The freezer and refrigerator sections of the side-by-side appliance needed to be the same size. The doors had to be heavy, and the ice and water dispenser had to be as simple as possible.

"I wanted something simple because I wanted the least number of things that could go wrong," said Richardson, a Bullitt County, Ky., resident who recently bought a model with those features. "If something breaks, I like to fix it myself, but I can't if it gets too complicated."

To figure out what he wanted, Richardson said he spent a lot of time in stores opening doors, feeling materials and pushing buttons.

While many shoppers study Consumer Reports and other buying guides before making appliance purchases, the in-store experience is still a big part of shopping, vendors and appliance designers say. For appliance makers, that means designing products to grab and hold customer attention.

Shanon T. Jones, product manager for dishwashers at General Electric's consumer and industrial division in Louisville, said literature can be placed in stores to explain how well a dishwasher cleans or what features it has, but people can't experience those features until they get it home.

Instead, they can fold down tines in dishwasher racks, play with flatware trays and touch the controls.

While cleaning ability and price tend to be the top selling points of a dishwasher, usability is usually in the top five, she said.

That has meant expanding the inside space of dishwashers, adding fold-down tines so people can put bigger items inside and, most recently, allowing customers to raise or lower the upper dishwasher racks to give more room for lower-rack items.

"I had a guy come in with a pizza pan," salesman Steve Combs said. "He said (a dishwasher) had to fit this dish. He ... was tired of washing it by hand."

GE follows up on technical studies with consumer-focus groups. For the most part, GE human factors psychologist Cathy Emery is seeking simplicity - the fewer decisions a user has to make, the easier the product is to use.