Bad Design

[BlodwynPig]

Good 'ol Quentin.

[Sebastian Cobb]

So the company agreed to replace our desktops with MacBooks. The first few of us to get them were allowed to choose our own perihperals. A few of us went for keyboard and trackpad, one went for keyboard and mouse.

Given the choice I'd go with standard non-apple peripherals, I put up with them as they were already bought for me at work and didn't annoy me that much but I still would've preferred a keyboard with decent key travel and a mouse with actual buttons.

[katzenjammer]

Oh yeah, pedestrian crossings. The council have installed a load round here that have a secret config where, after two days of not being used, assume a fault with the button and go into a permanent pressed mode so the crossing sets off ever 2 minutes. Major PITA for traffic, but also for anybody who's unfortunate enough to live by one, and have the damn thing bleeping all night and not know why.

My last flat was next to a crossroads with two automatic pedestrian crossings, no problem at all until one day they replaced them with a newer model which beeped about ten times louder than the old ones. They went off continuously all day and night. It was unbearable. I was seriously considering taking a hammer to them. There are loads of flats near them, must have been hundreds of people who couldn't sleep because of those bastards.

[Cuellar]

I've never encountered it in the flesh so it might well be shit, but I think the numpad appearing on the touchpad idea is good, actually.

I like using a numpad for entering numbers with one hand, and for moving units around in Civ 2.

[Gurke and Hare]

This "numpad" on my Acer laptop drives me dotty. You see that little icon in the top-right? Well, it turns the trackpad into a "numpad". There's little point in this existing at all since numbers are also part of the regular keyboard. Maybe it serves people in financial/accounting jobs well?

Yeah, a numpad's essential if your job involves typing a lot of numbers in - those people won't even be looking at the keyboard. The design that allows it to be easily turned on accidentally though is terrible.

On a similar theme, these backwards and forward buttons on my mouse:



They do the same as the back/forward buttons in the web browser but it's really easy to accidentally nudge the back button, and in combination with the bad design prevalent on the web these days you end up losing your place on whatever site you were on.

[Mobbd]

They're called puffin rather than pelican crossings when they're like that. I don't like that you can't see the light change back to red while you're crossing with them. In Europe it's quite common to see the green signal paired with a clicking for visually impaired people that gets faster and faster the closer the signal gets to changing back to red - do UK crossings have that sort of thing?

Some pelican crossings have a shrill beeping sound, far less pleasant than the woodsy pucka-pucka-pucka ones of Europe. But even these seem to be going out of style: I don't think the puffin crossings (didn't know that term- thanks!) have a beeper. Maybe some do but it seems to be increasingly less common. Give us the pucka-pucka ones, somebody!

I'm so glad someone else reads "look left" upside down and looks the wrong way. I do this all the fucking time and assumed it was unique to my own special brand of dribbling idiocy.

I think if you're a big enough reader, the text just goes into your brain barely consciously, even if it's upside down: your brain just recognises the shapes and slurps them up. Also, I don't know if it's true of everyone but people are more likely to be looking generally six feet ahead and down rather than, simply, down at their feet. Could be wrong. Seems like shit design to me and dangerous too.

Oh yeah, pedestrian crossings. The council have installed a load round here that have a secret config where, after two days of not being used, assume a fault with the button and go into a permanent pressed mode so the crossing sets off ever 2 minutes.

I'm astonished by how stupid that is. I have low expectations but fucking hell!

[touchingcloth]

Yeah, a numpad's essential if your job involves typing a lot of numbers in

I'd hate having to do this on a touchpad rather than physical keys, though.

[Magnum Valentino]

The PS3 media remote would turn the console on if you pressed any button whatsoever on it, which was easily done.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The PS3 media remote would turn the console on if you pressed any button whatsoever on it, which was easily done.

The curved bottom of a firestick remote makes it very easy to get wedged in crevices of sofas, not only does this lead to it getting lost easily, but it can also mean the buttons get pressed and it rinses the batteries, which being some sort of wifi remote flattens much quicker than an IR job.

[Old Thrashbarg]

Given the choice I'd go with standard non-apple peripherals, I put up with them as they were already bought for me at work and didn't annoy me that much but I still would've preferred a keyboard with decent key travel and a mouse with actual buttons.

As I'm about 50/50 in terms of time split between using the inbuilt keyboard/trackpad and the externals, I do like the consistency. Though the keyboard is shit and there's no way I'd pay the extortionate price if it was my own money. At this time, the inbuilt trackpad was tiny too, so on a desk with limited space the large external one was very useful. Less of a selling point these days though.

[touchingcloth]

The PS3 media remote would turn the console on if you pressed any button whatsoever on it, which was easily done.

I bought a generic bluetooth controller for my laptop, and it has buttons on the grips, like where the tips of your little and fourth fingers rest. They aren't mapped to anything, but I wonder what the point of them is as I click them all the time just by holding the controller the way it's designed to be held.

The curved bottom of a firestick remote makes it very easy to get wedged in crevices of sofas, not only does this lead to it getting lost easily, but it can also mean the buttons get pressed and it rinses the batteries, which being some sort of wifi remote flattens much quicker than an IR job.

I was about to write a reply to this, and then I thought "hang about, there's a deja vu cat here"

The thing weighs about the same as the cable it's attached to, so if you place it on a table to charge with the cable coming from down on the floor it's quite likely to get tugged off that's what she said the table.

The thing is uniform on all sides besides the front, so the only way to know by touch which way round you're holding it is by feeling what the button layout is. This would be fine if the side of the device with the buttons on didn't also contain a touch sensitive surface, meaning that trying to pick the remote up in the dark to change the volume can instead result in you skipping forwards and backwards in whatever you're watching.

I've actually been tempted to put a couple of lumps or bumpers of Sugru onto it to deal with that.

Its thinness makes it look like it'd be very easy to lose in the crevices of the sofa.

The Amazon fire tv remote has a similar problem, it's a fair bit thicker than that as it has to accommodate AAA batteries but the bottom is rounded so it's pretty good at acting like a wedge to allow it to force itself into gaps and widen them.

Then it gets squashed or sat on and the buttons get depressed which then flatten the batteries in it. It's the first remote I've ever bothered to stick nimh cells in, although it uses rf rather than infra-red so flattens them quicker anyway, progress apparently.

 A circle in a spiral within a wheel within a wheel is a terribly bad design.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Much laughter for the rest of us as he had to charge it whilst being forced to use the inbuilt trackpad on the machine for a couple of hours.

People in this thread said a single charge lasts about a month,  so couldn't you charge your upside down mouse for about 10 minutes and it'd be enough to get you through the day??  (Then just remember to charge it overnight and you're good for another month until you forget again!)

[Old Thrashbarg]

Probably. This was about 10 years ago now, so that might well have been the case, and I've just exaggerated in my mind to be funnier than it was.

[copa]

These stupid wooden posts that force people to walk on the road.

[FeederFan500]

Birmingham New Street is indeed terribly designed, including the hand dryers.

The only thing in its favour is that you can walk through it without catching a train and cut off a bit of a corner.

However if you are in a 6 car train the staircases are generally at about cars 1 and 4. This means anyone getting off in car 5 or 6 has to wait ages to get to the staircase up to the main concourse, because there are lots of people in the way either waiting to get on the train or trying to go up the stairs having got off. This section is also really narrow because it's where there are lifts or storage areas between the platforms, so if you have a reserved seat for one of the carriages at this end good luck getting to that quickly.

In addition, should you want to change platforms to catch another train, the staircases near car 1 lead to a nice simple bridge over all platforms and there is no problem. But if you are at the other end near car 4, there are two halves of the station, meaning that if you need to change from platform 5 to 7 say, you have to clock out the barriers, go round in a horseshoe shape to the gates for the other half, wait for people who wave their phone in the vicinity of the gate and wonder why nothing is happening, then go back on yourself to get to the stairs for your platform.

Aha, but there's another bridge that's really quiet you could use! No, because this is at the same end as car 1, just further out from the centre, so is of no use whatsoever unless you want to use that station exit.

[Mobbd]

Birmingham New Street

My mother insists it's called Grand Central now. And yet she's allowed to vote in elections and everything.

[Psybro]

Brief précis of the many great cycle lanes of Sheffield



Route into back of a parked car.  Note the street has been closed to motor traffic at the end, so cyclists and anyone trying to execute a three point turn out of their parking space can get into a standoff.



Route into back of parked car whilst you turn your head around 180 degrees to see if you will be murdered by a bus in attempting to go around it.



Lovely downhill straight paralleling the ring road with an unsignposted road whose users will not be able to see you coming running directly through the centre.

[greencalx]

People in this thread said a single charge lasts about a month,  so couldn't you charge your upside down mouse for about 10 minutes and it'd be enough to get you through the day??  (Then just remember to charge it overnight and you're good for another month until you forget again!)

Yeah. We had this conversation before.

The issue for me is not the placement of the charging port, but the fact that the OS doesn't give you enough warning that the mouse is about to run out of battery. I usually get an alert literally minutes before it needs charged. But even 2-3 minutes charge is usually enough to keep you going to the next point that you are afk for a bit. If only you could then remember to put it on charge!

A desktop computer could reasonably remind you to charge when you put it to sleep, but as sleeping a laptop is usually achieved by closing the lid, this would be more difficult.

My guess is that Apple tried out designs with a charging point on the front, and found they scored less favourably in user testing. (Possibly because the front sits higher; or less ergonomic when plugged in.) It's unlikely that they failed to realise that it couldn't be used as a mouse when charging...

[Captain Z]

Note the street has been closed to motor traffic at the end, so cyclists and anyone trying to execute a three point turn out of their parking space can get into a standoff.

As a car driver in that situation I would simply wait for the fellow driver to complete their manoeuvre and for the road to be clear before safely continuing my journey. Not sure why as a cyclist the same rules wouldn't apply?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Agree that New New Street is shit. The old one was dirty and ugly but resembled what a major busy train station in a major city should look like.

However around the same time they electrified the lines to the town my family lives in so I can actually get to/from it without having to get a lift from Longbridge so swings and roundabouts I suppose.

[Psybro]

As a car driver in that situation I would simply wait for the fellow driver to complete their manoeuvre and for the road to be clear before safely continuing my journey. Not sure why as a cyclist the same rules wouldn't apply?

They would, but it's counter intuitive design to have vehicles forced to cross the path of bikes which ostensibly have been given priority by closing the end off to motor traffic.

[touchingcloth]

That's pretty terrifying.

[simon templar]

I despise puffin crossings. Often you can't see if the green man is on or not because people are standing next to it. You always see people standing next to green men not realising the signal has changed.

 This setup also means the signal for the perpendicular crossing faces you so often there will be a green man facing you but it applies to a different crossing.

Imagine if the green light was perpendicular to traffic flow so drivers were forced to look down the direction of opposing traffic

[idunnosomename]

The late 20th-century obsession with animal-based names for pedestrian infrastructure reached an avian peak with the Toucan Crossing (two can cross -meaning pedestrian and cyclists).

They should have a booby crossing where you're just allowed to waddle across a multi-lane highway like a comple and total tit.

[Blumf]

The late 20th-century obsession with animal-based names for pedestrian infrastructure reached an avian peak with the Toucan Crossing (two can cross -meaning pedestrian and cyclists).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_crossing

[Endicott]

Duh, they can just fly across.

[MojoJojo]

Why is the red horse walking?

[Bum Flaps]

Lovely downhill straight paralleling the ring road with an unsignposted road whose users will not be able to see you coming running directly through the centre.

It's disappointing that the designers didn't incorporate the sign+lamp posts into a fun cycle-path slalom feature, to really "keep the cyclists on their toes" (i.e. in A&E)

[FeederFan500]

They should have a booby crossing where you're just allowed to waddle across a multi-lane highway like a comple and total tit.

Tits and boobys are different birds

[touchingcloth]

Caterpillar crossing