Trying Out an Air Hand Dryer
Experiment Procedure
In order to test out the efficacy of an Air Hand Dryer for myself I conducted a little experiment. For each trial I held my hands under the sink for 5 seconds to get them nice and soaked. Then, I moved them quickly to the hand dryer--a Toto Clean Dry. These dryers are somewhat of a hybrid between a WAD and a JAD--and they sit at a price point of $593. When drying my hands, I used five different techniques for each trial:
- Flat - holding my hands flat against the air flow, flipping only once. (click on image for video preview of technique)
- Flip Flop - holding my hands flat against the air flow, flipping back and forth between palms up and palms down every couple seconds. (click on image for video preview of technique)
- Rubbing - rubbed my hands together in the same motion as when washing my hands. (click on image for video preview of technique)
- Dragging Hands - dragged my hands through the airstream, flipping in between each drag. (click on image for video preview of technique)
- Paper Towels - I compared all of the air hand drying methods above with using a paper towel.
My main unit of comparison was drying time, I had my friend Helen time each trial from the time I took my hands out from under the water to the time I felt like my hands had reached ~97% moisture reduction. My hypothesis was that the paper towel would be have a faster drying time than any of the air dryer times.
One interesting thing to note about the bathroom setup is the presence of the paper towel dispenser directly next to the air hand dryer--more to come on this in my user observation section.
Summary of User Experience
Again, my main basis for comparison was the time elapsed between leaving the sink and reaching ~97% moisture reduction. The distance from the sink to the dryer/paper towels was very short (approximately 3 feet, mostly in the vertical direction) so if there was any discrepancy in the time it took me to get from the sink to the dryer/paper towels I am counting it as negligible. The below times were recorded (unit: seconds, to the nearest integer):
- Flat Drying: 20 seconds
- Flip Flop Drying: 16 seconds
- Rubbing Drying: 12 seconds
- Drag Through Drying: 12 seconds
- Paper Towel Drying: 6 seconds
My hypothesis was confirmed by the results of my test, the paper towel took significantly less time than the other hand drying techniques. The drying times for the air dryer surprised me though, they are significantly less than the averages I found when researching this topic -- see the downfalls page for the statistics I found in my research.