Sure, you can call me anal-retentive (which I'm not -- I think "perfectionist" is a more accurate term, but without the connotation of stasis that comes with it), but I love what I see in the photo above. I took it at a hotel I visited recently.
What do you see?
I see the mark of someone who cared. I see someone who was paying attention. I see a belief in quality and the pursuit of perfection. I see a work culture where people are able to exercise their need to do good work.
All this in eight screwheads aligned on the same plane, plus four switches located correctly within their assigned cutout (if you've ever put one of these panels together, you know how hard this is to do). Quality experiences and offerings are fractal in nature, and rely on the largest and smallest elements to all be in sync. Being a guest at this hotel -- from the bed to the room to the food to the views -- was a marvelous experience, and looking at this panel none of that news should come as a surprise.
Again, everything matters.
Right on. My other big hotel thing is noticing if they've vacuumed the corners. After a year doing NASCAR I found vacuumed corners to be sort of a rarified thing!
What hotel was this?
Posted by: Reilly Brennan | 24 November 2008 at 05:08 PM
If you want to see really good switches, come to Europe a bit more. Just last weekend, I was at the Hotel Omm in Barcelona (http://www.hotelomm.es/). They have a really elegant set of switches (round in matte/satin steel, within a steel frame, no cheap plastic, no visible screws); but the best thing about the bedside switches to control the lighting of the entire room is that they are really thoughtfully designed, including a bathroom-only switch. Why? If you wake up at night, you most likely need to go to the bathroom. This switch allows you to see where you're going but keep the bedroom dark, without shining a light on the person sleeping next to you and waking them up. Sorry I did not take a picture!
Posted by: LivePaola | 24 November 2008 at 11:32 PM
LivePaola, I am in total agreement about Omm. I didn't get closeups of the switches, but I loved the room enough to capture these photos
Flickr set from Omm
Posted by: Reilly Brennan | 25 November 2008 at 06:22 AM
Back when I was on Kaiser health insurance I noticed that in every examination room I went into, regardless of which hospital, the screws on the light and power panels were all turned vertical. (To my eye this is more aesthetically pleasing than the horizontal alignment, it matches the switches themselves.) But my guess was that in this case there was a mandate in the contract about this that the electricians were held to, rather than some deep caring on their part. Who knows why, perhaps like a rider in a rock group contract where they are only to be fed brown M&Ms so that they can see how well the contract was read.
Posted by: richardsona | 29 December 2008 at 08:34 PM