General design stupidity

[anmpr1]

And I hate green cars. No not that kind of green. Just the color green. Not a fit color for a car.

I don't know. Some cars sort of demand that color. Although the Signal Red ones look nice, too.

 

[mansr]

And I hate green cars. No not that kind of green. Just the color green. Not a fit color for a car. I had a green car once (still do), but I painted it bright yellow.

Nothing wrong with British Racing Green.

 

[digitalfrost]

I'm looking forward to see Vettel race in the Aston Martin this year.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I work on UIs all day, so the pumps at the new gas station on the corner are offensive to me. I give them my money anyway

Ha, this is pretty amazing! What's your best theory as to how they managed this? Re-purposing of a design intended for some other function? Surely they didn't begin with the idea of a machine that was supposed to do what this machine does?

 

[muslhead]

I was going to post a separate thread on this but it fits here.
On black Friday, someone was kind enough to post a deal for an infinity center channel speaker (RC263). Great reviews and to top it off the deal was great .. ,regularly 500 on sale for 150. I needed to replace my existing center and jumped on the deal. After a few months of waiting for delivery (backordered) i was ecstatic when it arrived

The sound is great and works well in my system but what sux is the design. Here is an image from the front

Both the top and bottom have a very short shelf before they become angled which you can see on the front view but becomes clearer when looking from the rear.

As soon as you connect speaker cables of any weight, the speaker rocks back on the angled edge. Depending upon the weight of the cable the speaker either points up (rather than forward at the listener) or it will rock up and down, pivoting on the edge where the angle starts.
In order to get it to stay pointed forward (and not up) or not rock, i have to wedge something under the angle, blocking the speaker from moving.
Harman completely missed the ball on this.

 

[Cider]

Ha, this is pretty amazing! What's your best theory as to how they managed this? Re-purposing of a design intended for some other function? Surely they didn't begin with the idea of a machine that was supposed to do what this machine does?

Your guess is as good as mine, but probably a combination of the usual causes: decision makers that don't value design, aggressive release schedule, design-by-committee, lack of user testing, etc.

 

[JeffS7444]

You are talking about a car with an automatic transmission? Please real drivers are going to have a clutch and a stick for sure.

Bah, it's all gone downhill since they did away with manual chokes and running boards.</sarcasm>

But seriously, modern 6-speed auto with paddle shifters? Seems like it'd be worth a look.

 

[Dialectic]

Why in the world are credit cards going from cards with nice large raised numbers to designs with a blank front side and small print on the back. And in my case not just small print but print with almost no contrast - light grey against slightly darker grey. I honestly cannot read these.

My card design pet peeve is that a certain credit card issuer in the United States made one of its cards black to resemble the ultra-exclusive Amex Centurion card, which is reserved for conspicuous consumers. My card is not as exclusive as the Amex Centurion card, and most any middle-class person with a good credit score can get it. It has some nice travel benefits, generous points, trip cancellation insurance, etc., which is why I have it.

However, the black color is a magnet for fraudsters. I have had to have the card replaced more times than I can remember. It happens almost any time I travel internationally (it's actually been a while because of the pandemic) - two weeks or so after I'm home, I receive alerts about huge unauthorized charges. It doesn't seem to matter how careful I am. I think discreetly taken cell phone camera photos of the card are the method.

 

[pjug]

My card design pet peeve is that a certain credit card issuer in the United States made one of its cards black to resemble the ultra-exclusive Amex Centurion card, which is reserved for conspicuous consumers. My card is not as exclusive as the Amex Centurion card, and most any middle-class person with a good credit score can get it. It has some nice travel benefits, generous points, trip cancellation insurance, etc., which is why I have it.

However, the black color is a magnet for fraudsters. I have had to have the card replaced more times than I can remember. It happens almost any time I travel internationally (it's actually been a while because of the pandemic) - two weeks or so after I'm home, I receive alerts about huge unauthorized charges. It doesn't seem to matter how careful I am. I think discreetly taken cell phone camera photos of the card are the method.

Ha I guess you need my card. I wonder if fraudsters can read my handwriting; I just wrote the number on the back with a sharpie so I can read it now.

 

[anmpr1]

1) Bah, it's all gone downhill since they did away with manual chokes...</sarcasm>
2) But seriously, modern 6-speed auto with paddle shifters? Seems like it'd be worth a look.

2) My last two cars had/have DSG gearbox and paddles. Shifting is faster than you can think, but occasionally the dual clutch hesitates from a standing start. A little disconcerting. That said, I can't tell you the times I've 'missed my shift' with a manual! LOL

1) I don't even think you can find a manual choke on a lawn mower anymore. There was certainly an 'art' to manipulating those. Sort of like getting the VTA and alignment right on your cartridge!

 

[Dialectic]

Ha I guess you need my card. I wonder if fraudsters can read my handwriting; I just wrote the number on the back with a sharpie so I can read it now.

Perhaps we have figured out why your card is designed that way.

 

[pjug]

Perhaps we have figured out why your card is designed that way.

I'm not going to give in, though. Having easy to read print on the bottom side would still give pretty good prevention against photos I think. And make it from a low-credit-looking color! Bronze like my health plan.

 

[pjug]

I guess there are thousands of examples of car designs where what should be simple repairs are made very difficult because of bad design. One over the top example I dealt with was with an Outback. Subaru made it so that your average owner had to turn the tire and go through the wheel well to replace a head lamp. I did this myself three times I think, and my arms were scraped raw after doing it. It ended up costing Subaru, though, because unhappy customers got them to have their dealers change the headlamps for free.

 

[egellings]

My local gas station had pumps that played ads to the captive audience while said audience filled the tanks. The pumps got vandalized, and the owners removed the ads. Vandalism stopped. When you are forced to see an ad, that will tend to raise some danders. It did mine, as in, lock the hose on, drop it, light it and drive away.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I guess there are thousands of examples of car designs where what should be simple repairs are made very difficult because of bad design. One over the top example I dealt with was with an Outback. Subaru made it so that your average owner had to turn the tire and go through the wheel well to replace a head lamp. I did this myself three times I think, and my arms were scraped raw after doing it. It ended up costing Subaru, though, because unhappy customers got them to have their dealers change the headlamps for free.

Oh there are at least many thousands of those. I guess you have a discussion about whether repairability should be part of car design. Modern cars can be quite terrible from trying to package everything inside an aerodynamic shape.

I don't know how far someone could go with a car, but Bad Boy lawnmowers were designed from the ground up with easy maintenance and repairability in mind.

My Miata headlamps are similar to, but worse by far than your Outback headlamps.

For a number of years Honda Accord had the worst placement of oil filters. Made changing oil a horrible job and there is no excuse for that. I think they should at least make regular maintenance simple. Oil changes, air filter changes, cabin filter changes.

 

[MattHooper]

Oh yummy! A thread in which I get to complain about bad design!

I'm perversely fascinated by bad design, because so much of it seems mysterious, such obvious missteps. I mean, the product in question would have been worked on for a long time, often by many different people, and NOBODY noticed this flaw?

My current biggest pet peeve comes from my iphone. The Reminders feature.

I have a crappy memory so the moment siri came along and I could just say "hey siri, remind me tomorrow at 11:00 am to take X out of the freezer" or whatever, was a godsend. And indeed it IS a godsend.

But this feature has the most bizarre flaw. The crazy thing is, that IF they designed the siri function to be so useful someone actually used it a lot, that meant lots of reminders would build up in the app. But there is no easy way to delete expired reminders (tasks you've done). I open up the reminders and there's this BIG LIST of reminders built up that are expired, and the ONLY way to delete them is to open reminders, press "edit" so you can start editing them, then the reminders get an edit icon, then you have to choose the expired reminder, then choose "delete." This multi-step process is SO DAMNED CUMBERSOME if you have tons of reminders to delete. It turns the process in to a second hobby just deleting damned reminders so of course they don't get deleted, they build up even more, until you have so many the thought of spending 1/2 day going through the cumbersome steps to delete each one is off-putting.

So the front half of the process "siri remind of of X" is terrific, but the back half is a sh*t show!

What boggles my mind is that this occurs at the world's greatest and richest tech company, with "the best teams." How could a team have spent time developing this feature without it ever occurring "You know, since lots of expired reminders will build up, we should have a simple way of bulk erasing them." You know, like a button for "delete expired reminders." But...no... apparently it never occurred to anyone.

How does this even happen? It's a puzzle on the level of The Problem Of Evil.

 

[MrPeabody]

You all have gone and done it now! You got me started! But where to start?

1. Cars not having knobs. Look at the new VW Golf that is coming to the USA later this year. Not a single knob. Just below the touch screen there are three touch-sensitive sliders: a large center one for volume, and to either side of it, temperature controls for driver and passenger side. There is not one single knob. To change the HVAC vents that are active, say from the footwell to the defroster vents, you have to switch the touch-sensitive screen from what it is on (GPS or Sirius/music) to Climate, and then maybe navigate after that. Blame Tesla for popularizing this dumb trend. By the way, Tesla's stock is going to crash before this year is out. Two bad quarters within one year will pretty much do them in at this point, with all the other electric cars that are coming out. Ford is going to eat Tesla's lunch with that new electric Mustang SUV.

2. Shift paddles that turn with the steering wheel instead of staying in one place so that you can always find. (And eliminating the console shift control on many new cars, which forces you to use the silly paddles!) This happened because younger men who grew up playing video games where they pretended to be F1 race car drivers thought that street cars should be like F1 race cars. In F1 race cars, the steering ratio is so small that the steering wheel barely turns at all. The paddles pretty much stay in one place. In street cars, if the paddles turn with the wheel, the paddle at 12 o'clock is sometimes the up-shift paddle and it is sometimes the down-shift paddle. I shouldn't need to say more, yet many racer wanna-be types defend this moronic design and insist that it is how it ought to be.

3. The great majority of web sites are designed by idiots. The surest proof of this is the proliferation of a junky bar that drops down over the upper portion of the screen when you scroll in the direction that would otherwise permit you to see more of the upper portion of the screen. Sometimes this bar is a useful menu. It usually isn't, but even when it is, it is annoying as hell. The reason you're scrolling in that direction is that you want to see what it was that just recently vanished at the upper edge when you were scrolling down. So you reverse the direction of scrolling, so you can see what it was that vanished at the upper edge. Instead of seeing what you want to see, the retarded bar suddenly drops down and covers up even more of the upper part of the screen, so that you see even less of it than you could see before reversing the direction of scrolling. I understand the reason that web developers do this, but I still think it is retarded as hell. Their reasons for doing this aren't nearly great enough to justify the actual effect that web users routinely put up with because of this crazy nonsense. As a general rule, web developers simply don't have the good sense that the good Lord gave to geese.

4. Replacing actual gauges behind the steering wheel with simulated gauges using an LCD screen. What happens is the same thing that happens to the color LCD screen on your camera when you try to use it in the daylight. Dumb as hell. Dumber than hell, actually.

5. Front wheel drive. The advantage in fuel economy was barely significant when it first became popular more than forty years ago. Improvements in drive train efficiency are such that the advantage in fuel economy just doesn't amount to very much. The front wheel spin and the car goes scooting over into the ditch on one side of the road, or else across the center line into the oncoming lane. The car rides like crap because there is so little weight over the rear wheels. To combat these problems, the manufacturers have gradually pushed the front wheels further to the rear over the years, to the point that nowadays you pretty much have to pull your legs in to maneuver your feet around and over the wheel well when entering the car. No wonder the switch to automatic transmissions, because what with the wheel well right there in the way beside your left foot and with both feet pushed over to your right in an uncomfortable position, there isn't any room for a clutch pedal. There's barely any room for the brake pedal.

6. Foot rest for the driver's left foot. These became popular with manufacturers in the effect to deal with there being no place for your left foot in front-wheel-drive cars, because of the wheel well. If you place you foot on the wheel well rounded/sloped surface, it perpetually slides off, and there is no place for it to go. The only solution was to put that flat board-like thing down there so that you can put your left foot on it. The only problem is that you want so badly to be able to stretch out that left leg after about 30 minutes, because your left knee is bent at an angle of about 120 degrees. No can do. It doesn't have to be this way, but in order for it to not be this way in a front-wheel-drive car, you pretty much have to give up the back seat and do the overall design with a steeply raked windshield, a dash that sits well to the rear, and everything, including steering wheel, pedals, shifter, and driver's seat, all pushed to the rear about 6" further than what you find in most any modern front-wheel-drive car. The '90 Mitsubishi Eclipse wasn't like this. It was front wheel drive, and had the best front leg ergonomics of any car I've ever owned. But the back seat was only a pretense.

7. Did I mention that thing about the bad web pages with the infuriating bar that drops down from the top of the screen and covers up the top part of the screen when you scroll upwards in the attempt to see more of what's at the top part of the screen?

8. Apple's software user interfaces. Who designs these things? None of them are the least bit logical. Try the application where you grant keychain access permissions to applications. What does it mean? iTunes is an obvious example. Somewhere on the menu there is something that you can use to try and manage your music database. But it's crazy as hell. The use of that special key thing you use to start iTunes in a special mode where you can change to a different database is stupid as hell. What's wrong with the people who thought this up? Why weren't they fired twenty years ago, and why are the developers currently running iTunes still doing it that way? What's their problem? Try to use or even make sense of their Internet accounts service. And then there's the iCloud. What the hell? Dumbest, most illogical thing that was ever invented. Although, to be fair, let's include Google. Google Maps is a roadmap for how to make a horrifically bad user interface. The sad part of it is that they think it is swell and are very proud of it.

In another ten years, you'll still be able to drive your car if you really want, but there won't be a steering wheel, or a brake pedal, or an accelerator pedal. Instead, you'll use a touch-screen with a virtual steering wheel and sliders for the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal.

 

[andreasmaaan]

3. The great majority of web sites are designed by idiots. The surest proof of this is the proliferation of a junky bar that drops down over the upper portion of the screen when you scroll in the direction that would otherwise permit you to see more of the upper portion of the screen. Sometimes this bar is a useful menu. It usually isn't, but even when it is, it is annoying as hell. The reason you're scrolling in that direction is that you want to see what it was that just recently vanished at the upper edge when you were scrolling down. So you reverse the direction of scrolling, so you can see what it was that vanished at the upper edge. Instead of seeing what you want to see, the retarded bar suddenly drops down and covers up even more of the upper part of the screen, so that you see even less of it than you could see before reversing the direction of scrolling. I understand the reason that web developers do this, but I still think it is retarded as hell. Their reasons for doing this aren't nearly great enough to justify the actual effect that web users routinely put up with because of this crazy nonsense. As a general rule, web developers simply don't have the good sense that the good Lord gave to geese.

This one is the bane of my web-browsing life. I will exit a website literally upon arrival due to this stupidity.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Here's a simple and obvious one: Click on the magnifying glass icon to enter a search and it opens a small window. Why doesn't it move the cursor to the window? Do they think you just want get some fresh air?

 

[MattHooper]

You all have gone and done it now! You got me started! But where to start?

1. Cars not having knobs. Look at the new VW Golf that is coming to the USA later this year. Not a single knob. Just below the touch screen there are three touch-sensitive sliders: a large center one for volume, and to either side of it, temperature controls for driver and passenger side. There is not one single knob. To change the HVAC vents that are active, say from the footwell to the defroster vents, you have to switch the touch-sensitive screen from what it is on (GPS or Sirius/music) to Climate, and then maybe navigate after that. Blame Tesla for popularizing this dumb trend. By the way, Tesla's stock is going to crash before this year is out. Two bad quarters within one year will pretty much do them in at this point, with all the other electric cars that are coming out. Ford is going to eat Tesla's lunch with that new electric Mustang SUV.

2. Shift paddles that turn with the steering wheel instead of staying in one place so that you can always find. (And eliminating the console shift control on many new cars, which forces you to use the silly paddles!) This happened because younger men who grew up playing video games where they pretended to be F1 race car drivers thought that street cars should be like F1 race cars. In F1 race cars, the steering ratio is so small that the steering wheel barely turns at all. The paddles pretty much stay in one place. In street cars, if the paddles turn with the wheel, the paddle at 12 o'clock is sometimes the up-shift paddle and it is sometimes the down-shift paddle. I shouldn't need to say more, yet many racer wanna-be types defend this moronic design and insist that it is how it ought to be.

3. The great majority of web sites are designed by idiots. The surest proof of this is the proliferation of a junky bar that drops down over the upper portion of the screen when you scroll in the direction that would otherwise permit you to see more of the upper portion of the screen. Sometimes this bar is a useful menu. It usually isn't, but even when it is, it is annoying as hell. The reason you're scrolling in that direction is that you want to see what it was that just recently vanished at the upper edge when you were scrolling down. So you reverse the direction of scrolling, so you can see what it was that vanished at the upper edge. Instead of seeing what you want to see, the retarded bar suddenly drops down and covers up even more of the upper part of the screen, so that you see even less of it than you could see before reversing the direction of scrolling. I understand the reason that web developers do this, but I still think it is retarded as hell. Their reasons for doing this aren't nearly great enough to justify the actual effect that web users routinely put up with because of this crazy nonsense. As a general rule, web developers simply don't have the good sense that the good Lord gave to geese.

4. Replacing actual gauges behind the steering wheel with simulated gauges using an LCD screen. What happens is the same thing that happens to the color LCD screen on your camera when you try to use it in the daylight. Dumb as hell. Dumber than hell, actually.

5. Front wheel drive. The advantage in fuel economy was barely significant when it first became popular more than forty years ago. Improvements in drive train efficiency are such that the advantage in fuel economy just doesn't amount to very much. The front wheel spin and the car goes scooting over into the ditch on one side of the road, or else across the center line into the oncoming lane. The car rides like crap because there is so little weight over the rear wheels. To combat these problems, the manufacturers have gradually pushed the front wheels further to the rear over the years, to the point that nowadays you pretty much have to pull your legs in to maneuver your feet around and over the wheel well when entering the car. No wonder the switch to automatic transmissions, because what with the wheel well right there in the way beside your left foot and with both feet pushed over to your right in an uncomfortable position, there isn't any room for a clutch pedal. There's barely any room for the brake pedal.

6. Foot rest for the driver's left foot. These became popular with manufacturers in the effect to deal with there being no place for your left foot in front-wheel-drive cars, because of the wheel well. If you place you foot on the wheel well rounded/sloped surface, it perpetually slides off, and there is no place for it to go. The only solution was to put that flat board-like thing down there so that you can put your left foot on it. The only problem is that you want so badly to be able to stretch out that left leg after about 30 minutes, because your left knee is bent at an angle of about 120 degrees. No can do. It doesn't have to be this way, but in order for it to not be this way in a front-wheel-drive car, you pretty much have to give up the back seat and do the overall design with a steeply raked windshield, a dash that sits well to the rear, and everything, including steering wheel, pedals, shifter, and driver's seat, all pushed to the rear about 6" further than what you find in most any modern front-wheel-drive car. The '90 Mitsubishi Eclipse wasn't like this. It was front wheel drive, and had the best front leg ergonomics of any car I've ever owned. But the back seat was only a pretense.

7. Did I mention that thing about the bad web pages with the infuriating bar that drops down from the top of the screen and covers up the top part of the screen when you scroll upwards in the attempt to see more of what's at the top part of the screen?

8. Apple's software user interfaces. Who designs these things? None of them are the least bit logical. Try the application where you grant keychain access permissions to applications. What does it mean? iTunes is an obvious example. Somewhere on the menu there is something that you can use to try and manage your music database. But it's crazy as hell. The use of that special key thing you use to start iTunes in a special mode where you can change to a different database is stupid as hell. What's wrong with the people who thought this up? Why weren't they fired twenty years ago, and why are the developers currently running iTunes still doing it that way? What's their problem? Try to use or even make sense of their Internet accounts service. And then there's the iCloud. What the hell? Dumbest, most illogical thing that was ever invented. Although, to be fair, let's include Google. Google Maps is a roadmap for how to make a horrifically bad user interface. The sad part of it is that they think it is swell and are very proud of it.

In another ten years, you'll still be able to drive your car if you really want, but there won't be a steering wheel, or a brake pedal, or an accelerator pedal. Instead, you'll use a touch-screen with a virtual steering wheel and sliders for the brake pedal and the accelerator pedal.

Excellent rant!

I'd add: ANY web site that presents articles in the Slide Show format. "Here's 10 things that will help you do X" or whatever. Forcing you to click over and over to get information that could easily have been put on the same page.

This is of course done to increase click revenue. And that fact only adds to my fury, the way the experience is cynically commerce-driven vs user-experience driven.