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Overthinking the problem

December 9, 2010
Soap leaf dispenser

Soap leaf dispenser: "Push down lever and release"

Once upon a time, public washrooms had a sink, a bar of soap, and a towel.  Then somebody got sanitary and the towel became a roll of re-usable cloth, usually laundered and refilled by the uniform company that supplied the business. It was a good system that you still see in very busy places.

But paper towels also became popular (however wasteful they might be) and nobody wanted to handle a bar of soap that strangers had handled.  So somebody thought up the bright idea of a “soap leaf” dispenser.  The business would buy packets of “soap leaves” which were thin little wafers of pressed soap.  It was a new revenue stream for the supply company!

I remember them; the wafers broke, the mechanism jammed, but the fancy stainless steel dispensers were bolted into the wall forever.  This one is probably thirty-five years old but I bet it actually only dispensed soap leaves for the first three months of its existence.  For the last several decades every one I’ve seen has had a plastic dispenser next to it, for liquid soap.  Simple, effective, cheap.

It’s important to avoid making overly complicated solutions to simple problems: people won’t use them no matter how shiny they are.  The trick is figuring out if your new invention is a soap-leaf dispenser, or something people will use.

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  1. December 9, 2010 at 07:21 | #1

    Very good point! I used to enjoy reading old issues of Popular Mechanics to find all the inventions that had gone nowhere over the years, and then speculate as to why they hadn’t caught on.

  2. Ray M
    December 9, 2010 at 17:03 | #2

    Speaking of overly-complicated solutions… I still regret my decision, back in the early 90s, to buy a radial arm saw with fancy new electronic controls and a digital readout. It turns out the battery didn’t last very long, it was proprietary (Sears), and expensive. Adding insult to injury, the electronic angle measurements didn’t work very well and required constant adjustment. I gave up and reverted to using it with the few fixed mechanical positions it does provide.

    Why oh why didn’t I go for the time-honoured all-mechanical version?

    • Rod Clark
      December 10, 2010 at 16:07 | #3

      Ray, I bought a DeWalt radial arm saw back in 1970 before Black & Decker took them over. It was a great saw. However, I began to meet people who had had very serious accidents with their radial arm saw, and my confidence disappeared. Its now sat unused in my workshop for the past 23 years. I much prefer a bandsaw altho I admit its better at some jobs and no match for the radial arm or tablesaw for squaring panel-like projects (kitchen cupboard doors etc.)

      At 63 I’m more interested in a safe & painless life than I am in building things by using dangerous tools.

      Rod

  3. December 9, 2010 at 19:39 | #4

    I took my motorcycle club to an agricultural museum last summer,
    having arranged with the curator that he remove the explanatory texts from one wall of 100-300 year old agricultural tools, leaving just the tools and their numbers. Task was to name & describe the purpose of those 30 tools. Best score? just 17; my score? only 11.

    If we can’t look backwards for inventiveness, how can we hope to look forward? :-(

  4. December 10, 2010 at 02:15 | #5

    I have this sudden urge to visit bathrooms around the city to see if I can find a soap leaf dispenser. Perhaps on April Fool’s, so I can then ask management why the dispenser’s empty… I am evil.

  5. Rod Clark
    December 10, 2010 at 16:03 | #6

    Try living in a bi-lingual country where every soap leaf dispenser is labelled (all functions) in two languages. “Push down lever and release” is the last thing your eyes find. I love to have breakfast in Buffalo NY; “english” on all four sides of the cereal box at breakfast.

    Rod

  6. December 10, 2010 at 20:33 | #7

    Don’t you just love stainless steel, though? A little cleaning now and then, and it looks as new as the day it was installed.

  7. dof
    December 11, 2010 at 23:23 | #8

    The design guy Don Norman says that for most gizmos (and I assume, computer applications) if you need instructions, the design is faulty.

    Stainless is lovely – it usually outlasts anything attached to it. Last year I threw out a good stainless sink because the faucet and drain had corroded and worn out. Could have replaced just those items but a new sink was cheaper than the time required. Future archaeologists may wonder WTF…

    I got rid of my radial arm saw – it just made me too nervous to use. I have a nice Rockwell table saw though, and always use push sticks that I make myself. I also have something called a Delta Sawbuck that I like a lot.

  8. dof
    December 22, 2010 at 15:14 | #9

    Here’s a clever solution to the problem: it uses an ordinary bar of soap, and shaves off a little bit when you press the bar. Might actually work.

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