Nishad Patne

Projects / Ceiling Fan

Completed

Usability study of ceiling fan pull‑chain controls

1 / 3The fan studied: two identical chains, one for speed, one for light. (Product photo: homedepot.com.)

Paper
Ceiling Fans: An analysis of pull-chain controls
Role
Research and design
Team
Nishad P
Timeline
Fall 2022

Many ceiling fans hang two identical ball chains that differ only in length: the short one cycles the speeds, the long one switches the light.

01

Concept and work

The fan studied: two identical chains, one for speed, one for light. (Product photo: homedepot.com.)

I ran individual trials with 5 university students, with interviews before and after, and read the results through five human-factors principles:

  1. 01Control discrimination
  2. 02Visual perception
  3. 03Memory
  4. 04Bottom‑up processing
  5. 05Decision making

  • 4of the 5

    said they were uncomfortable

  • 2of the 5

    pulled the wrong chain first

  • 1of the 5

    could not complete the task

How long each participant took to complete the task.

My proposal: a mechanical indicator beside the speed chain (three numbered icons and an off icon) that needs no power, so people recognise the fan's state instead of recalling it.

The proposed indicator: the fan's speed shown beside its chain.

The full paper (PDF, embedded).

The full paper (PDF, embedded).
02

Reflection

It was fun to look back on an academically rigorous paper from the pre-AI days. A quirky topic, yes, but still relevant: it makes me wonder how fans like this were made in the first place.

Did no one run a usability test?

I wrote it as a class research paper for the Foundations of Human Systems Engineering course at ASU, and I feel it was my last purely handwritten work, untouched by AI of any kind (it shows in my bad English there). Fans with this problem are still everywhere, including the one in my room right now. (Btw, this paper earned me a 4.22 on a 4.0 scale, for that course.)