Usability Forum

If I were to just pack a meat thermometer in my lunch box

By Eddie Lopez. Friday, 27. March 2009, 21:33:38

Microwave meals.

In this day an age, we pretty much assume that microwave meals are "self contained," save for a utensil or two. They even have their own bowl/plate! If I were to conduct some field research on the microwave meal consumer, I'm sure my participants would find the typical use cases to be:

those who carry to work for a lunch....
those that are unwilling or unable to kick start the 'ol oven/range and cook up something from scratch.

well, those are pretty much the big use cases I'd guess... In any event, I'm sure if we'd canvas those participants, I'm sure the "a's" would not have access to a meat thermometer, and the "b's" would not care enough use one.

On Step 5, the text reads:

Check that the product is cooked thoroughly
*Internal temperature need to reach 165 degrees as measured by a food thermometer

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Comments

Anonymous # 29. March 2009, 10:33

Anonymous writes:

Sorry to post this as a comment to an article, but how do I email the writers of this blog? I can't see any "Contact us" links anywhere.

WillYum # 29. March 2009, 18:37

@Anon: Easiest way is a My Opera account and Private Message (PM). or go with Eddie.

@Article:

It's ironic because I'm contemplating a microwave meal this morning (our gas got shutoff... bad former tenant) and I wonder if it says something like this. That's such an obvious CYA attempt. Luckily, it's a bit transparent, if you create a food for convenience and usage in an environment where the user doesn't usually get to set the temperature (simply, high, medium, low, on most), then it falls on you to take reasonable precautions to ensure proper preparation.

Yum

Eddie_Lopez # 30. March 2009, 13:29

Anon-

In addition to WillYum (who I would definitely consider a primary contributor), You can click on any poster's profile and send a message- if that requires an account and you're not willing to do so, you can also try me