Such badly designed products are easy to spot by visual inspection.
Unfortunately, if you go shopping in a supermarket or online, you can find a huge amount of bad products that look like they were well designed, but in reality some of their parts are made from wrong materials, and you discover this only at home, after using them for a few months, or for a few days, or even after a few minutes.
For instance, I have seen devices where pressure-regulating springs were not made of spring steel, but of ordinary steel and they lost their elasticity after a very short time, making the device unusable, water buckets supposedly made of stainless steel that were actually made of chromated steel, which rusted at joints after a few months and a lot of diverse devices where parts that suffer cyclical stresses are not make of a fatigue-resistant material, so they break after a short time of use.
There are countless examples of this kind and all have this problem that you cannot detect visually if the correct materials are used, or not, like you can recognize an inappropriate shape.
I think the difference is AI images tend to create mush or impossible geometry. The ideas here where a minimal change to the design renders the item entirely unusable takes a fair bit of creativity.
Funny how some of those ideas are obviously useful, some I even see in stores... and then turns out the selfie stick is an example too, which makes one question the whole categorization.
I would spend an extra $0.20/lb if my butter came in a stick (though I think the form factor should emulate deodorant and not chapstick) and would shamelessly rock the umbrella tie.
I bought a new door for my house recently. When the salesman asked what type handle/knob I wanted, I had a bit of an internal crisis. The one he said post people got seemed like it would create a Norman door, which I desperately wanted to avoid. I ended up getting a standard knob to avoid being the absolute lunatic who spent 6 hours debating the merits of various door handles, but had I been alone, I would have absolutely done that. I still feel like I made a mistake every time I look at my door.
yeah, the book is something that people hate me having read. I know it wasn't my mistake and I tell them that.
as for door handles, most manufactures use interchangaple knobs so you can buy two and swap. You end up with a useless mechinism (i find you rarely can find a different door that needs the reverse handle)
"what if objects were actually designed for a bad user experience, instead of a good one? she recalled in a 2018 TED talk. That was my ‘eureka’ moment."
Or, she stumbled upon some article or the very Wikipedia page about it:
The lowest-key example of this is tools that enforce a particular order of arguments, or where the order of arguments carries semantic meaning. It's the worst. Please don't make me put the file name last, or first. You don't know which part of the command I'm tweaking.
Well, bash offers vi and Emacs as editing modes. We're already covered on that front. Many of the parameters for ls are cryptic, making it awkward to use for anything other than routine tasks without referencing the man page. more is so limited that many people choose to use a program used to concatenation files (cat) as a file viewer. Those who don't want to reach for their mouse to use their terminal's scrollbar buffer will use less, since it does more than more. Don't bother parsing that last sentence with bison, unless you have a yacc to shave.
Feed all command output through AI to summarize the results instead of actually giving the results.
Results from ls would be a few sentences explaining the types of files in the directory. Add a -l on there and it will give you a general overview of the permissions and size of the files. Ex. “These are rather large files that are primarily, but not exclusively, limited to root.”
Results from cat would give a summary of the file. You’d get the same results, with some degree of randomness from more and less as well.
Using any command with sudo would provide the same type of results, but in all caps.
Trying to pipe commands together would be a slop multiplier.
Such badly designed products are easy to spot by visual inspection.
Unfortunately, if you go shopping in a supermarket or online, you can find a huge amount of bad products that look like they were well designed, but in reality some of their parts are made from wrong materials, and you discover this only at home, after using them for a few months, or for a few days, or even after a few minutes.
For instance, I have seen devices where pressure-regulating springs were not made of spring steel, but of ordinary steel and they lost their elasticity after a very short time, making the device unusable, water buckets supposedly made of stainless steel that were actually made of chromated steel, which rusted at joints after a few months and a lot of diverse devices where parts that suffer cyclical stresses are not make of a fatigue-resistant material, so they break after a short time of use.
There are countless examples of this kind and all have this problem that you cannot detect visually if the correct materials are used, or not, like you can recognize an inappropriate shape.
IC: With AI getting bigger and more controversial and so on, have you used AI to create any of these designs?
That is an interesting point to bring up, because this type of "almost but not quite right" is exactly what AI seems to naturally create.
I think the difference is AI images tend to create mush or impossible geometry. The ideas here where a minimal change to the design renders the item entirely unusable takes a fair bit of creativity.
This gets quite close to chindogu, the Japanese art of designing objects that kind of serve a very niche purpose, but then without being useful. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chindogu-japanese-inventions/
Funny how some of those ideas are obviously useful, some I even see in stores... and then turns out the selfie stick is an example too, which makes one question the whole categorization.
I like the iPhone Control Center screenshot in there…
I would spend an extra $0.20/lb if my butter came in a stick (though I think the form factor should emulate deodorant and not chapstick) and would shamelessly rock the umbrella tie.
i need a roller desk EV.
I’ve always enjoyed the “useless teapot” that Don Norman has on the cover of DOET: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61KtiLw7BtL...
If the cap is screwed on and sealed, you should pour it from the side like a bottle of oil: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attachments/technical-stuff/1...
I believe it is actually called: The masochist’s teapot.
I recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in design. Even today it is fantastic.
Reading it was a watershed in my life.
I never look at doors, without evaluating their usability, anymore.
I bought a new door for my house recently. When the salesman asked what type handle/knob I wanted, I had a bit of an internal crisis. The one he said post people got seemed like it would create a Norman door, which I desperately wanted to avoid. I ended up getting a standard knob to avoid being the absolute lunatic who spent 6 hours debating the merits of various door handles, but had I been alone, I would have absolutely done that. I still feel like I made a mistake every time I look at my door.
The book was a gift and a curse.
yeah, the book is something that people hate me having read. I know it wasn't my mistake and I tell them that.
as for door handles, most manufactures use interchangaple knobs so you can buy two and swap. You end up with a useless mechinism (i find you rarely can find a different door that needs the reverse handle)
for the record, I am a furniture designer class 1985 Primrose Center and I made a table without a top to demonstrate this point: https://www.jeisch.com/img/furniture/tab_no_top_1988.jpg and another one which is a table which is a holder for a painting: https://www.jeisch.com/img/furniture/tab_pointy_1987.jpg the painting which is being held in the pointy table is this: https://www.jeisch.com/img/paintings/oil_martyr_1988.jpg but it slides in and out basically it is a horizontal holder a painting.
this really reminds me of the "worst volume control" from reddit https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world...
"what if objects were actually designed for a bad user experience, instead of a good one? she recalled in a 2018 TED talk. That was my ‘eureka’ moment."
Or, she stumbled upon some article or the very Wikipedia page about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu
This reminds me of Jacques Carelman's Catalogue d'objets introuvables. Highly recommended. It has already been mentioned on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9789216
I feel like I've seen some of these designs a VERY long time ago? Is this something old that the person was just interviewed on recently?
It’s been on HM a couple of times, first in 2017:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theuncomfortable.com
Yes! (The article says the project started a while back but the writer/interviewer only just discovered it)
It does do the rounds on the various social medias on the regular. The website looks interesting enough at least.
I love that these are all fairly beautiful, stuff you'd really love to have if it wasn't fundamentally unusable.
It really highlights how much we associate "good design" with aesthetics first, even though function is doing most of the heavy lifting
This is a link to the interview. here is a link to the products website: https://www.theuncomfortable.com/#
It's missing the Magic Mouse.
Or the M4 Mini power button...
on the bottom (both) WHY?
as a designer and innovator, i appriciete this. this gives me ideas really out of box, just to see these. amazing!
i also do this for ui and app logic: go to some Microslop service, they are all like these...sad but true
Now I’m wondering how you could create ‘uncomfortable’ versions of simple command line tools (ls, cat, more etc.) or perhaps shells.
Emacs and/or vi, depending on your inclination, have text editors covered already, of course ;-)
The lowest-key example of this is tools that enforce a particular order of arguments, or where the order of arguments carries semantic meaning. It's the worst. Please don't make me put the file name last, or first. You don't know which part of the command I'm tweaking.
Well, bash offers vi and Emacs as editing modes. We're already covered on that front. Many of the parameters for ls are cryptic, making it awkward to use for anything other than routine tasks without referencing the man page. more is so limited that many people choose to use a program used to concatenation files (cat) as a file viewer. Those who don't want to reach for their mouse to use their terminal's scrollbar buffer will use less, since it does more than more. Don't bother parsing that last sentence with bison, unless you have a yacc to shave.
This is a fun idea
jus used new ubuntu instead of ifconfig (weird name) it had ip couldnt figure from the help how to get actually show the ip
so linux is already there
Yeah, Linux has been trending to incomprehensible commands.
In terms of usability, moving to FreeBSD from Linux is quite a positive experience. Pity that hardware and software support is limited on the BSDs.
Feed all command output through AI to summarize the results instead of actually giving the results.
Results from ls would be a few sentences explaining the types of files in the directory. Add a -l on there and it will give you a general overview of the permissions and size of the files. Ex. “These are rather large files that are primarily, but not exclusively, limited to root.”
Results from cat would give a summary of the file. You’d get the same results, with some degree of randomness from more and less as well.
Using any command with sudo would provide the same type of results, but in all caps.
Trying to pipe commands together would be a slop multiplier.
Use an agent for all CLI work.
What's wrong about the glasses? I've been staring at them and trying to figure out why they're unworkable, as opposed to just a quirky pair of specs.
The sharp angle of the bridge would dig into your nose.
Pointy bit on the bridge of the nose.
the sharp point on the bridge is going to hurt your snout.
you don't have glasses ever, i guess?
The glasses would be great for pool playing, as they would sit higher on your line of sight :)
What kinds of terrible product designs have you seen?
This is such a great reminder that "good design" is mostly invisible until it breaks
The funny thing is that the toothbrush would actually come in handy for cleaning stuff other than teeth.
For example, the inner water tank of a robotic vacuum.
given the title, so may software developers must be living in bliss! /s
All seems very contrived. Not what I would call creative