A website by a self-proclaimed design troubleshooter, great idea, eh? I mean, the world is full of badly designed things, isn’t it?
Trouble is that this website is one of them.
Worse, too many of the criticisms are just whiny, ignorant rants about things the author was too stupid to understand, for example here, he complains that it wasn’t made abundantly clear that the inner foil cap on a squeeze tube of toothpast could be pierced using the little plastic spike on the plastic outer cap he had just unscrewed. :smack:
And he’s not even consistent with himself; in many places, he insists that, for example, button legends consisting of English words are only useful to English-speaking people; symbols should be used - fair enough - but in other places, he whines that symbols aren’t clear or unambiguous enough and they should be augmented by adding… a word of explanation… in English. :rolleyes:
Not everything you don’t (or can’t be bothered to) understand is somebody else’s fault; sometimes in life, you do actually have to use your brain.
I’ve seen this site before (probably followed a link from here.)
Yeah, the guy’s either got serious cognitive difficulties or he’s not very good at deadpan humour.
The one that I remember best and think of surprisingly frequently is the complaint that a friction lid withn 1/8" lip around the top edge is a bad design because it encourages people to use it as a handle, and the jar might fall off. No, you knob, it’s a good design because it affords enough purchase with which the lid can be easily removed. That’s what it’s for. Only an idiot would attempt to carry a jar that size by placing their fingertips under this tiny rim.
Heh. I remeber stumbling across that site years ago. I remember thinking, “Oh, cool! A page about bad design and how they could be made better! This should be insightful and enlightening!”
Ehhhhh, not so much.
I wish someone would do a good job of it, though! It’s really a cool idea for a website.
How stupid do you have to be for this to happen to you? They spent several minutes trapped between doors and not once did they think to try to push them, and not pull them?
I too thought that the toothpaste example was bad. I don’t know when I first ran across this design, but it didn’t baffle me at the time and has never done so since.
I read through a dozen or so of this guy’s examples, and I have come to the following conclusion:
Anything that requires reading directions, paying attention to detail, or using any sort of thinking skills is “bad design”.
This guy seems to me to just be a really, really lazy person, who would much prefer if the entire world were designed so that he never had to use his brain.
Wow, dumbasses usually aren’t so vocal about the fact they’re dumbasses. I especially like this one because of course it isn’t his fault for being a dumbass and putting (and continuing to keep) the cutlery in that particular drawer - it’s the designer’s fault!
I’d say about .5% are semiworthy rants. The rest are just dumbassery at its finest.
Working in that place is now my personal fantasy; I would have a workmate called Dave and whenever stupid people got trapped in the glass walkway, I would stand outside on one side and hold up a sign that said “Dave, we have stupid people trapped in the walkway again”. Dave would be standing the opposite side and would hold up a sign that said “Release the badgers!”.
I have a feeling he’s missed the point entirely with this one; I don’t think the fascia was designed to look like a dial by accident, I suspect it was designed that way to carefully divert your attention away from the otherwise plain fact that you’re buying a cheap-ass, crappy metronome; OK, it’s still ‘bad’, but not necessarily ‘bad design’.
I think the thing that drives me the most insane about this guy is that most of his problems would be resolved if he’d just Read the fucking manual. I’m not sure where he came across the idea that all products should be instantly useable - they come with instructions for a reason. I don’t think I can browse the site anymore, it’s gonna make me batty.
But if a young, foreign child had to fly this plane, without instruction, he would instinctively push the lever instead of pulling it, also, he would have trouble reading the legends on the dials, since many of them are complicated words, in English.
I have to say, I’m with him on this one. There’s a bar here (I can’t remember which one- go figure) with round, smooth handles. Baffles me that someone that those up, and that other people buy them.