Product review (2 stars): An exercise in really bad user-interface design
We bought a refurbished house and it came with this range. The good thing about this range is that if you can get it to do what you want, it works and it works very nicely. But the user interface on this thing (and all the Whirlpool ranges in this series) is a textbook example of what not to do. No I mean what NEVER to do. Actually I mean about 20 things NEVER to do. Really, I could teach a short course on bad design using just this range. Where do we start?

First of all, the center touch panel is recessed and it's dark. It almost defies attempts to make it light enough to see. Because it's recessed, there is a constant shadow on the top of it. If you install this with the companion overhead microwave oven you'll have both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that the microwave will cast a shadow from any overhead lights you may have, making the control panel essentially unworkable in anything but the brightest side-lit sunlight. The backhanded blessing is that the microwave has a light beneath it that you can use to slightly illuminate the control panel - but this light is pathetically dim, it's mounted almost directly above the control panel, and once again the shadow due to the recession of the panel makes even this very close light almost worthless, leaving the top half of the panel in total darkness. So you'd better keep a very bright flashlight near your stove, because you are likely to need one both day and night.

Making matters worse is the fact that the control panel has several very similar-looking buttons, requiring you to look very carefully at them. This problem with the similarity is compounded by the staggering darkness of the thing. If you are older and your eyesight is not really up to par, you will find yourself constantly putting on or taking off your glasses and/or sticking your head over the cooktop and squinting to read the tiny type, since the dark images are entirely insufficient to make clear what almost any button does.

There are more problems with the control panel but I don't want to make a book out of this.

The cooktop has four heating elements arranged in a square. But the four control knobs are in a straight line, providing no hint as to which knob controls the front vs. back burner on each side. In order to determine which burner each knob controls, there is a tiny, tiny image near each knob. Unless you have 20/20 vision at this distance, you are going to be leaning over and squinting just  to see which burner you are turning on. You might expect that after a year I would have memorized which knobs go to which burners, but I haven't.

I would guess that 99% of the population would say that you should design a burner control knob so that turning it clockwise makes the burner hotter, but no, on this oven all of the knobs make the burner hotter by turning them COUNTER clockwise. Well, almost all of them. It gets even crazier.

The left front burner has a center element surrounded by an outer ring. You can turn on just the center, or the center and the ring together. Very nice, except again for the controls. Once you figure out that the leftmost knob controls the front burner, you have to squint again to see the tiny, tiny images on the left and right sides of the knob. One shows just a circle (indicating the center element) and the other shows two concentric circles, indicating both elements. These images are so incredibly small that one simply has to wonder whether the designer had some sort of telescopic vision.

After you have leaned over and squinted sufficiently to determine the side towards which to turn the leftmost knob (you select either one or both burners by using either the left or the right semicircular heat range), you then have to worry about whether to turn the knob clockwise or counterclockwise to get the "high" or "low" heat setting. Incredibly, these are opposite on the two sides of the knob. So if you are using just the center of this burner, you rotate the knob one way to make it hotter, but if you are using both elements then you rotate it the other way to make the burner hotter. A nasty contradiction in just one knob, and remember then that the side of this knob that heats up clockwise is also in contradiction with the other three knobs. Think of it. A stove on which the knobs use different rotational directions to mean "hotter". And think of it you will, every time you decide to adjust a burner. You'll squint and you'll think.

If you want some idea of how much you'll be struggling with this thing when you buy it, I suggest  you look at Amazon's biggest-magnification image from a normal screen viewing distance and imagine yourself trying to figure out exactly what to do. It's very similar to standing in front of the real thing. Unless you have the eyes of a sharpshooter, you'll be putting your face right up to the screen and squinting.

The entire panel on this range is a ridiculous exercise in bad design. If I were teaching a design course and a student turned in something like this, I'd fail him and advise him to pursue another career. Really, how something like this could have made it out of the lab, let alone into production, is beyond me. And from Whirlpool, no less.