Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has a short discussion today about digital camera design, and also briefly mentions a couple of sound mixing boards he has used.

Plus, people just like stuff that looks and feels better. I remember my old Alesis mixing board was good, but its controls felt cheap -- like a kid's toy. The Mackie I use now (the Alesis suffered an unfortunate accident) isn't any better, really, but its controls feel better, so it's a pleasure to use.

I've been noticing a lot of contrast in my life between products that actually work very well, and products that are far more pleasurable to use than the first set but don't work nearly as well. One example that I think about almost daily is body lotion, which I use a lot of because I have very dry, flaky skin.

The cheap, national-brand lotion I get at the grocery store smells a bit off (not too bad, just neutral instead of good). The container is, again, a bit off: not attractive, although I like the colors chosen for the pump and part of the text: a nice strong blue, somewhere between turquoise and teal. The design of the bottle is good in that you really can get almost all the lotion out through the pump. And the lotion works wonderfully: one application lasts roughly 24 hours--that is, my skin doesn't feel dry or itchy, and I have a lot less flakiness. I don't feel a bit sticky or greasy after applying it, either, and it's never stained my clothes.

I've had a lot of other moisturizing experiences (not all were lotions) in the last couple of years, including: custom-scented lotion that Twoson gave me for my birthday (he picked jasmine, one of my favorites), orange-ginger lotion from a hotel stay (I grabbed each day's tiny bottle and brought them home), and then there are the LUSH products.

Massage bars, lumps of scented cocoa butter to use in the shower, foot lotion, hand lotion (both a solid bar and a custard in a pot), body lotion. All beautiful to smell, touch, and see; all very expensive.

These non-grocery-store products are very pleasurable to use. I feel special when I use them, both because they are not the run-of-the-mill basics and because of their particular properties: their silky feel on my hands while I'm spreading the product, their smells, the packaging used on them.

The very expensive, clove-scented foot lotion from LUSH is a decadent luxury to put on, and I feel like a princess when I'm doing it--but my feet feel dry when I get up in the morning. Not true of the grocery-store basic. Same with the hotel lotion: the tiny bottle is clever and hip, the lotion smells delicious, but my hands feel dry and I need more lotion about an hour later. And the massage bars and shower bars leave my skin so greasy that I prefer to lounge for a few minutes and let them buff off a bit on the inside of my robe before dressing.

All of the LUSH stuff is like the foot lotion. Pretty product, great scents, marvelous feel while using, but ultimately they're not doing the job of moisturizing my skin, and some of them have the negative quality of greasiness.

On the other hand, the basic grocery-store lotion is very cheap to buy and use: it has no bonus of pleasure in the use, no happy smells or pretty feel to induce me to use it, it's like taking my vitamins or my prescriptions, a chore rather than a treat. But that's what I keep going back to, because effectiveness is more important to me than pleasure, and this one does the job at a quarter the price.

Even though I'm willing to pay more for texture, color, scent, and even a pretty package, I'm only willing to pay more when the product also *works*. It doesn't have to work better than the less-expensive competitor, but I want it to work at least as well.

In a perfect world I could get the basic lotion in a range of scents for just a bit more in cost, but I'm glad to have it at all. And I'll keep buying it, because I'm not stupid: I'd buy it even if it cost more than the others because it works, but it's actually cheaper by a lot. I can give up the decadent pleasure of using the expensive stuff in favor of the practical value of the cheap stuff.

So that's my sweet spot. I imagine I'd struggle harder if any of those premium products worked, but they don't. I'm astounded by that, truly I am.