The mystery of bathroom mats and of backdoors
The mystery of bathroom mats and of backdoors
Muse #346 - aesthetics or usability?
We have a bathroom mat by our shower entrance. When I use the toilet late at night or early morning here in cold Canada, the floor is quite chilling. Well, there are options. Like heated floor for one, which we don’t have. Or I could wear something on my feet. And I am certainly too lazy to do that in my sleepy state. So, I do the next best thing… pull the bathroom mat partly closer to where I sit, so that I can put my feet on it and save them from the cold.
When I visit the bathroom the next time, the bathmat has moved back. There are strange creatures in my home which do that. The same happens to the mats that are at our basement exit and the one on the main floor that leads to the deck.
These two entry doors are double-doors and one of these double doors is permanently locked. So, I often align the foot mats in front of the door to be covering the whole of the door that is in use. But then again, these mats tend to move back to the middle of the two doors, not serving the purpose to cover anyone entering through the door in use. It is the same creature that seems to be at work here. The mat-moving creature.
It keeps me wondering. What is important? Aesthetics or usability. I come from the camp that usability and functionality are more important. Function over form. The form is important but if that comes after function, then it is great. But form alone is not enough. For some items like art, I can understand that form trumps function. Form and uniqueness are its purposes. But for everything else, it is the other way around.
What do you think? Usability or aesthetics? Should I let my creature win?