We love what this Electrolux washer-dryer can do. Its wash-and-dry capability is excellent. The buttons, though, are atrocious. A capable machine should not make starting an ordinary wash feel like solving a small puzzle.
Start should mean start
The SmartSelect EWW12-series manual tells you to use the Start/Pause control and the right-hand soft key marked “OK” to start, pause or interrupt a programme. Why does a button labelled Start/Pause need an OK chaser? If starting the cycle takes another button, Start is not doing its one job clearly.
Those soft keys change function depending on what the display says. That is already one more thing to keep track of. Making the user interpret a changing button and then confirm a routine action is needlessly confusing. Press Start, start the wash. If a confirmation is truly needed, put the reason on screen in plain language.
The display hides the useful information
The same manual says the wash and dry times appear separately for only a few seconds before the display settles on the combined cycle time. Add drying and the estimated wash time can change too, because the wash is adjusted to prepare the clothes for drying.
Maybe the adjustment is sensible inside the machine. The interface still does a poor job explaining it. Keep the wash time, dry time and total visible together, and say why an estimate changed. Making people catch a brief screen to understand their own laundry schedule is bad feedback.
Brilliant capability, atrocious buttons
The machine's capability is why we love it. The buttons make using that capability more frustrating than it should be. A clear one-press Start and a persistent cycle-time breakdown would fix the biggest problems.
To whoever designed this interface: did you drink too much fabric softener? The laundry comes out great. The buttons need more than another rinse.
These observations refer to the SmartSelect washer-dryer instructions for the EWW12 series; control layouts vary by model. Read the Electrolux Australia user manual.