Permadeath and laundry

Wash, rinse, reset. I just got game over on the washing machine.

Permadeath is a game mechanic concept, meaning that when you lose, you have to restart the game from the beginning.

You might recognize permadeath from classic arcade games, like Pac-Man and Space invaders. 👾 🕹️

No continues. No save points. No undo.

GAME OVER. PLAY AGAIN?

The washing machine in our current Airbnb also incorporates permadeath as a part of its design.

Everyone here has experienced it at least once by now.

It works like this:

🤩 You press the “on / off” button to wake up the machine.

🤔 You go through the more or less complicated process of setting the program, temperature etc.

🤦 You try to start the washing cycle, but accidentally press the “on / off” button again instead of the intended “start / pause” button.

This turns off the machine.

This resets all your settings.

GAME OVER. PLAY AGAIN?

Another example of the same concept is the <input type="reset"> button in HTML forms.

When clicking on a reset button, everything you have entered in the form is reset to the default state. Everything you have typed is forever lost.

GAME OVER. PLAY AGAIN?

It used to be a common practice to put a reset button next to the submit button in a form.

Nowadays it is a strong recommendation to not use it at all:

You should usually avoid including reset buttons in your forms. They're rarely useful, and are instead more likely to frustrate users who click them by mistake - MDN

You probably don’t want to frustrate anyone using your product.

You probably don’t want them to feel like it’s game over.

Unless you are actually creating an arcade game.