Bad Design

[Terry Torpid]

Any food packaging with a plastic peel off label that disintegrates into shards under pressure of a normal, entirely logical movement of the fingers.

On a similar note, if you have a packet of ham or cheese or something like that, and you have to peel the label a certain direction, but the slices are stacked the other way.



Drives me up the wall. You need to peel it almost all the way to get the top slice.

[Dex Sawash]

Doors at work have a flippy lever for the deadbolt but no other latch. If you grasp the handle, turn and push door it pinches some part of you with possible

Spoiler alert

degloving

[close]

injury.

Gets blood from unsuspecting customer about once a year

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

Rover thinking it was a good idea to place their cars ECU's in the plenum chamber.

dunno what this is but it sounds hot

[Dex Sawash]

dunno what this is but it sounds hot

'puter in the fishbowl

(English Beat consider)

[touchingcloth]

'puter in the fishbowl

(English Beat consider)

Smiths lawyer up against The Beat.

[Blumf]

On a similar note, if you have a packet of ham or cheese or something like that, and you have to peel the label a certain direction, but the slices are stacked the other way.



Drives me up the wall. You need to peel it almost all the way to get the top slice.

Oh hell yes!

Weirdly, sliced cheeses don't have this flaw.

[Sebastian Cobb]

dunno what this is but it sounds hot

There's a chamber below the windscreen in a lot of cars, it's supposed to drain but eventually leaves and mulch block the holes. As Dex calls it 'the fishbowl' it's a fairly common issue on lots of cars, Rover in their wisdom decided it was a good place to put the car's electronic brains.

[Jerrykeshton]

New Street is a total shit show.  The proper revamp should have totaled the useless shopping centre and inserted extra platforms on additional decks/floors

Never going to happen though.  Bet they wished they had now given there's less demand for shopping

[Blumf]

There's a chamber below the windscreen in a lot of cars, it's supposed to drain but eventually leaves and mulch block the holes. As Dex calls it 'the fishbowl' it's a fairly common issue on lots of cars, Rover in their wisdom decided it was a good place to put the car's electronic brains.

Modern Fiat 500's, amongst many, many problems, had the plenum chamber overflow right onto the tops of the suspension struts, which happened to be cupped. Good luck loosening the bolts on your struts when you need to change them!



Later models came with plastic covers for the tops, which partially helped, and fit earlier models.

[Sebastian Cobb]

In Audi's they seem to overflow into the inside of the car, and soak the footwells, which is also seemingly where the brains live. Happened to a friends. Although I think they're less prone to overflowing to begin with.

[touchingcloth]

Why don't they just make it so there's not a chamber below the windscreen?

[touchingcloth]

FFS. I promised myself I wouldn't wank today.

[Mr Farenheit]

I still kick myself every day for shelling out £21.99 on this:





It was sold to me as the 'revolutionary battery-less calculator'. Sounded great but it basically means it has to be plugged in. This has obvious limitations and has thoroughly wrecked my posture.

[idunnosomename]

Particularly as it doesnt even have a divide function

[seepage]

and what does the '?' button do?

[Gurke and Hare]

Haven't all calculators been solar powered since about 1987 anyway?

[Gurke and Hare]

Also, surely there are no numbers higher than 99,999?

[dex]

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.

The audibles (bleepers) if they are newer have a screw an engineer can adjust to turn down the volume. Old school pelican units with ancient bleepers are fixed volume and can be replaced. You're no longer there but get onto the council and someone can sort that. Also, if the controller configuration has been done properly and the time/date settings are correct on the traffic signals' CPU there should be a timeswitch to cut the audibles out at night -normally after 22:00 so they shouldn't be bleeping in the middle of the night and disturbing people.

[dex]

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.

Sometimes, particularly in winter the buttons can get stuck active or the microswitch can get jammed and yes this triggers a fault on the controller which causes a permanent pedestrian demand state. Again, get onto the council and an engineer can go sort it.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

The placement of the charging port is the least of this thing's problems. Those black 'rails' on the bottom mean that - while moving the mouse up and down along a vertical axis is all well and good, the rails just add resistance when moving horizontally with the result that the mouse naturally wants to tip over. It's the worst fucking mouse ever.

Apple have form when it comes to stupid mouse design. Back in 2001/2002 I worked in an office which was kitted out with G3 Macs with the infamous 'puck' mice, and they were (literally) a pain to use. Like the design team sat down and said "Let's make a mouse that that gives users instant hand cramp."



It was so uncomfortable that people used to buy these little clip-on palm rest extenders just to be able to use the thing for more than 2 minutes at a time.



And then there was this thing:



The entire upper surface is the button, so clicking with only your index finger requires twice the amount of force as with a regular mouse. The alternative method being to just mash the whole thing with your palm. Just don't rest your hand on it too heavily when moving it about or you'll register unwanted clicks every few minutes.

[touchingcloth]

The entire upper surface is the button, so clicking with only your index finger requires twice the amount of force as with a regular mouse. The alternative method being to just mash the whole thing with your palm. Just don't rest your hand on it too heavily when moving it about or you'll register unwanted clicks every few minutes.

But it's perfect for penguins.

[greencalx]

Our hob (ceramic I think) has control buttons that are activated by just touching the surface. There's no physical button and I guess it works according to the same principle as a touchscreen (change in capacitance or whatever it is). Anyway, this is all well and good, unless your fingers are wet, you spill anything over the control area, or place a hot tray on top of it. All of which happen all the time while you are cooking.

Way more annoying than an Apple mouse.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Our hob (ceramic I think) has control buttons that are activated by just touching the surface. There's no physical button and I guess it works according to the same principle as a touchscreen (change in capacitance or whatever it is). Anyway, this is all well and good, unless your fingers are wet, you spill anything over the control area, or place a hot tray on top of it. All of which happen all the time while you are cooking.

Way more annoying than an Apple mouse.

Oh I had one of these. I was the perfect height for the bottom of my t-shirt to be able to trigger the buttons with a glancing brush, or better turn the whole thing off if it dangled over several of them for a length of time.

[Gurke and Hare]

Those toilets that flush themselves. Shift slightly in the seat to get paper to wipe arse, get wet arse when it flushes.

[touchingcloth]

Our hob (ceramic I think) has control buttons that are activated by just touching the surface. There's no physical button and I guess it works according to the same principle as a touchscreen (change in capacitance or whatever it is). Anyway, this is all well and good, unless your fingers are wet, you spill anything over the control area, or place a hot tray on top of it. All of which happen all the time while you are cooking.

Way more annoying than an Apple mouse.

I have some waterproof bluetooth earbuds - IPX8 which means they can be fully submerged, and you can not only go out in the rain or have a shower in them, but you can go swimming in them if you like. Except you won't like, because the buds have capacitive touch surfaces for changing the volume and skipping tracks, and so are rendered useless unless your shower, pool, and the rain comprise exclusively distilled and deionised water.

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's a certain design of hob that both fucks off individual controls but also has a magnetic knob to control the power. Which I assume is exactly what you want when you're hastily trying to stop something over-boiling, no chance of you going 'oh shit' and slapping it away under the sink.

[copa]

Those black 'rails' on the bottom mean that - while moving the mouse up and down along a vertical axis is all well and good, the rails just add resistance when moving horizontally with the result that the mouse naturally wants to tip over. It's the worst fucking mouse ever.

You just have to think of the mouse like a little shopping trolley or sleigh. If you want the pointer to go left, you steer it 90 degrees in that direction and away you go.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

You just have to think of the mouse like a little shopping trolley or sleigh. If you want the pointer to go left, you steer it 90 degrees in that direction and away you go.

I indeed assume they were aiming for some sort of bobsleigh-like experience. They even rounded off the edges on the underside so you can really lean into those turns.

[touchingcloth]

Moving any mouse will result in some attenuation of its tip-resistance performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the fingers. This is a fact of life for every wireless mouse. If you ever experience this on your iMouse, avoid moving it to the left or the right, or simply use one of many available cases.

[Gurke and Hare]

In case it's unclear, that's the bottom of a bottle of handwash which has a rise in the middle so that the last bit of handwash falls to the outside of the bottle where the pump will never be able to get it. It's only a bit that is inevitably wasted, but it's annoying nonetheless, probably because it's so unnecessary.