The Museum of Bad Design - your favorite exhibits.

[jz78817]

@kopek

As for rear plugs; my buddy’s Dodge Omni became my benchmark. I did Midgets, Sprites and everything else but that damn Omni ------ I almost had to drop the motor. I DID have to shift it around somewhat.

Had a Norton JPS cycle ------ when I sold it I included the specially modified needle-nosed pliers you needed to insert, remove and turn the key. :smack:

Um, I think you’re misremembering. The plugs in the Omni/Horizon were right up front on both common engine options (VW 1.7 and Chrysler 2.2.)

[Rocketeer]

@jz78817

Um, I think you’re misremembering. The plugs in the Omni/Horizon were right up front on both common engine options (VW 1.7 and Chrysler 2.2.)

Yeah, that’s how I remember it on my 2.2 Omni (fun little car to drive). But let’s not talk about the rear bank of plugs on a V6 Camry. My dad used to say that the back 3 cylinders had “100,000 mile plugs”.

[thorny_locust]

@Quintas

How big is this stove? The size of a queen size bed? Why do you have to lean to reach the back burner? Just extend your arm…

Short person and/or tall pot.

IME taller people rarely take into consideration that not everyone can reach and/or see what they can.

[Chronos]

My Android phone has call waiting. Well, of course, because every phone nowadays has call waiting. If I’m talking with someone, and someone else calls, it’ll beep, and show on the screen who’s calling, and I can pick up that new call in the same way I pick up any other incoming call, by swiping the phone circle to the side. All fine, so far.

And then, after I’ve told the person who called in “Hey, I can’t talk right now, I’m on the other line with someone”, I can just switch back to the first call by…

um…

Well, I guess I can just call them back. Which usually ends up going to their call waiting, because the first connection was never actually severed.

Seriously, this was a simple matter even on phones where the only controls were the hook and the numbers. Why can’t they just put a button on the screen that says “return to previous call”? Or make the “hang up” button have that functionality, like it did on an old phone? Or provide any other way at all to return to your previous call?

[Shoeless]

@txjim

What interface, I thought you had to use mental telepathy to communicate with it.

I firmly believe SAP was created by the Germans to prepare for the time they desire to take over the world. There has to be a secret setting that, when activated by the overlords, takes the system down worldwide. All industry is immediately crippled and OPS/accounting won’t consider developing or building anything unless Earned Value/Process Flow is operational.

LOL - that corporate travel portal UI that I was bitching about in post 33? Turns out it’s SAP.

[carrps]

@Asuka

To call in sick you must use an automated line for my job.

The problem is that it’s voice only and if the system can’t understand you two times in a row, the call is terminated and you have to recall the number and go through the entire 10 minute process all over again.

The thing is, if you’re sick you might be couching or sneezing which the voice line will interpret as a voice and become confused at what option you chose and tell you to “repeat that”, and remember you only get one more chance to make it right.

Also it’s two misunderstandings in the entire call, not just two misunderstandings in that particular section.

If they simply just made it numbers based the system would work, there’s nothing in the call that would require a specific phrase to be uttered that can’t just be put on the numpad.

Our very barky dachshund used to trigger voice response when I was on calls that used it. I’d have to go to another room. Easier than trying to train a dachshund not to bark.

[carrps]

@txjim

What interface, I thought you had to use mental telepathy to communicate with it.

I firmly believe SAP was created by the Germans to prepare for the time they desire to take over the world. There has to be a secret setting that, when activated by the overlords, takes the system down worldwide. All industry is immediately crippled and OPS/accounting won’t consider developing or building anything unless Earned Value/Process Flow is operational.

Hey! I’ve been retired five years now. I do NOT want those nightmares recurring… :mad:

[gotpasswords]

@pullin

I nominate “Changing the headlight bulb in a Dodge Ram Pickup truck.”

I’ve done it – it goes like this…
…
Who in hell decided to mount the engine/battery/etc. components in such a way that access to headlights is through a wheel well?

The same dorks that hid spark plugs on the Ram’s Hemi engine under the firewall and/or master cylinder. I couldn’t even quite figure how to get at the bolts that held on the coil packs, much less get anything down into the hole to touch the spark plugs. And that engine had SIXTEEN plugs!

Some flavors of 1990s-era Ford Taurus had half of their plugs jammed up against the firewall as well. Theoretically possible to get with about seven flex joints and extensions, but easier to either drop the whole engine/transaxle, or remove the intake manifold.

[Peter_Morris]

Does the SDMB’s Sultantheme count?

[phs3]

@Dewey_Finn

There was a team on Shark Tank that proposed a narrow cushion thing specifically designed to go between the car seat and center console just to prevent things like cell phones, car keys and whatever from dropping down and getting lost. (A couple of years ago, my mother dropped her keyfob down there and couldn’t find it. So she drove to my brother’s house, where he crawled around until he located it in the crevasse under the seat.)

And it exists: look for “Drop Stop”, on Amazon and elsewhere. Works pretty well, actually.

[phs3]

@iamthewalrus_3

This is a bad design, but I believe that this is a feature of the car, not of Apple, and it’s not something Apple can easily fix.

When a phone is connected to your car’s bluetooth, the car is the one driving the interface. The car tells the phone to play or pause or whatever. When the phone gets a message from the car that says “play whatever”, there’s no real way for the phone to know that it’s because the car is being dumb, and not because the driver of the car, say, pushed the play button on the controls. Apple can’t fix the car’s software sucking.

Good thinking, but no. My Android players all have settings to note whether to autoplay at connect. I have it set off and they NEVER start playing when they connect, no matter what vehicle (50++ rentals so far). I don’t believe the car sends a “start playing” on connect at all.

[phs3]

@Xema

How about the (very common) Drop-Down List - as presented when you have to enter the US state as part of your address? The display has room for about 8 state names.

You can avoid scrolling through the full list by entering the first letter of your state. But then the display typically shows the 7 names that precede those of interest, followed by the first one that starts with that letter.

So (for example) if you live in Minnesota, you enter ‘M’ - a fairly clear indication that your state name begins with that letter. What you’d like to see is this list:
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana

But what you usually get is this:
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine

True, but if you hit M again, it goes to the next one. I often hit (say) N to get to the end of the Ms. Not arguing with crappiness but at least you can (semi) hack it!

[JohnT]

I’m so used to typing “T” two times (for Texas) that I thought everyone knew that hack.

This isn’t necessarily bad design, but holy hell, some people are competent enough to find a damn city-zip table so that when you type in, say, “78205” the city and state automatically populate with “San Antonio, TX”. Why can’t everyone figure this out?

[carrps]

I like that California is the first ‘C’ state alphabetically. But, dang, there are a lot of ‘M’ states.

[carlb]

Booking engines. Ugh. I work a lot with hotel/luxury villa suppliers, and it seems there is an inverse correlation between the price of the product and the ease of use of the booking engine. To wit:
[ul]
[li]Check-out dates that do not auto-select the day after the check-in date, but instead default to today’s date. I can’t check out a year before I check in, you idiots.[/li][li]Most will have a quick-and-dirty search section on the home page. Destination, check-in date, check-out date, number of guests (or number of bedrooms). This will take you to a page showing the available properties or rooms. Some engines I’ve used do not then auto-populate the information you entered on the home page; to get to specific rates you need to re-enter all of this.[/li][li]Showing me a list of available properties, only to tell me the property is unavailable for the dates I’ve chosen after I have decided it looks good and I want to book it.[/li][li]Showing me rates that are not, in fact, valid for the dates I’ve selected. This is especially frustrating when there is a filter allowing me to select a rate range. I don’t know how many times I’ve made a selection, only to find that the rate for my desired dates is double or triple the rate I’ve filtered for.[/li][li]Displaying properties that have a minimum length of stay, when the dates I have already entered do not meet that minimum stay requirement. And, not informing me of this minimum stay until a few more levels down in the process.[/li][li] Booking engines that do not allow for altering one criterion (for example, number of bedrooms) and then re-searching, but instead require you to start the whole search over again from scratch.[/li][/ul]
I’ve seen a lot if this poor design in other web sites that involve fairly detailed search functions. The likelihood of me using your service is definitely tied to the ease of searching your product offerings.