Nominations for the worst bit of design ever.

Not really, given the QWERTY layout was designed to make typing as difficult/slow as possible, anything would be better now!

Never heard that before and internet suggests myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/Q/QWERTY_keyboard.html

the later says myth the former has more info and sort of supports the view

I have no idea as I said never heard that said before so still not sure if myth or fact

Any hand dryer apart from air blades. Who signed of the design?
‘Does it work?’
‘Oh yes’
‘but my hands aren’t dry’
‘erm’

Air Blades? Shite! The modern powerful jet of air under which you can rub your hands is miles better.

<rant>
Roundabouts with traffic lights every 3 metres…if you want traffic lights build a crossroads, it costs less, drains water better, easier to design and maintain, less prone to jams because some muppet can’t see the yellow box, aaaargh!

Mini roundabouts…universally ignored except by those that haven’t a clue and just stop and look at everyone else. Who also stop because someone is on their right, aaaaaargh!

Stop signs at junctions. Pointless, giving way is quite adequate, thanks
</rant>

Can’t stand the new jet hand dryers, so loud in a room which naturally has no soft furnishings to absorb. Almost tempted to take ear plugs when I’m off to the can at work. Blade ones a bit better but paper towels best for actually getting your hands dry although from what I understand not very eco. Back of the trousers it is!

Instruction manuals?

I mean, why bother? Nobody reads them, particularly car ones, particularly the section in them about how to change your light bulbs… 😉

Blade ones a bit better but paper towels best for actually getting your hands dry although from what I understand not very eco

Whats funny is I’m so used to the button-less sensor activated hand-dryers that when I last encountered a paper towel dispenser I found myself waving my hands vaguely underneath it wondering why the air wasn’t coming out.

But to generally ineffectual hand driers I’d add an additional circle of hell reserved for the manufacturers of sensor activated hand driers where the sensor and blower point to different places in space. You wave your hands under the machine – its starts – you move your hands to where the air is coming out – it stops.

The standard airplane toilet

toasters

Stop signs at junctions. Pointless, giving way is quite adequate, thanks

the ones locally[ only two I can think of ] are stop because you have to stop to see what is there in order to decide whether to give way – that is they have limited views of the road. I think you may have failed to understand their point and they are there to protect us from your [ better than average no doubt] driving prowess.

I have one at the end of the road that is regularly ignored and is the source of numerous accidents as folk just ignore it. So much so that I end up stopping at a give way sign rather than roll the dice with other cars.
Oner driver once got out his car and screamed at me its a **** give way sign you idiot
I pointed to where he had exited and said – its a stop sign have you stopped?

Ge replied – pointing at my exit with its a **** give way sign what are you stupid?
I loled – he went ape shit – I laughed some more

Was it you*?

Thats my rant for today, to match yours 😉

171
You MUST stop behind the line at a junction with a ‘Stop’ sign and a solid white line across the road. Wait for a safe gap in the traffic before you move off.
Laws RTA 1988 sect 36 & TSRGD regs 10 & 16

* I see him dropping his kid of at school he wont even make eye contact with me

And the winner – the €

I’m honoured. 😉

Winston has a point but as a designer, fulfilling a clients a badly thought out or short sighted brief doesn’t make it an adequate design. All it means means is you will get paid and for most designers that’s the main goal.

My nomination isn’t a product as such and does has some great touches, but considering the designers other remarkable creations, i’m at a loss as to what was going on here*. Mother nature, WTF?

*Only thing i can think of is an archeological prank. I mean, arms that can’t reach any other part of the body?

Those daft toilet doors on trains that, unless you know which magic combination actually closes and locks the door, actually open to reveal the user on the pot.

There must be a name for the anticipatory terror experienced when nature forces one to use these monstrous piss-tardis exposé traps. You can’t help twitching and looking wide-eyed at the door for the whole duration.

Please bring back old railway carriages, with wood, and ashtrays, and corridors, and little brass handles.

Gnome3.

Completely baffling. In the old days it had a “Hibernate” menu option to hibernate your machine. But in Gnome3 they decided that this feature was too “advanced” so it got removed. After a day of googling around I eventually found the configuration file you had to manually edit to re-enable it. And the rest is just as bad. There’s some funky configuration thing you have to install and poke around with to make it work, but life is just too short. Aaarrgh!

Gnome2 used to be great, but I’m living with Xfce now because it’s not Gnome or Kde.

The car.

IN 1885 Karl Benz constructed the first automobile.

It had three wheels, like an invalid car,

And ran on alcohol, like many drivers.

Since then about seventeen million people have been killed by them

In an undeclared war;

And the whole of the rest of the world is in danger of being run over

Due to squabbles about their oil.

If an alien was to hover a few hundred yards above the planet

It could be forgiven for thinking

That cars were the dominant life-form,

And that human beings were a kind of ambulatory fuel cell:

Injected when the car wished to move off,

And ejected when they were spent.

’Autogeddon’[/url] (excerpt) by Heathcote Williams

Chiller cabinets without doors. Honestly, even before the green agenda really got going you’d have shops spending money on leccy to run the chillers whilst cranking the heating up so the staff didn’t walk out. Barmy.

I work in retail construction and it is the one thing that always gets me. The client I work for will spend a fortune on green initiatives that will never really pay back, but avoid the obvious one for fear of it impacting on sales. Even the companies that make the refrig equipment keep telling them to add doors to save shed loads but they won’t. If all the supermarkets did it, then customers would have no choice but to open a door!

It’s not do much the staff that whine it’s cold….it’s the customers. As a result you have an open topped fridge / freezer with heaters underneath heating the isle. No one seems to see anything wrong with this apparently!

And yes those light bulbs are awful.

I’d also like to nominate buttons on baby grows….why? When you have a fidgety baby, buttons are the obvious thng to make life easy!

Knees.

Proof that the creationists idea of Intelligent Design is tosh wallops.
‘Lets connect the two bits that let you run away from hungry beasts together with stretchy string, and cover the bits the touch in mildly tough jelly?’
‘Now lets design the rest of the body to outlast them’

Combining a recline function and tray back table on an airline seat.

What could possibly go wrong? Giving one person the ability to tip scalding hot drinks into another person’s lap by being selfish.

by being selfish.

I’d say designing a seat that you expect someone to sit in for 10 or 12 hours bolt upright where the only crumb of relief you can get is by reclining it slightly but risk being called selfish for doing so is bad design in itself. Yes, I know why (squeezing us all in to reduce costs/increase profits) but it’s still not good enough.

I mean, arms that can’t reach any other part of the body?

No wonder they were always so cross

…you have to stop to see what is there in order to decide whether to give way…

I absolutely agree, but why do you need a sign? Give way is what you’re doing, and if it’s necessary for you to stop, then stop
It’s like putting “Fog” on motorway signs. Really? Is that what that thick grey blanket obscuring my view is?

The problem is that people get nannied, if they had to think then we might do a bit better

(and of course I’m a better driver than average, all motorists are)

High-heeled shoes in general. But this:

I’m not sure T-rex qualifies for bad design – It was a top predator and around for 2.5 million years – homosapien has only been here for 500,000 so far.

My top nomination would be most houses that have been built since the 30’s. The design faults in our dwellings are so legion I don’t know where to start.

After looking at iolo’s thread about the phone dock/dog I’ll nominate this. After all everyone needs a 3.5m high docking station in their lives.

http://jarre.com/products/jarre-technologies/aerodream-one

I would just like to point out that I am not responsible for any of these.

Yet.

And I shall be revisiting the thread…..when I’ve finished designing cheap solar garden lights for manufacture in China. 😀

Give way is what you’re doing, and if it’s necessary for you to stop, then stop

NO and you really need to learn and read
STOP Means STOP – you MUST STOP. you dont choose whether you stop its like a red light. Why am I having to explain this again and I am not sure how this tricky conundrum has out smarted you 😕

if they had to think then we might do a bit better

The fact you cannot follow a simple rule [ and then argued about what it meant after I cited the relevant highway code instruction] and ignore it suggests otherwise.

Its a stop sign its not complicated to work out what to do at it.
Its not an option its an instruction.

The button fly. Whoever thought that was a good idea was obviously never troubled by needing to go for a leak with numb fingers on a cold day.

The button fly.

Similarly, the fly on my jeans which has a little zipper garage flap into which the pull on the zipper slips while you’re pissing and is then almost irretrievable, certainly without looking completely ridiculous.

I’d say designing a seat that you expect someone to sit in for 10 or 12 hours bolt upright where the only crumb of relief you can get is by reclining it slightly but risk being called selfish for doing so is bad design in itself. Yes, I know why (squeezing us all in to reduce costs/increase profits) but it’s still not good enough.

I should probably qualify this. The act of reclining the seat is not selfish, but at least 50% of the people I have sat behind just recline their seat without even looking, let alone asking if it is ok. That’s the selfish bit.

Original conti mountain kings.

Too thin, too tight on the rim, and triangular tread blocks just sliced through the dirt rather than gripping it. The worst tyres I have ever bought.

This bit of design quickly became very bad when rifles appeared………

The bright white webbing cross on the front makes a handy aiming point as well.

Shimano dual control. A crap solution to a non-existent problem.

*note to self: never design anything for DannyH* 8)

*note to self: never design anything for DannyH*

You can. Just make sure it’s not crap!

Did you spill my pint?

Technically, yes, but I just leant on the bar a metre away, physics did the rest.

Shame they overlooked one small exhaust port………

Shame they overlooked one small exhaust port………

I have it in confidence that the Imperial design brief originally neglected to specify ‘at least half the size of a womp rat and protected in both directions by blast shields’

I’d totally go with the rightangled scart lead, and its accomplice, appliances with horizontal scart lead sockets- a combination perfectly designed to pull the cables out of the TV. Most French thing ever

I like Shimano dual control.

I’d totally go with the rightangled scart lead, and its accomplice, appliances with horizontal scart lead sockets- a combination perfectly designed to pull the cables out of the TV. Most French thing ever

Now that most people wall mount their tellies now (not me – CRT til I die or at least until flat telly stop being too ugly to look at) then I’d also nominate tellies where non of the leads can be plugged in or unplugged once the tv is fixed to the wall.

What other options do you think the designer of that had?