I know I framed this journal as a series of posts about the
user experience of living in a small studio apartment and yet the first dozen
posts were mostly about the moving process.
I thought the topics that I covered were interesting and somewhat
relevant to the theme, so I included them.
But now I want to try to focus more on the original “UX of small” theme.
Appliances: I never
really thought about this before, but a refrigerator that is ¾ the size of a
standard model only fits about half as
much stuff. The electronics in the back
is about the same size and the insulation requires the thickness of the sides
and door to be the same size. So to make
it ¾ the size, they have to cut the interior in half. You don’t notice it at first because the
design changes are subtle. But there are
only two rows on the door and they are very slim. The drawer on the bottom for produce is
deceptively small and there is only one.
This winds up changing a lot of my eating habits in ways I
wouldn’t have guessed. I used to cook
for a week and store the leftovers in the fridge or freezer. Can’t do that now. I used to buy some staples in bulk, can’t do
that now. And I have to go shopping more often.
I actually had to toss some leftover pizza – not because it was old but
because there was no room left.
