An article on the development of water fountains designed for water bottles

[conuly]

http://on.wsj.com/ZiYvwf

Interesting article, but I kinda lol'd at the assertion that if the fountain doesn't fill a bottle in under 10 seconds users will get "bored". If they don't want the experience to be boring, they're in the wrong business. It's a water fountain. I think I can spend ten seconds of my day there.

Comments

[eofs.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago we had an email go round at work, asking for opinions on replacing our water fountains. I wrote back quite plainly: please, please don't. It was a classic style water fountain, and the first office I'd worked in where you could easily fill a water bottle. (My first office I had to go to the toilets to fill my water bottle, as the kitchen didn't have drinking water in the tap!)

But alas, progress marches on. People who disliked the 'unhygienic' old water fountain, or wanted to do away with the plumbed in one and replace it with those massive bottles (ahahaha like that will happen) won. (I always think that if your mouth is touching the water fountain whilst you drink, you're doing it wrong.) And new fountains arrived, the now typical style shoot a jet of water from above. For a brief period there was a new one downstairs and an old one upstairs. Which allowed me to time the difference between them. The old filled a standard 500ml bottle in 15 seconds, the new in 30. I'm not sure that bored is the word I'd use, but in a busy newsroom when there's a queue for water or you've dashed away from the stove whilst cooking to fill your water, the difference is noticeable. The button on the new one encourages you to stoop slightly to hold it down, as it's several inches lower than the old one. And you can't see what you're doing any more, even after a year of filling my water bottle 3-6 times a day, I still struggle to position it so that the water goes into the bottle rather than cascading down the side.

But to me, even if all those are dismissed as me being picky or whatever, the most unforgivable change is that before someone just needing a quick drink could lean over the fountain, drink for some seconds, and move on. Now we get through hundreds of plastic cups. In an age of going green, we've made our footprint bigger. Unbelievable.