It is way too easy. I can remember seeing a rash of magazine articles and news reports cautioning against just such a thing about five or six years back. Most newly designed stalls have taken this into consideration and moved the hook either half-way down the door or onto one of the walls.
I woudl have agreed with this 10 years ago but I think the design of microwaves has gotten much, much better recently. On my microwave, the power is always high unless you change it. It’s got buttons for popcorn and stuff that you can press and let cook. For timed cooking, put in either minutes or seconds and hit “start”. And my favorite feature, “minute cook”. Press once for 1 minute, twice for two, etc. You can press it while it’s cooking and add a minute. It also has “add 30 seconds”. Ridiculously easy to use.
Piston engines
Gas piston engines ar about 120 years old. Steam engines had pistons so it was the 1st thing they thought of.
The British nave switched to turbines in the early 1900’s
In this connection see my bathroom lament above. If they provided a place for women to put their purses (or for men to put their European carryalls :D), then they wouldn’t have to run that risk. Another inconsiderate bathroom design feature is when the stall door is placed just so you can be clearly seen sitting, even when it’s closed. This usually seems to happen when they convert the last two stalls by the wall into a double-wide handicapped stall, but instead of putting the toilet as far away as possible from the next stall, in the corner, they cozy it up to the divider of the next partition. Somehow this usually seems to put the toilet in full view of the door crack.
When I began studying the development of aircraft I was surprised to see how poorly the cockpit ergonomics were planned. The early jets in particular had very haphazard instrument placement.
My favorite story about this (from the book “Cockpits of the Cold War”) concerns the earliest operational British jet, the Gloster Meteor. It was a twin-engine jet, and was equipped with a re-light system in case the engines flamed out.
To re-light an engine in flight you had to turn a high pressure fuel cock near the cockpit floor while also pressing an igniter button on the panel. Which meant that nobody was flying the aircraft! The pilots used to grab the stick with their knees while executing the procedure. Can you imagine the engineers not thinking of this?!
Also, on the Lockheed T-33 (which I’ve flown) one of the most important instruments in the fuel counter. It’s conveniently located at about knee level and behind the stick where you can’t see it. Just brilliant.
I just thought I’d put in a good word for my button microwave. I think it has more complicated modes, but I’ve never used them. There’s three time buttons: +10min, +1min, +10sec. Admittedly, you need a few presses, but it’s easy, as a mind is good at going 1-2-3-4-5 for 5 min, provided nothing stops it (unlike my phone, which whenever you do anything, won’t do anything else for a second, and furthermore, beeps loudly if you try). There’s also ‘cancel’ which pauses, or clears the time. And ‘go’.
The one piece of advice everyone should remember is “spend 30 seconds imagining you’re using it”. It makes design so easy. But many people forget.
Re. CD packaging, I recently learned how to get the damn stickers off with a minimum of fuss. I’m referring to the sticker that runs nearly the length of one side of a CD, preventing you from opening the case until the sticker’s been removed:
First, of course, take off the plastic wrapper. Then, on the edge away from the sticker, snap the little hinge out of its fulcrum (the little hole). Now you’ve essentially got two halves of the case, held together only by the sticker. Bring the top all the way around the other side of the bottom, and the sticker comes off easy as pie.
Hope I’ve described that adequately. It’s really, really simple when you actually do it.
I always figured the tops of surfaces in bathroom stalls were sloped to keep people from putting stuff there, so they wouldn’t forget things in the stall when they left. But I’m an optimist.
And to do this, simply run the bottom edge of the CD hard along the sharp edge of a table or counter.
[/Jai Roderiguez]
My stupid clothes dryer.
The lint trap is on the top and must be pulled up and toward you. Where is the lint? On the bottom of the mesh as it comes toward you. What happens to the lint? Why, it ends up scattered all over the top of the dryer, thanks for asking.
Julie
As someone who used to fix airplanes for a living, I am quite convinced that the concept that people would need to use and maintain their creations never occured to the people who designed them. Things that have short lifespans and need constant replacing are stuffed in dark holes behind more reliable equipment, that is probably being worn out from all the removing and installation it gets because of the POS behind it. Maintenence crawlways that are a few inches narrower than the average human being’s ribcage. Illconceived wiring modifications for things that are never used, and are difficult to repair. ( We went to a noise cancelling headset system, but couldn’t afford the headsets to go with it. That didn’t stop us from going ahead with changing all the aircraft wiring. And the new headset cords are so poorly designed that they constantly break during normal use and require you to go cross-eyed while repairing them. In contrast, the old cords were easy to repair, and lasted a long time before needing repair.) Levers that get in the way of controls when used. ( sometimes you needed to turn hydraulics on to get out certain instruments).
Finally, my biggest poor design pet peeve, tennamin(sp) nuts. These are little spring loaded nuts that hold in the instruments on at least two models of aircraft. They fit into notches in the hole the instrument slides into and are held in with nothing more than the force of the spring. Twitch just a little (or have the screw not start the thread correctly), and they go caroming off into the dark recesses of the instrument panel, often requiring a whole afternoon of poking, prodding, and searching to find. And you can’t just leave the little buggers in there, since you might start a fire. Why the evil bastard who designed them couldn’t just use riveted nuts, or better yet the wire nuts that every ficken thing else uses is beyond me. I have cursed his name so much there has to be a special layer of hell just for him. If there isn’t , there is no justice in this world.
Tinnerman nuts?
Thong underwear. It keeps riding up my butt. :eek:
Seriously…the inside protective seal on bottles. Sometimes it doesn’t have a little tab for you to pull, so you have to get a knife, cut a hole in it, and try to pull it off the bottle. But the glue they use is so strong that it doesn’t pull off completely, and when you pour over that last little bit of seal, the flow of the liquid goes all goofy and you sometimes spill. I hate when that happens.
A major advancement in caring for little ones is the electronic thermometer that reads temperature from the kids ear with just the press of a button.
One of the early Braun models, that unfortunately we happen to own, is a nightmare. The thing is hinged so that when not in use it folds in two to protect the probe. Good idea that. When you want to use it you unfold it and the two halves lock together. Works great. The thing is battery operated. So where do the batteries go in? The door for the batteries is located between the two folding halves. In fact the battery door IS the locking mechanism.
So when you open the thing and lock it in place for use the one side locks to the battery door and promtly removes said door from the battery compartment. You then have to pry the battery door off the one side, get the battery door attached firmly enough to the battery compartment that the locking machanism won’ t just pull it off again. Then return to step one and repeat the process until the stupid thing holds long enough to actually take a temp.
Having a sick fussy kid waiting through this whole process of course only adds to the fun.
Before you ask, we would have thrown the thing away long ago but it cost $50 new and would be at least $30 to replace it now. We just don’t use it enough to make that kind of expense worth while.
The coin chute on one of the pop vending machines at my workplace should have been designed differently. When it returns change you have to put your hand in front of the chute if you don’t want your coins flying out of it and possibly rolling underneath the machine itself, making them irretrievable (this has happened, it was only a dime, but still…) The adjacent snack machine has a clear plastic door in front of the change chute, so it catches any stray coins that might fly out otherwise.
Rocketeer- Yes Tinnerman Nuts. I had a personal name for them that wasn’t quite PC. The ones we used have the appearance of the flat ones, but slip into a slot and hold themselves in place sorta like the U ones. They were designed to go into a slot next to the instrument hole, and were held in from the front, but could slip out to the side. Unfortunately, I can’t find a picture of the type exact type.
From the website, it " Holds itself in place for blind assembly.", and they" Provide maximum holding power at minimum cost per fastener. " They forgot to add that this feature only applies some of the time. The springs wear out easily (which is how you drop them), so even if an individual one is cheaper than a riveted nut, you have to buy more.
Hmm…found a picture, they call it a cage nut. The peices of metal on the sides act as weak springs and hold the nut in place…sorta. The ones we had were flatter than this, but it seems functionally the same.
Oh, gosh, the list of Bad Human Factors in aircraft is endless…
Let’s start with “yokes” - those “steering wheels”. WHY did they go from joysticks to yokes? You see, with a stick you never ever forget you’re in an aircraft. With a yoke, your brain, conditioned from years of experience with cars, goes into “car mode” and you start trying to drive the plane instead of fly it. This is a problem for every student pilot starting in yoked airplanes. And the older the student the worse it is. You’re trying to taxi around an airport by steering with your hands instead of your feet. Yes, pretty much all the new designs are going back to stick, but we have thousands of yoked aircraft still flying, and old designs still in production like the new model Cessna 172’s are still using yokes because regulatory inertia makes it too difficult to convert it to stick (leaving aside re-design costs).
Then there’s the endless list of gauges badly placed, or too small to see clearly, or switches in awkward locations - I have a friend who has to push his seat back and use this weird stick device in order to change the fuel tank used by his Mooney, as just one example, because he just can’t physically reach it from his seat.
Clearly, whoever designed some of this never had to actually use it himself. At least not while actually flying. Doing this while sitting in a hangar on the ground doesn’t count, although I’m pretty sure most of the problem things weren’t even tested that much.
Well I prefer a stick too, but I don’t necessarily think yokes are a poor design choice for trainer aircraft. Sticks often require less force to manipulate, which makes the plane a bit more twitchy and easier to overcontrol. That’s fine if you’re experienced, but not necessarily what you want for a basic trainer. Student pilots are often ham-fisted with the controls, so a yoke with some mass to it isn’t always a bad thing. Not the case with all planes of course - Piper Cubs make great trainers.
Also, a yoke requires less travel laterally. This is desirable in aircraft with side-by-side seating.
Although most people have to overcome their driving reflexes to some extent when they learn to fly, I haven’t seen people having a LOT of trouble with this. During their very first lesson I have students taxi the plane while keeping their hands on their knees. I find this gives them a pretty good foundation for developing the new reflexes they need. Later on I have them position the controls into the wind with the yoke/stick.
The stick/yoke thing reminds me of a book I read about the Concorde, which had a “ram’s horn” control. The first pilots who saw it were very dubious. But it was a good choice given the cramped cockpit. You see those in a few business planes too, but not often.
On the subject of public restrooms, why do the doors to stalls always open inwards? When leaving, you always have to step way back, while trying not to fall over the toilet, so you can open the stupid stall door and move around it. Handicapped stalls always open outwards, for obvious reasons; why do regular stalls always open inwards? The only thing I can figure is its designed so that if you’re standing up in the stall taking a leak, and didn’t lock the door, and someone tries to open it, it’ll bump into you and stop, saving you some embarassment…but this really can’t be the reason for this, can it?
Oh, and here’s another one: the computerized registers I’ve used at a video store I worked at. When a customer would pay with a credit card, you’d swipe the card, and then the receipt printer would print out the receipt to be signed when the card was accepted. So, the cashier takes the receipt, and leans forward to set it on the counter so the customer can sign for it, right? Well, at exactly the moment in this series of motions where the cashier leans forward to place the receipt in front of the customer, the register drawer opens with great force and suddenness. Due to the strategic placement of same, if the cashier is unprepared, they will get struck soundly in the balls or lower abdomen.
There are tons of other things I could harp on regarding the terrible, terrible UI of these computers, but this one is by far the funniest.