When Design Overthinks: The Hang On Outlet

While we are very much against power waste from electrical technology and their vampire power-packs, we do have a strong negative reaction to this design concept that all the cool blogs are waving around. The concept offers a place to hang your plug when it’s out of the socket and therefore encourages you to, erm, take your plug out when you’ve finished using your electronic stuff.

While we respect that Paulo Oh has the right to experiment and play any way he feels fit, we don’t think this idea is worthy of the spotlight focus it has received on sites like Yanko and Product Dose. We have a couple of problems with this idea.

a) People aren’t unplugging their electronics because they don’t have a place to put their cables afterwards. Unplugged plugs spotted by guests during dinner parties are not major embarrassments.

b) The concept involves a significant change in behavior – you get on your knees, you pull out, then you hang up the cable.

C) Many vampire power-packs (e.g. the ones for your mobile phones) have the plug already built in. So this concept fails to deal with them.

Why not just put an on/off switch on all sockets instead? Maybe one that glows. Or gives out a shrill cry every 30 minutes. That’ll remind you to unplug.