The other night I had to wheel a large trash bin to the end of my driveway for trash pick-up the next morning. As it was too dark to see outside, I grabbed my headlamp to address the issue. The headlamp is about 2 1/4 inches long by 1 1/4 inches wide. The comfortable, easily adjustable elastic headband, about the diameter of a person's head,
affords wearing. It consists of one button and three LED lights. The pill-shaped button design set into the outer edge of the device has textured pattern that
signifies its intended use, pressing. Despite the minimalist interface (only one button), it has a variety of states beyond the obvious "main-light on" and "all-light off" states. The other states include: a secondary-light state, a locked state, a red-light state, a dimmed state, and dimmest and brightest states. For what it is, a headlamp, it's fairly complex. For something as straightforward as the trash routine, simply putting the headlamp on and clicking the button once when walking outside and again when coming back in, is all the interaction required. However, if someone unfamiliar with the Black Diamond headlamp design were handed the light and given the task of figuring out all its states, that person would likely struggle because of a lack of
discoverability. In fact, despite having owned the light for many years, it was only last year during a canyoneering trip that I discovered the ability to "lock" the light after it accidentally got turned on in my backpack, drained the battery, and made me
frustrated. On a positive note, the design for dimming and brightening the light is well done. After clicking once to turn the main-light on, clicking again and holding the button for less than a second turns the light to its brightest state from which it proceeds to steadily dim before blinking to indicate that it has reached its lowest setting. Continuing to hold the button will perform the opposite action. This quick blink
feedback is wonderful as it makes it clear when the extreme states, dimmest and brightest, have been reached. However, alternative solutions do exist that could make use of other aspects of the light more intuitive. Little exists in the way of a
natural mapping between the button
presses and
holds that are required to turn the light to the desired state. Having separate buttons to control the secondary lights, positioned along the edge of the device, adjacent to the secondary lights, would create
spatial relationships that may improve the user's experience. Lastly, note the blue tape keeping the battery cover from accidentally opening. The latch, which is suppose to act as an
anti-affordance, preventing the battery apartment from being exposed until the user intentionally opens it, is too weak to hold and would open at unintended times.
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