ux-sunami09
User eXperience Journal
Breathing Plastic: How My Air Purifier Worked, Without Actually Working
A few weeks ago, I bought a Levoit air purifier for my room. I set it up, plugged it in, and turned it on. It lit up, made a soft humming noise, and everything seemed to be working perfectly. For almost a month, I thought I was breathing clean air. I wasn’t.
The Interaction
Figure 1: External view of the air purifier. Nothing suggests additional setup is required.
I wanted to improve the air quality in my room. The setup felt straightforward. The top panel had touch controls with icons for power, fan speed, sleep mode, timers, and a few others that weren’t immediately obvious.
Figure 2: Control panel with multiple icons, some of which are unclear.
I pressed the power button and the lights turned on, and I could hear air moving, so to me it felt like everything was working. Based on what I’ve used before like those standing fans, my mental model was that if a device turns on and air is coming out, then it’s doing its job. So in my head it was like: air purifier is on, air is moving, so the system must be working. Because of that, I didn’t really question anything or check further.
The Buttons That Didn’t Make Sense
Figure 3: Button layout and a specific icon that appears to suggest rotation but does not behave as expected.
The control panel had a bunch of icons arranged in a circle. Some of them made sense right away, like the power button and fan speed, but others were honestly confusing. There was one button that looked like it might rotate the airflow or do something like oscillation. Based on my past experience with fans, my mental model was that this button would probably make the air move in a different direction. But when I pressed it, it actually didn’t seem to do anything at all, which made it even more confusing.
This is a problem with mapping. Ideally you should be able to predict what will happen, but here that wasn’t the case. I had to guess what the button did instead of just knowing.
It also relates to affordance, because the icon didn’t clearly suggest its function. It looked like it should do one thing, but either did something else or just wasn’t obvious. This increased my cognitive load, since I had to stop and think instead of just using it naturally, which kind of breaks the flow of the experience.
The Discovery
After about a month, I randomly came across an Instagram reel in my feed where someone was opening their air purifier and removing the plastic from the filter. That made me pause for a second, because I didn’t remember doing that when I set mine up. So I went and checked mine. When I opened the purifier, I found the filter still wrapped in plastic. At that moment, I realized I hadn’t been purifying air this whole time.
Where the UX Failed
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Mapping (Buttons Issue): The button layout and icons didn’t clearly map to their functions. I had to guess what certain buttons did, which increases confusion and reduces usability.
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Feedback: The device did give feedback through lights and sound, but it ended up being misleading. In UX, feedback is supposed to tell the user not just that something is happening, but that it’s happening correctly. In this case, the purifier was basically telling me “I’m on” through the lights and noise, but it never indicated whether it was actually filtering air. So even though it seemed active, it didn’t really confirm that it was working the way I expected.
What Worked Well
- Clean, modern design
- Responsive touch controls
- Once set up correctly, airflow and performance were noticeably better
How It Could Be Improved
- Clear external label: “REMOVE FILTER PACKAGING BEFORE USE”
- Improved button design: clearer icons and better mapping
- Better system feedback to indicate real functionality