Interacting with Pure Chronos CD radio

PURE Chronos CD Series II DAB/FM/CD/MP3 Stereo Clock Radio.

I recently bought a combined CD player and DAB/FM radio to use in the kitchen. It has an alarm function too but that was not a priority.

It works well, makes a good sound, and even has a little remote so if we wanted we could control it without leaving the sink or the cooker. It was easy to set up – you just turn it on and it sets itself up, setting itself to the right time and date and tuning in to all the available stations. So these criticisms of its interaction design should not be taken to mean it is a bad product – they are minor irritations.

1. Location of the on button. The machine has a low energy standby mode, so the usual way to turn it on or off is to press the button marked Standby which is a toggle between standby and on. Why is it in one of the least accessible parts of the front panel (bottom-right of the eight-button set)?! You have to carefully guide your finger past the big round knob in the middle, taking care not to hit the button immediately above.
2. Delay in response of the on button. The machine is in standby. You press the Standby button. Nothing happens – it takes up to three seconds for the display to change and for sound to emerge. This breaks all the rules of providing immediate feedback for user-reassurance. It could surely flash the display (which is permanently on in standby mode), make a tiny beep, or something...? The total lack of action for a moment is disturbing and creates an aura of doubt around the product as a whole.
3. Location of the volume button. By contrast to the on button, pride of place is given to the Volume button (top-left of the eight-button panel). This might seem reasonable on the grounds that you may want to suddenly turn the radio down if the phone rings or a friend calls round, but in fact you hardly ever need this button. Why? Because the big round knob in the middle is the volume control. You only ever need to press the volume button if you had previously selected another mode and want to return to Volume. This switchover is something that the machine does anyway after quite a short time-out while any other mode is selected. So there really is no need for the volume button to have the most accessible location on the panel.
4. Selecting stations. To change stations requires a three-fold interaction: (1) press Stations (2) turn the central knob until the name of the chosen station appears below the current station in the display (3) press the central knob inwards. This seems excessive, and is certainly something you have to read the manual to discover – surely no one would intuit the idea of using a large rotatable knob as a push-button? 
5. Selecting presets. Choosing a preset is very similar to choosing a station. But with one incomprehensible difference. When you choose Stations, the station shown, from which you can navigate left or right using the central knob, is the current one. But when you choose Presets, the station shown is not the current one but the first. I can only imagine that the programming of the interface does not include checking whether the currently chosen station is in the presets list so the machine cannot behave as it obviously should, directly analogous to using the Stations control.

This is a nice machine in the Pure range [external link] designed by Imagination Technologies [external link] in the UK. With a tiny bit more care in interaction design it would be even better.