On my Nissan’s dashboard information of various types is digitally displayed. When the headlights are on the display automatically dims. I guess Nissan designers have never imagined people driving with their lights on during the daytime (or highways where that is required!)
In order to read anything like the odometer or trip meter in daylight I have to turn my headlights off briefly. I know for a fact other drivers have thought I was flashing my lights at them.
There were DVD cases that, as far as I could tell, had an actual design mistake. Here is a typical case:
See the four cut-outs for fingertips? These allow you to remove the DVD. There were some cases where the “ramps” were molded in, but there was still a continuous ring of plastic around the circumference of the DVD, making it almost impossible to remove the DVD from the case. Since the case had the finger notches, the only explanation is that the mold was made wrong, and it was simply too much expense and trouble for the company to fix it. I used to see maybe 1 in 5 cases with this flaw.
Yes, I have some DVDs in these cases and they can be frustrating. But at least the DVD case developers learned from the CD case disaster and made DVD cases of a more flexible plastic that is hard to break.
Well, the pictured door does have a sign telling you to “pull”.
For some people, even that is not enough.
I didn’t think that was a “trick”; I just thought that was the way it was supposed to work.
I agree that CD jewel cases are/were anoyingly prone to breakage, but I never had any issues removing the CD from them.
For some reason, the preview doesn’t work for me, but I knew exactly what you were posting. 
I’m going to nominate all those device controls, opening guides, lables as to which port is which, etc. that are carefully made as inconspicuous as possible. Yes, I gather that you think the doohicky is prettier if it’s all sleek black or all sleek clear or whatever; and also that whoever designed this thing has absolutely excellent eyesight. I don’t care what it looks like, I care whether it works. And I want to be able to find the on/off button, the volume control, the spot on the bottle lid that needs to be squeezed at that particular spot and in a particular direction in order to get the damn thing to open, etc. I don’t want to have to pull off my glasses and pull out a flashlight in order to figure it out.
I know you can do color highlights because they’re elsewhere on the thing where you wanted to be sure everybody knows what your name is!
I’ve discovered that a lot of web pages can be rendered readable by (this is Firefox on a Mac, maybe other browsers have an equivalent) clicking on “view” in the menu bar; going to “page style”; and setting to “no style”. Dark brown type on a magenta background? Suddenly black on white and legible!
This. They serve absolutely no actual purpose; unless the purpose is to be annoying.
This has also become true of beeping noises. These days absolutely everything beeps. Nobody can possibly be paying attention to any of the beeping. The actual usefulness of things such as backup alarms has been destroyed.
Oh, yeah. Not only your Nissan, also my Subaru. And if it’s raining, we legally have to have our lights on – not to mention that it’s a good idea. – there’s a control to adjust the dash brightness, but it seems to keep getting itself reset, somehow; and it’s not in a place I find intuitive so I keep having to look it up, which is not something I’m going to do while driving. I think it’s somewhere in the middle of the side mirrors adjustment control, but although I’ve managed to remember that much I can’t seem to remember how you get the control to control the dash brightness instead of controlling the side mirrors.
So it’s two separate versions of bad design affecting one problem: the autodimming dash lights, and the terrible control design. My previous car had a little knob right in front of the driver on the dash panel which you twisted left to dim dash lights, right to turn them up. I had no trouble remembering or adjusting that one; and it stayed where I left it.
A number of years ago I purchased this bolt action .50 BMG rifle. I quickly determined there was a design flaw that is potentially dangerous.
After you insert the cartridge, you push the bolt handle forward and then rotate it right/down until it stops. Squeeze trigger. Hammer goes forward, hits firing pin, and the round goes of. There’s also a safety feature built in to it: if the bolt handle is not completely down when the trigger is squeezed, the hammer will force it down as the hammer is going forward.
So far so good, right?
When friends would come over to shoot it, there were a number of times the round would not go off after the firing pin hit the round. This was a scary situation, since the round might go off when the bolt handle is disengaged. When a round didn’t fire, I instructed them to wait at least 60 seconds before pulling the bolt handle back and pushing it forward again.
I initially thought the problem was due to bad ammo. But then I discovered the root cause after I closely watched a shooter.
Here’s what I observed: after the shooter pushed the bolt handle forward and then right/down, they would wrap their right hand around the pistol grip. And then - without realizing it - the back of their right wrist would accidentally make contact with the bolt handle. The bolt handle would move up a couple millimeters as a result. When the trigger was squeezed, the hammer would move forward, force the bolt handle down (as designed), and then strike the firing pin. Here’s the problem: the bolt lost some energy when it forced the bolt down, and it didn’t have enough energy to make the round go off as a result. The design problem is that the bolt handle is in very close proximity to the back of the right wrist when shooting.
After discovering the problem, I would tell the shooter to ensure the bolt handle is completely down after they put their right hand on the grip by checking it with their left hand.
But then how I am I supposed to find my car in a parking garage when I can’t even remember what floor I parked on?
Yeah, they picked the wrong door to illustrate the concept. But a properly designed door shouldn’t need signs to tell,you where to push or pull. It should be obvious from the affordancess.
I declined to buy the alarm when I bought my current car. That seemed to surprise them, though all they did was to go into the engine and remove a chip. I get the impression that the alarms are pre-installed in all of them now. But at least now if I hear a car alarm going off, I know for sure it’s not my car.
Yeah. The real point is the sign should be the absolute last resort, not the first resort.
The problem with that pic as an example of a Norman handle is that you can tell from the design which side is the hinge side. A properly designed (which is to say improperly designed) Norman handle doesn’t even tell you that. Push or Pull? Left or right side? No way to know. That’s what lit Norman’s fire.
The rear view mirrors on my 1957 Triumph TR3 are mounted on the front fenders. So you have to get out to adjust them. Which means you can’t see the mirror while you are adjusting it. It takes a dozen iterations or a helper to get it done. And as soon as you drive off you realize they aren’t correct anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_TR3#/media/File:Triumph_TR3A.jpg
No fair - you’re in a civilized country!
Dan
I have firefox on windows, so I,ll try this - thanks
Dan
This is wrong, false, incorrect! One time when I lived in a condo, late at night, I was woken up by a car alarm. I looked out my window in time to see a group of people, some had clearly been breaking into other cars, run off. The police showed up a bit later, but the thieves were long gone.
So at least once in the history of the universe a car alarm was effective. Mostly effective at preventing break-ins to nearby cars the thieves hadn’t gotten to yet.
Does that offset the other time in the condo that an alarm was going off continuously for most of a weekend from a car where nobody knew who the owner was?
I’ve had a number of wood stoves. Built my own handle for one. Heated with them for years. What you are describing is a manufacturers excuse for a poor design that they came up with in a quick meeting. Assholes.
Yup. My car does have a touch screen. But at least the temperature controls are just three big knobs next to each other. Left one is fan speed, middle is where you want the air to go, right is warm/cool. I never need to look at nuthin. 2019 4Runner.
My Wife has a 2019 Subaru Assent. It’s not touch screen for heat/cool. But even as a passenger and can look at it, I scratch my head. Ummm…
Some ziplock bags close ok, but many just don’t track properly, especially the double-track bags, and those containing pre-packed frozen food. I spend way too much time getting them to close. Oftentimes I give up, fold the bag over and put a rubber-band around it.
Also, those cardboard food boxes that require you to ply the flap open, then tuck in the protuberance. The glue they use is too strong. Nine times out of ten, I end up tearing the flap and end up tearing the box into little pieces out of frustration.
No, the fact that once a car alarm went off because of an actual car thief does not excuse or justify the thousand other times a car alarm went off for no good reason. In fact, there’s no reason car alarms can’t be redesigned to annoy or notify the car owner and only the car owner, perhaps via a dedicated smartphone app or just an SMS message. Everyone else should hear nothing but silence.
This is also a problem for the right-side mirror on my work van. There’s no way I can reach the thing while sitting in a normal driving position; I don’t think even a tall person could do so, though a tall person might not need to either climb out and walk around the van or move over into the passenger seat.
I don’t see how that problem’s fixable short of electric mirror adjustments, however (the van’s a 1998 basic model. I’ve even got crank windows!)
Yup. Talk to some people who actually use the things!
– you know what I miss in car heating systems? Being able to adjust separately the temperature of the air coming in near my feet and the air coming in near my face. I want my feet warm and my face cool. Most older cars used to do that with no problem. Now I can set the right and left sides of the car to a precise degree temperature – but I can’t adjust feet and face separately. (Yes, I’ve tried closing the upper vents. That helps a little, but doesn’t really accomplish the purpose.)
Even the ones that do work when they’re new usually stop doing it long before they’re otherwise worn out. And it’s often hard to find the twistie version.
And if you’re going to sell me frozen fruit in a resealable bag – don’t hide the opening halfway down the bag in the middle of the design so I have to figure out where it’s supposed to open and then how to pull it apart. And then have trouble getting anything out if some of it’s refrozen into chunks, because the opening’s too small.
