BS: Bad design

Subject: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 02:07 AM

OK. I am in a pissy mood. But enough is enough.

We bought this expensive potato masher from Cutco; but when you try to use it you find that it has a point on the end of the handle that digs into the palm of your hand.

And they actually PAID some moron to design that. How stupid can you get?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 02:41 AM

Obviusly that device (and lots of others) was intended to be "beautiful" rather than functional.

Hardly anything is "made to use." Stuff is only MADE TO SELL.

It's quite probably a lovely point, and quite attractive. (?)

And you could always wear a leather glove to protect yourself when you use it, couldn't you? After all, the designer is an artist and you can't possibly understand his/her creation.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 02:46 AM

The rocket shaped Starkk lemon squeezer

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 02:47 AM

Vegetable slicers that slice your knuckles. Ouch!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 03:28 AM

Mixer taps (faucets) in hotel bathrooms that have no indication of how they work, how to adjust flow or temperature.

What happened to a straightforward "lift and rotate" handle? Recently had all sorts of "pretty" designs which took ages before I could work out how to control them.

Oh, and transparent bathroom doors in hotels? Or in one case in Gurgaon, India, recently, a whole bathroom "pod" in a hotel room that was just glass panels. Good job I was flying "solo" on that one.

Several recently "made over" hotels I've stayed in on business in the last few months seem to have had the design briefs handed to 14 year old GCSE Design students, the briefs themsleves apparently being simply "make this look really trendy". Functionality just doesn't come into it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Nick
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 03:29 AM

It's probably 'cutting edge' design

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 03:38 AM

Bought a saucepan recently (luckily just the one and not a whole set). Both the handle and the knob on the lid get extremely hot when boiling spuds. Have to use an oven glove just to lift the lid. Somebody needs an urgent lesson in heat conductivity of materials! But it does look smart and shiny. Handsome is as handsome does...

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 03:48 AM

IMHO "design" usually screws up the engineering...

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 06:02 AM

Gigantic pillows on Hotel beds that give you a "crick in the neck".

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 06:38 AM

This guy did something about it:

Adrian Chernoff

Rubber Bandits®

A seemingly simple idea sometimes can become an incredibly successful, mass-market product that makes life a little bit easier for millions. Such is the case with Rubber Bandits®, oversized rubber bands equipped with tear-resistant, waterproof labels, created by self-described "idea czar" Adrian Chernoff in 2004.

Chernoff was born in 1971 and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1996, followed by an M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering, as well as an M.B.A., in 1999, all from the University of New Mexico. He began a career in product development, first working for NASA as a mechanical engineer, with one-year stints at Walt Disney Imagineering, Sandia National Laboratories, and Los Alamos National Labs before landing at General Motors Corp. in 2000, where he spent five and a half years working as Chief Vehicle Architect. At GM, Chernoff developed a variety of innovative vehicle designs, including several powered by alternative forms of energy.

In 2004, he received a phone call from his mother who had heard of a competition held by the office supply store chain Staples®. The competition, called Invention Quest, invited entrants to submit ideas for products from which judges (including Staples founder Tom Stemberg and Post-It Note® inventor Art Fry) would choose several to go into production. Cash prizes would be awarded, along with licensing agreements.

Chernoff didn't have much time, but he told his mother he would enter. Just one week before the deadline, while sitting on a bus in Colorado on the way to visit his brother, he began brainstorming ideas. He thought about the challenges he faced himself when it came to organizing files and media at work and remembered that he had once tried to attach a sticky note to a rubber band, but that the sticky note had fallen off and gotten lost. That's when he had the idea of adding a label to a rubber band. He began sketching illustrations of how it could work, simply wrapping a rubber band around bunches of documents, disks, scrolls, tools, even flowers, and having a foolproof label attached to the band for easy identification.

Chernoff submitted his idea and made it through several rounds of competition, continually improving his design with each round. In the end, Staples chose his Rubber Bandits from among more than 8,000 entries; they awarded Chernoff $5,000 and signed him to an exclusive two-year agreement. In 2005, the company began selling the colorful bands in retail stores across the country. The bands were sold through late 2007.

Meanwhile, Chernoff left GM to start his own ideas company, 2 Smart + 1, where he serves as CEO. Later he founded a think tank called Ideation Genesis, where he is Chief Innovation Officer. He serves a variety of clients through these entities in industries ranging from entertainment and consumer goods to manufacturing and automobiles.

Chernoff holds over 75 patents with more than 20 others pending and has been recognized with a number of honors for his achievements. He was recipient of a General Motors Chairman's Award during his tenure there and was named a Distinguished Engineer in 2007 by his alma mater. In addition to his startup ventures and consulting work, he runs the website Muzz.com, devoted to inspiring individuals who have each, in some way, changed the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 07:49 AM

The old fashioned masher way is still the best can't go wrong. It may take a little longer but at least you know it is going to do the job.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 07:55 AM

Try holding it in a different way, like fingers held around the shaft so the point (now in your palm) faces up, but not into, your wrist.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 08:08 AM

I'd like to speak to the guy who designed third-gear on the old three-gear bikes. Anybody else know what I mean?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: DMcG
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 08:09 AM

Chic hotels: I stayed in one recently which looked gorgeous until you were in the room and realised there were no drawers or cupboards or any kind, so all your clothes - new and used, had to just lay around the room in suitcases and/or plastic bags, together with any papers, magazines, books ...

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 08:16 AM

Information on knife sharpening:


A sharp knife

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 08:17 AM

Oops, "knife sharpening" was from me, (not to be confused with the other "guest" :)

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 09:01 AM

A recent visit to a medical clinic found an excellent design.

The soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers, and water faucets in the rest room were "ultrasonic." When your "hands" approached closely enough to the device, dispensing was turned on automatically.

Unfortunately, the soap dispenser was so over-sensitive that it was impossible to get past it, to get to the sink/faucets, without receiving a squirt of soap on your shoulder/sleeve.

(I'll concede the point that faucets and other "points of contact" with dirty hands probably are likely to have some contamination, but these things were a little too "touch free" IMO.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 10:25 AM

I recently had to replace the grill element in an oven. The element connected to the wires with the usual spade terminals but the terminals pointed upwards, so to remove or insert it with the wires connected you had to lift the element upwards to get the terminals and wires to go through the hole in the side wall. Anyone spotted the flaw? You cannot lift it upwards because the top of the oven is in the way :-( Had they have pointed them downwards it would have been easy to thread through. As it is I had to pull the oven out and take the side panel and heat insulation off to get at the terminals! That was nothing to do with fashion or looks. Just lack of foresight. Or maybe they did it on purpose so you thought you had to buy a new cooker!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 10:27 AM

Hi, John. Those dispensers remind me of the doors to the stores in my neighborhood shopping centers. They open automatically if a person simply walks past, letting out the heat or a/c.

Bert, do you have tools in your home? Perhaps you could use a hacksaw or file to get rid of that point on the potato masher. Then everytime you look at it, you get a warm glow, thinking, "They tried to poke me, but I foiled them!"

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Michael
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 10:40 AM

I recently had the need to use the visitors WC in a new school. Just a single very small room with one of the highly efficient and noisy hand driers. The trouble was the room was so small that the dryer started as I went in and when I sat down my knees were under it,so it roared and blasted hot air all the time I was in there. A mixture of innovation and poor design.

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 10:56 AM

But you were warm, right :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 11:42 AM

I bought a daft garlic crusher and the thing you press down didn't reach the bottom, so there was always a load of unsquashed garlic left in it. Chucked it out!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 01:05 PM

Zips that you can't get to catch on properly at the bottom.

Toilet paper that does not tear properly along the perforations.

Cling-film wrapping on ripe brie.

Blister packs made out of such lethally-thick plastic that, with one false move, you will have your fingers off.

The USB connector (there is an infallible law of the universe which states that you will always try to connect it upside down first).

Printers that use up over half of their extremely expensive ink just to clean the printing heads before each use.

Non-standardised mobile phone chargers.

Shrink wrapping on CDs.

Baked bean (etc.) cans with ring-pulls (always have a spare tin-opener handy!), not to speak of those ring-pull cans of mackerel that spray you with olive oil when you actually do manage to open them.

Those rolls of brown parcel tape that you can never find the end of.

And I've got one of those garlic crushers too!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 01:10 PM

And the juice of the poor garlic is impossible to eat.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 04:00 PM

One of the cleverest redesigns of a formerly useful product is an OTC meducation that I've used for several decades when a chronic "drip" causes congestion. Prevously sold as "®Robitusin" a small dose would loosen the mucous so that the next cough expelled it and cleared the plumbing.

"House brands" generally just called "Tussin" were available for a while.

In response to the idiot notion that any medication "has to do everyting," for the past couple of years it has only been stocked by local shops as "Tussin-DM" or "Tussin-CF." The -DM adds a "cough suppressant" and the -CF adds both the cough suppressant and an antihistamine.

So the medication (guiafenesin/glycerol guiacolate) that's intended to "liquify mucous" to make it easy to cough it out now comes only with an additive to prevent coughing (-DM=dextromethorphan), or with both the anti-coughing additive and a separate additive to dry up the mucous so that it's sticky and can't be expelled (-CF=Phenylephrine HCl).

I suppose mixing two medications with precisely opposite effects probably means poor results for either, and assures that you'll need another jug of their juice(?) to obtain any results at all, but either of the additives gives me a headache and prevents the old original main ingredient from working at all.

On rare occasions when I do find the original unadulterated product, the answer to "how many do you want" is "all of them," but it's become increasingy difficult to keep the small supply I'd like to have at hand.

Marketing trumps medicine - as usual - (of course why would I think otherwise?).

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 04:37 PM

The moulded plastic wrapping manufacturers use on most things thess days like toothbrushes and suchlike which make it near impossible to get into unless you happen to have a pair of sharp scissors or a blowtorch to hand.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 04:55 PM

And can anyone tell me why Microsoft can't write a system that works. When I studied programming we were told "If it doesn't work don't bother to turn it in because you've got an F".

I just typed in a lengthy reply and my browser shut down and lost it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: frogprince
Date: 28 Feb 14 - 11:02 PM

This one is relatively petty, but I still find it annoying and stupid:
We have a 2009 Ford Fusion. In most respects I'm quite happy with it.
But you never know when you will reach to open the door and find it locked by the remote thingy in your pocket. The real clincher is, if the doors are locked when you release the trunk lid with the remote, the alarm goes off and continues until you unlock the doors.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 01:23 AM

Steve Shaw wrote
Blister packs made out of such lethally-thick plastic that, with one false move, you will have your fingers off.

Some years back I bought an expensive kitchen knife which had the blade protected with such a plastic sleeve - I cut my palm on the corner of the knife when I was cutting the bottom of the cover off.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 01:27 AM

frogprince: our car is stupid like that. I unlock the doors, get in and start the car then when my wife tries to get in I have to unlock the doors again 'cos the stupid car locks them when I start the engine.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 02:09 AM

I have yet to find a garlic crusher with handles that do not bend when I try to crush garlic.

I think the most epic fail in design terms was the loo with the proximity flusher control. When you put the lid up it triggered the flusher. And kept on doing it. Which, if you had added to the contents at any time was refreshing but insanitary.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 09:38 AM

Those Dyson Airblade hand-dryers. I mean, what is in that nasty little pool of slime at the bottom...?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 11:00 AM

On Corned Beef cans, and the challenges some folks face 

Corned beef cans (aka, "bully beef" deserve a special place in history,
I found some of the comments in the sitt above very funny:) Check them out.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 11:09 AM

A colostomy bag you wear on your head.

Okay, how about a nuclear waste store mounted on top of a reactor?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Ed T
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 11:11 AM

Bully Beef" 
The earlier link may not work-try this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JennieG
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 04:32 PM

Steve, definitely those Dyson hand dryers.......one has beautifully dry hands, but has lost one's hearing in the meantime because of the noise it makes.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 04:50 PM

Several have commented on the impenetrable wrappings on smaller items.

The answer is simple: You need to have some big power tools (that come in a cardboard carton that's easier to open) to open the little plastic wrappers on small hand tools.

For some of the small stuff, a pair of "compound lever metal snips" will work more safely than a box knife, but I've often used the table saw (or the "Sawzall" reciprocating hacksaw) to cut all the seams off of the package in order to get into the stuff.

Worst of all are some "blister packs" in which, after you get through the hard stuff, the "blister" film has adhered to the object and has to be picked out of all the little holes and crevices to make the thing usable. (Sometimes a blowtorch helps with the film - it the film softens before the part you're trying to unwrap.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 05:05 PM

Price labels etc stuck to objects such as saucepans. I have a very handy product called GooGone which dissolves the glue, but you can't use it on metals. Even when you patiently pick the label off, you can't remove the gunk left on the surface and on your fingers. My husband hides in another room because my language is unprintable.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 05:17 PM

Eliza -

Try the fabric/hobby shops for similar label removers without the restriction on use on metals. There are several different kinds around, and a few of them actually sort of work.

An "office accessory" commonly used for such things is "Mentholatum" that has a penetrating oil/grease base and mades the stuff smell nice for a while. Just smear a little on the sticky and rub until it isn't sticky any more. It works great on "aged" masking tape that can't be removed by anything else short of a chisel or a grinder, neither of which is recommended for nicely finished stuff.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 07:10 PM

The corned beef/bully beef problems reminded me of a passage in one of my favourite books - Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat:

"It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood, and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-apple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat, we felt that life was worth living after all.

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.

It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry — but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead."

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 07:20 PM

Sticky Stuff Remover from Lakeland is great for getting labels off things. It also gets slug slime off your fingers in the event of your having accidentally picked up a slug, and it's brilliant for removing sticking plaster residues from one's skin. I've used it to clean up pottery ornaments I've bought off eBay. A house without a bottle of that stuff is a house not worth living in!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 07:29 PM

I was going to suggest that if Bert wants a well made potato masher he just pops down to Poundland and hands over £1. But then I remembered he's living across the wide Atlantic.

But wherever you live the fact that something costs a lot is a very poor indication of whether it's any good.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 08:43 PM

But wherever you live the fact that something costs a lot is a very poor indication of whether it's any good

Too true McGrath.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 01 Mar 14 - 10:28 PM

Now I'm going to add Hewlett Packard to my list of bad designers. I have this TouchSmart 310 PC and during one of HP's own scheduled updates, the music application stopped working.

So I searched for a solution on their website and couldn't find one. So I Googled for their Music App Updates. I chose a version that said it was for the Windows 7 home version that I have and downloaded it which took about half an hour.

I ran the .exe and it started the update, after a while it came back with a message that it was not suitable for my machine and gave one ooption, and OK button.

Come on now guys! You f&%*ing update didn't work it is NOT OK!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 01:04 AM

Having experienced several adverse medical events requiring the use of services from numerous hospitals and clinics, we have noted the commendable increase in "followup surveys" by which those agencies hope to determine whether their services were satisfactory to the patients.

Unfortunately, on being sent home with a dozen bottles of medications and a thirty page instruction sheet on how to "get well," the surveys invariably arrive before there's been even sufficent time to settle down and begin the prescribed home treatment. In one case, I received a phone call from one of them TWO DAYS before Lin was dismissed from the clinic.

The phone calls are always automated, and the paper forms are ALWAYS "on a scale of 1 to n how satisfied were you with our services."

I have yet to see the option to responde with "HOW THE F*&@^! DO YOU EXPECT ME TO KNOW BEFORE I'VE HAD A CHANCE TO SEE IF I BEGIN TO FEEL BETTER."

All negative opinions are excluded, since those aren't choices on the forms. So why bother to ask?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 01:26 AM

Too true John, been there, it really pisses you off. I have got to the stage where I refuse to talk to a computer. I find that if you hang on and say nothing they will eventually either hang up or connect you to a person.

Since my last message I have been on the phone to HP to try to find out why their app doesn't work. After getting the run around all this time and being transferred to Microsoft and back. They want to charge me to fix the problem that they created. They are on to a good thing there.

One of their idiots suggested that I switch to Linux, but when pushed he admitted that none of the TouchSmart Apps would work on Linux.

How do these guys get their jobs?

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 03:04 AM

Us. You & me. Yooman beans...

The religious & the Creationists will try euphemisms like 'Intelligent Design' to try & disinfect the absurdity of their 'Deity' postulations. But 'Unintelligent Design' is what I always call it.

I mean, look at childbirth -- and if you have, like me, the privilege [in this particular] of never having to do more than look at it, think how lucky you are to be in this half of humanity. The fatuously exiguous dimensions of the passages the bloody great thing of that size has to get thru. 'Intelligent'? In a pig's ear!

Or regard the plain nuisance of having to stop whatever you are engaged in at frequent intervals to piss or shit. How inconvenient! Last time I mentioned this, some younger poster replied he quite enjoyed the process. Just let him wait till his necessary mechanisms aren't working with quite their present efficiency & see how much he'll like it then.

Which brings me to the main 'unitelligence'-factor in our design. The AGING process...

Surely if the designer really had any 'intelligence', he could have sorted out all these gross inefficiencies by now.

I repeat, a fine example of Unintelligent Design is what we are!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 03:05 AM

I will confess to having received a "survey" phone call recently in which there was a real person asking the questions.

I can only assume that there was more than one question, since the first one was "How likely are you to vote for Republican candidates in the next election?" and the "surveyor" hung up before I could finish my first answer. (I really thought what I had to say might have been helpful, but I guess it wasn't what they wanted to hear.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 03:51 AM

Thank you very much John and Steve for your kind advice. I'll look out for these products when I'm next in 'Narridge'.
Another pet hate (moan moan) is those stupid milk-container closures where you have to pull a tab to get the top off. The silly little tab often breaks off and you have to get a knife to poke a hole in, then fart about getting the thing to peel off. More bad language, more husband hiding in the study. So many of these type of closures are, I suppose, to stop wicked people trying to poison our food and drink on the supermarket shelves. I read recently they've found medication tablets in ice-cream. Weird.

Subject: RE: BS: Bad design
From: Bert
Date: 02 Mar 14 - 03:58 AM

Perfect ~M~