This is what happens when you make style more important than function.

Pop quiz: when you lift the handle, what temperature water do you expect to come out? (This isn’t a trick question; assume you have an awesome water heater with instant warm-up time)

“Hot,” you might say, because the “H” is pointed towards you and aligned with the faucet.

“Cold,” you might say, because the handle is turned in the direction of the “C”.

There wouldn’t be any ambiguity if the H/C markings were on an immobile part of the fixture so that the relative position of the handle made the answer obvious.

(If you instinctively answered “cold” then congrats this is the perfect faucet for you.)

In my bathroom there are 2 sinks in the counter. The handles on the outside are hot, the handles on the inside are cold.

I instantly thought cold. They all work like this in Australia.

left is cold seems pretty standard to me.

but I do think you make a fair point from the perspective of interaction design.

Yes, left==cold is a valid interpretation, and standard in the US.

My brain sees this interface like, say, a can of cooking spray where you twist the type of spray you want to the red mark (in the sink’s case, the faucet is the red mark). I see the “H” turned toward me and see it as selected.

It’s visually inconsistent.

If it needs a manual, it’s a bad design.

But this “should” be cold as the handle is what is dictating the temp gauge, but easy to get wrong with the H/C labels moving as well.

You assume it starting in neutral position aligned to center. And move toward H for hot and C for cold.

We've determined that 30c is the perfect temperature for all humans, so we've made the faucet to always dispense 30c water — Apple

We installed a camera in the faucet which adjusts temperature to become warmer if it detects goosebumps on your left boob — Google

Take this test to determine what kind of temperature person you are. Share and like for more water — Facebook

Temperature and quality are irrelevant, this 140ml of water is free, press this button for another 140ml — Twitter

Yeah that faucet has been rusted shut since Windows ME, but there's a wrench and a hammer under the sink. Give it a whack and it turns on, but it might restart a few time while you wash your hands — Microsoft

Please send water, we're dying — Yahoo

This is always a trick question.. not due to ambiguity of the pipe model, but because you never know when the plumber fucked up and crosslinked the pipes..

I would instantly say cold becausr when in neutral Position, youre turning the handle to C.

If it is your first time using this I get why it looks confusing, once you realize it loves up, down, left and right then it all makes sense.

Up/down adjusts flow
Left/right adjust temperature

This is a very good UX, one time use and you known how the thing works, no instructions needed.

Like the first Mario game.

@bittersweet this is one of my favorite comments.

@ryanmhoffman

We charge 0.000003c per μl of water from our network of redundant faucets per degree kelvin to your credit card, with free microdroplets for the first year! — AWS

Edit faucet.conf to set temperature and flow speed, restart faucet.service and pipe the water through cat. Kernel panic might happen if cat doesn't like water — Linux

@bittersweet that ladt one 😂😂😂😂 #dying

Right is usually for cold 🤔