Worst Product Design...EVAR

March 7, 2006 12:43 PM

50% of all product returns are due to poor design. Well color me surprised, kids. It seems as though we always take for granted the products we use on a regular basis. But most things I use just plain suck due to the design and resultant user experience. How often do you find yourself fighting with your mobile phone, DVD player, 80-button AV receiver and 15 component TV systems? Which products are paragons of good design, and which should be thrown away with the dishwater? What's the most infuriating product you've ever used? My choices for bad design: BMW's iDrive. Good design: iPod.
posted by tgrundke (137 comments total)

So what bad design choice was responsible for that crappy, truncated, supportless, sensationalist "article?"
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:48 PM on March 7, 2006

What's the most infuriating product you've ever used?

Metafilter
posted by Heatwole at 12:49 PM on March 7, 2006

I'm so tired of "design pundits" who can never come up with any examples of good design outside of the iPod.

Get a second data point and get back to us.
posted by GuyZero at 12:52 PM on March 7, 2006

bad design: iPod's built in obselesence (limited battery life with no way of replacing it), use of software that doesn't let you share music (iTunes), horrible interface (turns on and off in one's pocket), bad customer service, and overly high price make it the most infuriating product I've ever used.

Phew. That felt good.
posted by xammerboy at 12:52 PM on March 7, 2006

This is not a good FPP.

This will probably be a good thread.
posted by S.C. at 12:53 PM on March 7, 2006

Sorry you have problems with your BMW iDrive. I can totally sympathize. I drive a 24 year-old Volvo station wagon (yellow).

Oh, wait. I can't sympathize. Fuck you and your iDrive! You're taking it for granted!
posted by notmydesk at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2006

FoB- Did you miss the part where a scientist said it? 'Cause it's right there: "a scientist said." Unsupported, indeed!
posted by OmieWise at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2006

notmydesk,

that made me laugh. for what it's worth, I don't drive a bimmer, but i've played with iDrive on friends' cars and find it to be absolutely infuriatingly overly-complicated. Give me some damned buttons to push, dammit!
posted by tgrundke at 12:55 PM on March 7, 2006

Roland products perform/sound so well as to almost be magic. Their interfaces bring with them a steep learning curve, but once learned they allow for fantastic applications.

Same could be said for most pro software, though.
posted by sourwookie at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2006

xammerboy, don't forget the scratch-happy case and screen materials.
posted by Dr-Baa at 12:57 PM on March 7, 2006

As an owner of a 18 year old Volvo 240 wagon: There's some good design for you. No repairs in three years and built-in ass warmers!
posted by sourwookie at 12:57 PM on March 7, 2006

Oh. Okay, then.

PS: What's an iDrive?
posted by notmydesk at 12:57 PM on March 7, 2006

posted by public at 12:59 PM on March 7, 2006

All DVD players. Putting aside the anti-consumer DRM and feature-disabling "features," the remote is a classic example of a design by committee, with so many potential functions that any given disk rarely implements more than half of them and no two using the same set, leaving it a complete mystery which buttons work and which don't at any given time. (Smart money sez: at any given time, most of those 40 buttons don't do anything.)
posted by localroger at 12:59 PM on March 7, 2006

I totally disagree on the iDrive. But then, it seems to be a love it or loathe it thing.
posted by uncle harold at 1:00 PM on March 7, 2006

notmydesk -

iDrive was BMWs way of 'computerizing' everything from turning on the radio to seat warmers. Basically, take a large knob and use it to flip through a dozen screens on the LCD panel before you can change the radio station.

I'll stick with simple buttons for each function, thank you.

Other manufacturers have done a much better job of this type of integration: Acura's Navigation system is stellar, and Audi's MMI system is very good as well, though not as simple as Acura's.
posted by tgrundke at 1:00 PM on March 7, 2006

While I do like my iPod, it's never struck me as a particularly fantastic design. I mean, it's not a particularly *bad* design, but I didn't look at it and go, "OH MY GOD! How did mankind survive up until now without THIS!"

So I'm on board with xammerboy. The most frustrating product I've ever had the displeasure of using is in fact iTunes. I eventually turned to AskMeFi for help, and once I was able to slog through all of the "you are the spawn of Satan for even suggesting that something farted out by Apple could be anything other than the best product EVER!", I found a better media player.

Anyway, here are my nominations:
Best product(s) ever: all of the ones I like.
Worst product(s) ever: all of the ones I don't.
posted by robhuddles at 1:01 PM on March 7, 2006

I'm going with most mobile phones as worst overall product designs. I want a phone to do two things:

1) Make telephone calls;
2) Synchronize my contacts and calendar from my computer via Bluetooth.

That's it.
posted by tgrundke at 1:01 PM on March 7, 2006

The Telecaster is an example of really good design.

Though most of the people that buy them should return them. Please. Like, please don't play that near me anymore. Thanks.
posted by sourwookie at 1:02 PM on March 7, 2006

sourwookie: No kidding. I've got almost 300,000 miles on mine. Just wish it had a cup-holder.
posted by notmydesk at 1:02 PM on March 7, 2006

OmieWise writes "Did you miss the part where a scientist said it? 'Cause it's right there: "a scientist said." Unsupported, indeed!"

It looks like den Ouden hasn't published her results (outside of her thesis) yet, but here's the abstract of a talk she gave at last year's Reliability and Maintainability Symposium:

Based on field data of two modern high volume consumer electronics products, this paper demonstrates that reliability problems can be caused not only by mismatch between product performance and technical specifications (hard failures) but also by mismatch between customer requirements and technical specifications (soft failures). Classical technical reliability (TR) definition does not take the soft failures into consideration. This observation motivates a customer-focused reliability (CR) approach in this paper. In addition, a quantitative model based on Software Reliability Engineering (SRE) is proposed to analyze CR further. By using reliability-related customer profile and reliability-related customer use profile information, this model can be used to quantitatively analyzes how often certain CR problems are caused by different types of customers and different ways of customer use for highly innovative consumer electronics products. This approach can be used to analyze root causes related to customer and customer use of field reliability problems. It can also give feedback to the current product development strategy and test coverage and predict future CR. The CR approach is demonstrated with an example: a car audio system consisting of a CD player, a tape deck and a radio.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:03 PM on March 7, 2006

My wife and I got this cheap-o little Toshiba DVD/Color TV combo two years ago as a gift.

It is the WORST designed thing I have ever used. The remote, for example, is white. The buttons are clear with white markings - supposedly so they can illuminate - and tightly packed. I feel like Wilford Brimly, cussing and fumbling trying to squint to see what buttons to push at night.

The button arrangement is senseless - the Mute button is no where near the other audio controls. The sleep function does a countdown with beeps. Thus waking you up. There is no way to exit the DVD player with out first turing the TV off.

Absolutely NO UI principles followed at all. It's like some insane experiment.
posted by tkchrist at 1:07 PM on March 7, 2006

Four years into our relationship and I'm still in love with my tivo. The shape of the remote. The little 'boop' noise. The program listings that show so much more info than the satellite dish's guide feature. Best designed hunk of electronics I own, definitely.
posted by selfmedicating at 1:07 PM on March 7, 2006

Seems like this makes buying refurbished an even safer bet at getting a good deal (that is, safer than just the extensive testing products undergo in that they might not have been broken at all in the first place).
posted by ducksauce at 1:09 PM on March 7, 2006

A while back, one of my girlfriends (now ex) and I bought a TiVo. The design on the interface and the remote really was superb.

I really wish I had gained custody of it in the break-up. I can still its soft "boo-bloop" in my dreams, calling me softly like the wind through the trees--- erm, nevermind.

Now I don't watch TV.

also: iPods are proof that Jobs loves us and wants us to be happy.
posted by keswick at 1:10 PM on March 7, 2006

Can I return that article for not being complex enough? That was like buying a DVD player and opening the box to find a candlepin bowling ball inside.
posted by tpl1212 at 1:11 PM on March 7, 2006

Worst: Calculator watches. They actually still sell these. Whose fingers are that wee?
posted by sharpener at 1:12 PM on March 7, 2006

Never mind DVD players being bad design - most DVDs are awful in that regard. You should be able to just put it in the machine and watch it. Like, you know, watching a videotape, or listening to a CD. If I want the extra features, then I'll push the Menu button. Mostly, I just want to watch the movie (without the ads, thanks).
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:13 PM on March 7, 2006

The Roomba goes up there with good design, bad usage. I really like mine, even though I bought it after reading a lot of complaints about how it doesn't handle drapes and cords too well. Basically, "Roomba proof" the areas and it solves that issue.

Long hair on the other hand, kills it dead.
posted by samsara at 1:13 PM on March 7, 2006

The Telecaster looks cool and has a nice neck, but it needs a tummy cut, the knobs are in the wrong place if you actually want to use them while playing, the volume knob is too close to the three-way switch to do any controlled roll-off with your pinky, and the three-way switch is a) in an ergonomically crappy position for switching on the fly and b) the stupid plastic cap on the switch always breaks. Oh, and you have to take the neck off to adjust the truss rod (at least on the good ones), which is stupid. Wow, that really does feel good.

And if you think I'm wrong, you're wrong, because I'm quoting science. Or something.
posted by JekPorkins at 1:14 PM on March 7, 2006

The Targus Chill Pad oughta die. Oh wait, mine already did. Just over a month after I bought it.
posted by anjamu at 1:19 PM on March 7, 2006

horrible interface (turns on and off in one's pocket)
-xammerboy

While I agree with some of the other complaints about the ipod, this cannot be one of them. A: the hold button exists for a reason and unless your sprinting for 5 miles with the ipod in your front pocket (which by the way should not be done), its not gonna turn off for no reason --problem 1 solved.
and B: the ipod's menu system is miles ahead of other mp3 players of the same price. Ok, the battery life sucks (it is replaceable by the way), yes customer service is not excellent and yes the prices is a bit high. But don't attack the interface.
posted by RobertFrost at 1:22 PM on March 7, 2006

To turn to old school technology, I recently bought a VCR to replace one that crapped out after 12 years. It was so badly shielded that it interfered with my TV reception. Programming it was so unintuitive -- the remote had a numbers pad that for some reason had no role at all in setting the clock or the channels, and instead one used arrow keys elsewhere on the remote. Essentially, I had to consult the user manual to remind myself how to use the thing whenever I wanted to record a show. I finally got so frustrated with it that I took it back and bought a DVD recorder, which is what I should have done in the first place. Now I couldn't be happier -- um, for the money, anyway.
posted by schmedeman at 1:26 PM on March 7, 2006

bad design: iPod's built in obselesence (limited battery life with no way of replacing it), use of software that doesn't let you share music (iTunes), horrible interface (turns on and off in one's pocket), bad customer service, and overly high price make it the most infuriating product I've ever used.

My god, that's a bad rant. You're wrong on most of the counts. iPod battery -- completely replaceable, you can DIY if you're brave (it ain't that hard) or pay Apple the exorbitant fee. Limited battery life -- not an element of design, per se, and unless and until you come up with a new physics, there is no way around this one. Sharing music in iTunes -- my wife and I do it just fine. Oh, you meant DRM protected AAC files? Again, my wife and I do that just fine, but talk to the RIAA cartel -- they are 100% responsible. Turns on and off in pocket? It's got a frickin' hold button for cryin' out loud -- USE IT! Bad customer service -- sweeping claim, no supporting facts. High price? It's a bit above the market average -- don't buy it if you don't want to pay the luxury premium.

Got that was stupid.

My vote for bad design: Holmes One-Touch heater. It has 12 settings, but they only give you one button in an effort to simplify the thing -- but it actually makes it more complicated.
posted by teece at 1:30 PM on March 7, 2006

If there's no way around the poor battery life of an iPod, because of physics, then how is it that other companies have figured out how to get their battery to last way longer than iPod's? Voodoo?
posted by JekPorkins at 1:35 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad design: websites that let you post a comment before you've finished your
posted by devbrain at 1:38 PM on March 7, 2006

And if you think I'm wrong, you're wrong, because I'm quoting science.

I think you mean SCIENCE!
posted by S.C. at 1:40 PM on March 7, 2006

If there's no way around the poor battery life of an iPod, because of physics, then how is it that other companies have figured out how to get their battery to last way longer than iPod's? Voodoo?

Most other players (high capacity HDD based) are much larger and have more volumous batteries. Compare the Zen touch (24 hour) to the ipod 5g (15 hour). The Zen may last longer, but it's a brick.
posted by sourwookie at 1:42 PM on March 7, 2006

Any mobile phone not made by Nokia wins the prize for worst, in my book. Completely unintuitive menus and command systems.
posted by greycap at 1:44 PM on March 7, 2006

My current cell phone is the most poorly designed electronic piece of crap I've used in ages. It is so fucking loaded with features that it's practically unusable.
posted by agregoli at 1:45 PM on March 7, 2006

S.C., no, I was only quoting science. I'm scared to quote SCIENCE!, because I'm afraid of what SCIENCE! might do to me if I carelessly quote it. I heard that one time, it blinded a guy named Thomas.

sourwookie, the teeny tiny Sony NW ones get 50 hours of continuous play on one charge. They're a lot smaller than an iPod shuffle, and have the same capacity. And a screen. Sure, they have awful DRM and software, etc, but why can't iPod have a battery that lasts 50 hours?
posted by JekPorkins at 1:46 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad design? Wireless anything.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:55 PM on March 7, 2006

Does it have to be a hard product? My vote for bad design is Lotus Notes. I have never had so many different places in one program that I can get lost trying to set a preference or activate a tool.

Best designed product (that I own) My automatic turn-off iron. Anything that keeps me from burning down the house is good design.
posted by Gungho at 1:59 PM on March 7, 2006

tgrundke writes "I'm going with most mobile phones as worst overall product designs"

That reminds me. I recently bought a phone for my home office, needing speakerphone, caller ID, cordless, but with good reception and without feedback, which were problems of my last two phones. I got a model with a corded base and a separate cordless handset. I don't need an answering machine, but it came built in, and, despite an abundance of models, it's nearly impossible to get a phone of a certain quality without it, unless you go for the multi-line office phones. Anyway, works great, no feedback and reception is good. However, when you want to save someone's name and number on the caller ID into the directory, and it's long distance, you have to erase the entire number to add a "1" before the area code, because there's no cursor arrow, just "delete." You end up writing down the number so it can be re-entered. This also causes problems if you have a distinctive ring selected for that person, as the added "1" causes it to be considered a different number. You can add an additional entry so that the ring is distinctive, but it's sort of obnoxious having two entries just for that. Additionally, the caller ID and directory on the handset and the base are not connected in any way, so you have to clear entries for each, and a directory for each. This can result in confusion if both are not cleared or edited at the same time or frequency, so you can double your work for simple tasks or live with it.

I have to imagine there was very little testing of the features on this $70 phone before the design was finalized, or these relatively simple problems would not have been an issue. The older phone with feedback problems has much more intuitive caller ID, but unfortunately it's impossible to use otherwise.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:59 PM on March 7, 2006

I feel like I'm Pierre Bernard in his Recliner of Rage.
posted by krinklyfig at 2:05 PM on March 7, 2006

You're wrong on most of the counts. iPod battery -- completely replaceable, you can DIY if you're brave (it ain't that hard) or pay Apple the exorbitant fee.

I'm sorry, but I don't think that's a good answer. Most MP3 player's I've seen have batteries that can be replaced by opening a hatch -- often without even needing a screwdriver -- and popping out the old battery, and putting in the new. Yes, even the hard-drive based ones with proprietary lithium-ion batteries. This not only means you can easily replace it yourself, but leaves the market open for third-party replacement batteries.

The iPod's battery, on the other hand, apparently requires either bravery, or an "exorbitant fee." This is, of course, because it was deliberately designed to prevent the user from replacing it.
posted by CrayDrygu at 2:06 PM on March 7, 2006

Jek: I was being a smart ass — every single battery device made by humans has a limited life, including the Sony NW. I don't know (or care) how the iPod's battery life compares to other players, but the claim was not in the form of a comparison ("limited battery life compared to other, comparable players" is at least a potentially legitimate gripe, but I don't know if it's true or false. That may be what xammerboy meant, but the tone of his post is so iPod-hit-piece and slanted that I'm not all inclined to address his intended claim, but rather his as-written claim).
posted by teece at 2:06 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad design? Wireless anything.

You are crazy. My home wifi network is great, no wires, it's fast, no configuration, plug-n-play on the boxes. I bought the cheapest components I could and everything works like a dream.
posted by sonofsamiam at 2:09 PM on March 7, 2006

iPod's built in obselesence (limited battery life with no way of replacing it), use of software that doesn't let you share music (iTunes), horrible interface (turns on and off in one's pocket), bad customer service, and overly high price make it the most infuriating product I've ever used.

Ugh. What nonsense.

1. I replaced my girlfriend's iPod battery while watching the Oscars the other night. The battery cost us$17.50 plus shipping and will last another 2+ years.

2. Odd that iTunes has a "share music" option in the preferences, then, huh? Not to mention, iTunes and the iPod are not the same product.

3. The hold button eliminates the on and off problem. It's been a standard on any high end portable music player (and palm pilot) for almost forever. RTFM.

4. I can't speak for the customer service. I've had 5 of them in 5 years and none of them have ever broken. They're still running for the people I sold or gave them to as well.

5. The price hardly has to do with the design. Regardless, I feel they're worth every penny.
posted by Manhasset at 2:10 PM on March 7, 2006

wow. terrible post. but sure, I'll weigh in. worst design? my current cell phone: sony ericsson t637. best? ipod. gameboy advance SP.
posted by shmegegge at 2:10 PM on March 7, 2006

manhasset, are you lying or talking about an ipod shuffle? the actual ipod, with a screen and everything, has a far more expensive battery than that, and I was not aware you could buy it retail. Also, opening a non-shuffle ipod is extremely difficult and capable of destroying the unit. of course, it also voids the warranty.

also, for #3: I assumed that whats-his-name was talking about the pre-clickwheel ipods, which certainly have a very serious problem with inadvertent button pushing. not just when it's in your pocket, but when you're just feeling around in there to take it out or to press a button. those heat sensitive buttons were an incredibly poor design choice, which is why they created the clickwheel in the first place.
posted by shmegegge at 2:14 PM on March 7, 2006

While I do like my iPod, it's never struck me as a particularly fantastic design. I mean, it's not a particularly *bad* design, but I didn't look at it and go, "OH MY GOD! How did mankind survive up until now without THIS!"

The best industrial design doesn't present itself as some kind of mysterious artifact that will save mankind. When something is designed with things like ease of use in mind, you often don't notice how well-designed it is, you just know that it works. You may not even think of it as well-design until you have to use something else.

Just because something looks well-designed, i.e. has in they have all the visual hallmarks of simplicity and elegance, doesn't mean that it's actually going to be easy to unerstand, simple to use, or good at what it does.

Related: The Design of Everyday Things, the book and the web site
posted by camcgee at 2:18 PM on March 7, 2006

Cordless phones drive me nuts. You need electrical power to make them work, which means that they conk out in the event of a power outage. Regular phones? Don't do that.
posted by palinode at 2:25 PM on March 7, 2006

So...you’re not supposed to shit in the dishwasher?
What’s the swirly water in there for then?

Worst design? M-16

Can’t think of the best. Offhand I like the motorola i305 (cause the buttons are straightforward and it won’t break when you heave it at something)
posted by Smedleyman at 2:27 PM on March 7, 2006

Yeah, second the SP. I'm looking forward to getting my paws on a DSLite.

On the same track, consider the Nintendo Wavebird controller as an example of good design. Counter it with the massive original Xbox controllers that could be used as morningstars if it were not for the breakaway cord.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:27 PM on March 7, 2006

Every time water goes down the wrong tube I curse the "intelligent" design of the human body.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:29 PM on March 7, 2006

Best design: 3Com's Audrey, an internet appliance that briefly made it to market in 2000/1. I had a demo of one in November 2000, and took a job with the division as a result. That good. Simply: it made the internet easy enough for my parents to understand. Want to send a drawing in email? Draw it on the screen, tap "send drawing" and choose the recipient from your address book. Plus it faked always-connected in a really nice way.

Worst: Siemens S55 phone. Looks nice. Functions like ass. Worst feature: keys depress with a firm "click" but don't actually register the keypress.
posted by Hogshead at 2:29 PM on March 7, 2006

Grr, my Treo 600 has one fatal design flaw. The battery now lasts at most two days, and I cannot replace it. When I first bought the Treo, the battery was good for five days, six if the wireless was off (I could still use all the palm functions like calendar, memo, etc).

Now it dies after a weekend in the wilderness.
posted by seawallrunner at 2:29 PM on March 7, 2006

manhasset, are you lying or talking about an ipod shuffle?

Neither. See here: Ask. Price has gone down since but that's where I bought it.

I assumed that whats-his-name was talking about the pre-clickwheel ipods

I'm not sure I follow. I've had 3 3rd gen ipods, which were pre-clickwheel model (which was the 4g and 5g) and they had hold buttons on them. None of mine ever had problems of turning off or on when the hold button was set.
posted by Manhasset at 2:33 PM on March 7, 2006

Oh how i do loathe Ipod fan boys.

The interface is not all that great. My archos has a directory file structure that I vastly prefer, although I started using directory file structures with DOS 3, so that might be part of my preference for it.

To claim that ITunes and the IPod are not the same product is ignoring the fact that for the average user one requires the other. It's the sort of product marriage that Microsoft started, and would be prosecuted for as a monopoly, but apple gets a pass because people enjoy spanking it to the inevitably positive reviews.

I keep hearing about the video IPod as a gift from god. It has a small screen, and will not play Divx/Xvid... that is an immediate F grade.

Also why buy a 20 gig drive that won't let you store things other than media, my archos works as a usb hard drive, i can drag and drop files on to it. I don't even need a program, computers just say OMG there is an external hardrive what would you like to do with all of its fantastic space. Plus it has a built in picture viewer, and an sdslot for copying files off your digital camera...

Mostly the Ipod is aesthetically pleasing but all of the nonsense about it being a paradigm shift is just that nonsense. It forces the users into using new and inferior software to manage their media, and has sold a generation on the benefits of DRM.

In that vein apple is the devil, they have convinced the lot of you that DRM is acceptable, and we will all pay the price for that in the future.
posted by sourbrew at 2:33 PM on March 7, 2006

Good design:.................... Bad design:

Pencil.................................pen
Safety razor........................6 blade disposable
Sweater.............................Central Air
push style
lawn mower.........................safety electric
DVD's.................................Whatever's next
Pie.....................................Cake
ice tea................................Bubble Tea
Rock...................................Space Shuttle
posted by joelf at 2:34 PM on March 7, 2006

shmegegge: google iPod battery, the first commercial links are selling 4G (and other) iPod batteries for $19.99. And no, it's really not that hard to replace -- most companies give you a little tool that makes it easy. As for the warranty: it's going to be gone by the time your battery is dead, so that point is moot.

CrayDrygu: it wasn't an "answer." The claim was that the iPod battery is not replaceable -- that's just wrong. It's quite replaceable. The rest of your post, while worthy, doesn't seem to relate to the idea the original poster had in mind, which was human interface design, so I'm going to quit talking.
posted by teece at 2:39 PM on March 7, 2006

C'mon, where on earth did the OP invite ChatFilter?

How often do you find yourself fighting with your mobile phone, DVD player, 80-button AV receiver and 15 component TV systems? Which products are paragons of good design, and which should be thrown away with the dishwater? What's the most infuriating product you've ever used?

Oh. There.
posted by dhartung at 2:40 PM on March 7, 2006

Also why buy a 20 gig drive that won't let you store things other than media

Many people overlook the fact that an Apple iPod can be used as a portable data storage device for any type of file.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:41 PM on March 7, 2006

Worst design: all the cords on my sony ericsson k700i. They connect by sliding about 3mm of rounded plastic into the rounded phone, with between one and three centimetres of plastic then sticking out. This means that the headphones will disconnect while in my pocket, and the data cable (truly an abysmal product) will disconnect randomly unless I either HOLD IT IN (while it transfers data at hideously slow rates) or I literally leave it on a clear surface and don't knock it AT ALL until I'm finished.

Thank God I finally bought a bluetooth adapter, and can now abandon the data cable. It was sheer pleasure to be able to add a new song to my phone in less than 40 minutes.

Comparative best design: how I miss my Nokia, where the cords were designed to stay attached until you personally removed it!
posted by jacalata at 2:42 PM on March 7, 2006

and has sold a generation on the benefits of DRM.

Weird. I have 240 gigs of music. None of it has DRM. All of it works on my iPod.

And had an Archos Jukebox. It was a piece of shit. It was big, heavy, the interface was a joke. I sold it inside of a month and it broke shortly thereafter. Maybe they've improved since then (this was when they first came out), but any company who would release such a hunk of trash, well, I wouldn't trust them with any future product.

Also why buy a 20 gig drive that won't let you store things other than media,

Wha? My iPod appears on my desktop as a hard drive. I can drag any type of file I want onto it or off of it. I don't need to use any program to do this. If you're talking music management (which you weren't, but whatever), there are alternatives to iTunes should you want one.

Hey, I have no problem with people hating the iPod, but doing so for reasons that aren't true is pretty ridiculous.

Personally, I hate that it doesn't have gapless play and that I can't set a switch that certain playlists are always random and others are never random. See, those are reasons that are actually true. The iPod doesn't currently allow that. But using it as a hard drive, playing non-drm music, replacing the battery, etc etc, are not valid reasons as they're all wrong.
posted by Manhasset at 2:44 PM on March 7, 2006

Also why buy a 20 gig drive that won't let you store things other than media, my archos works as a usb hard drive, i can drag and drop files on to it. I don't even need a program, computers just say OMG there is an external hardrive what would you like to do with all of its fantastic space.

Less SCIENCE, more GRAMMAR.
Also, um, don't iPods also work as USB hard drives? I don't own one, but I've certainly seen them used as such.

On preview- I'm too slow!
posted by 235w103 at 2:45 PM on March 7, 2006

Good design: I have this potato masher that instead of using a grid (hard to clean, lots of corners for dried mash) is a single sinuous flow of wire. Much easier to clean, mashes just as well.
posted by alasdair at 2:48 PM on March 7, 2006

The modern toilet is an example of good design. It's unobtrusive, doesn't attract undue attention to itself, and performs precisely the function it is intended to, and no other.
posted by slatternus at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2006

Any phone that is made for more than phoning is a bad design. Featureitis. Instead of crappy cameras built into feature-burdened phones, I'd like to see bare-bones phones built into great cameras. Give people the ability to automatically upload their pictures to a server so they've got unlimited capacity. (If you're on vacation, you upload to the local number of a company that specializes in providing photo uploading at all big vacation spots.)

Every DVD player should have a flip-up cover over the control panel. With the cover down, all you see is giant buttons for play, pause, and stop. To do fancier stuff, you flip up the panel to reveal the never-used functions that the manufacturers add only to pad the advertised list of features.
posted by pracowity at 2:56 PM on March 7, 2006

This article seems to claim that its not that easy to just use your IPod as a disk drive, although it might be for mac users. In particular the switch disk format section. This seems to be a massive improvement from the early models, which if i recall correctly required lots of other finagling and some haxoring to make work properly.

Manhasset, while you it seems you have avoided the use of ITunes to download DRM laden music, you're on metafilter and are clearly not a standard user. It's the joe six pack user that has validated the use of DRM in consumer products, and with ITunes approaching 1 billion sales I think it would be a fallacy to claim that this is not a valid point.
posted by sourbrew at 2:56 PM on March 7, 2006

Legos are a good design.
posted by effwerd at 3:01 PM on March 7, 2006

My new Gilette Fusion razor (that's the one with five blades on the front, and a battery powered vibrator for the blade on the back is well-designed. It's simply the most comfortable shave I've ever had, and the handle ergonomics are incredibly solid. Make all the jokes you want about six blades, with razors, more really is better.
posted by slatternus at 3:07 PM on March 7, 2006

What's the most infuriating product you've ever used?

bottled water.
posted by quonsar at 3:11 PM on March 7, 2006

Manhasset, while you it seems you have avoided the use of ITunes to download DRM laden music, you're on metafilter and are clearly not a standard user.

I don't think it's valid because a) the iPod predates iTunes and the iTunes DRM and works fine with any mp3 file; b) iTunes will rip DRM-less mp3s without any hacks whatsoever--in fact, I think that's its default ripping mode; c) yeah, a billion songs have been sold in iTMS. I bet that's a drop in the bucket of the actually songs on iPods in total. Yeah, if you're comparing iTMS sales to other online retailers, fine, they've outsold everyone. But you can rip directly from your own cds as well as use mp3s from any other service. I've been buying from emusic.com for 5+ years.

What I have issue with is people implying or flat out saying that the iPod only plays DRM tracks or tracks from iTMS. This is completely false.

The only reason iTMS has DRM is Jobs otherwise would never have convinced any labels to come on board. Perhaps you'd have rathered they didn't sell online at all if they can't do drm-less tracks. That just seems silly to me since whether the tracks are protected or not is irrelevant to using the iPod itself. iTMS and the iPod are not synonymous. I've used mine for 5 years and have never even browsed iTMS. They're separate products.

I bought my sister an iPod for her birthday last november. She's one of the tech-clueless masses you hint at in your post. Trust me, it's much easier for her to insert a cd into the drive and click a single button (labeled "import") after iTunes automatically opens (when it senses the cd) to get songs onto the machine than it is for her to log on to iTMS, give out her CC#, browse tracks, put them in her cart, and download them, but believe whatever you wish.

Granted, I *do* believe one of the reasons iTMS does so well is because of the constant repeating by people on forums such as this that those are the tracks that work on the iPod, which is why I (and I assume others) are pretty adamant about stating the facts when the issue arises.

As for that article you linked to, I merely browsed it, but it looks like it's instructions for people who have a drive formatted for Windows who are switching to Mac.

Back on topic, the most frustratingly designed thing I know of is DVD menus. Why do they insist on showing us scenes and playing dialogue from a movie *we haven't watched yet*? Drives me fucking bonkers.
posted by Manhasset at 3:19 PM on March 7, 2006

convinced any labels to come

Should be convinced any major labels to come
posted by Manhasset at 3:21 PM on March 7, 2006

Manhasset: OMG, yes, especially those early DVD menus that had to have tricky intro animations and "interactive" components. I suspect a lot of web designers ended up doing DVD menus after the crash, and tried to graft their uncompromising design agendas onto the a medium that really didn't need them.
posted by slatternus at 3:23 PM on March 7, 2006

Oh, all the cell phone ranting reminds me - the software on Motorola phones is useless. Just utter and absolute crap.
posted by anjamu at 3:28 PM on March 7, 2006

Cable TV boxes- digital or otherwise (U.S.).

Especially Motorola and Scientific American.

Motorola digital box is maddening: navigation, layout, the flickering of the picture when you change channels, the remote...
posted by wfc123 at 3:42 PM on March 7, 2006

Luxman audio equipment from the 80's/90's, bic pens, basic Swatch watches, pre-TDI VW diesel engines, 3lb Craftman hammer (physics... even for penny nails it has more control), solar powered basic calculators, bicycle.

Worst? Typical 1,001 channel/function/button AV system, gas powered auto = inefficient, gov't computers.
posted by buzzman at 3:59 PM on March 7, 2006

The Sony PSP. Jesus. It's a complete, unmitigated nightmare to use. The horrible, horrible D-pad, the useless analogue slider, the row of completely superfluous buttons along the bottom of the screen (home? musical note?), the spongy, imprecise shoulder buttons... it all pales next to what should surely be the simplest part of the thing: the on-off switch, for christ's sake. To actually turn it off, you have to hold the spring-loaded switch in its 'up' position for a few seconds, until the green light flashes. Or doesn't flash. Or something. It seems to decide on the spur of the moment. Otherwise, the bastard thing just goes into gradual-battery-drain standby mode, and communicates this through the medium of more random flashes of the stupid power light, meaning that the next time you pick the thing up before leaving the house in the hope of actually using it on the move, it's guaranteed to have blown its little electrical load and require another million hours' charging. Well done, Sony. Not to mention the needless, battery-sucking optical drive, in a handheld. Sheer brilliance.

While I'm on at Sony (and as much as I rant, I do keep buying their products, although I'd love all the Japanese developers to jump ship so I stop having to), the Dual Shock pad is the single most successful implement of torture I've ever encountered. How Sony have convinced people that not only is it an acceptable means of controlling games, but that it's actually superior to the extent that they go out and buy adaptors to let them plug the evil things into other consoles, is completely beyond me. I suspect sorcery. The D-pad is actually worse than the one on the PSP (I don't think my thumb ever fully recovered from heavy play of the original Psyvariar on it), the 'analogue' face buttons don't have enough travel to make their analogue-ness worthwhile but have enough to make them feel needlessly spongy, the triggers are inexplicably digital and mounted atop a little ridge of plastic that makes them excruciating to press after a while, and the (waggly, imprecise as fuck) left analogue stick isn't under your thumb, where it'd be vaguely comfortable, but six miles away in an extrusion that extends towards the centre of the pad, in a mindless homage to the pad's origins as a digital controller with analogue sticks hastily stuck on that should've been designed out between the PS1 and PS2 eras. And to remedy these ills for the PS3, they keep everything the same but mount it in a banana.

Whew. That was cathartic.
posted by terpsichoria at 4:25 PM on March 7, 2006

re: many of the bad design complaints in this thread

this is why we companies should support opensource software that runs on their hardware! that way they can focus on getting the hardware right and let the users take care of making it work the way they want it to.

take my iriver. great piece of hardware, solid, lots of input and output options, good mic, can charge via usb, but absolute shite software. no gapless playback, no on-the-fly playlists, no ability to adjust line-in levels while recording, generally ugly, the list goes on. enter rockbox, it does all that and more, and i can make it look exactly like i want it to. why, iriver? why not ditch your shitty ass firmware, use the extra cycles to make better hardware, and start shipping an iriver branded rockbox with your players? seriously.
posted by christy at 4:31 PM on March 7, 2006

"bad design: iPod's built in obselesence (limited battery life with no way of replacing it), use of software that doesn't let you share music (iTunes), horrible interface (turns on and off in one's pocket), bad customer service, and overly high price make it the most infuriating product I've ever used."

I replaced my 3rd gen's battery myself. It was six bucks on ebay for a 700ma replacement. Fucker runs for DAYS on a charge now.

Don't like itunes? Use Anapod, EphPod, the winamp Ipod plugin, etc etc.

interface - HOLD SWITCH. HUUUUR

Also, I got my 3gen used on ebay for 90 bucks.
posted by stenseng at 4:38 PM on March 7, 2006

I'm going to chime in here on non-mobile, cordless phones. Whose crazy idea was it to make them all look and feel like slightly larger mobile phones? You don't have to cart it around all day, so it doesn't have to be small. It doesn't need to fit in a pocket, so it doesn't need to be smooth and non-angled.

It's really like they think mobile phones are somehow comfortable to talk on and model home phones on them. Never mind that you can't perch them between shoulder and chin without hanging up on someone. Give me an old Ma Bell phone with two big couplings any day to talk on for any period of time.

Cordless phones clearly need to step back and consider not only design but ergonomics.
posted by ontic at 4:48 PM on March 7, 2006

The iPod interface is pretty flawed. The navigation wheel is the same control for the volume, so when Im navigating between menus I need to go back and find the "Now Playing" item and click on it. Most other players have seperate volume knobs and next/previous track buttons which are handy. The all-in-one wheel looks clean, but is essentially the audio player version of the iDrive. Frequently accessed items like volume and track skip should have dedicated easy to find controls.

There's a difference between good looking aesthetic design and usability. iPods do the former better than the latter, but don't tell that to the fanboys. Design and usability often get mixed together, which is almost criminal as they're two very different things.

I'm still impressed by my old tivo. The remote is near perfect and the interface is pretty good. I don't like or even know why they would bury Season Pass manager under two menus or put pre-recorded shows in a section called "Now Playing," but everything else is pretty slick.
posted by skallas at 4:53 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad design = Touch-screen controls in cars.
Back in the day, German cars made their mark by superior ergonomics. Buttons and switches that were arranged within quick and easy reach for the driver. Physical buttons and switches are memorized by touch and feedback. The driver literally never needed to move his eyes from the road to adjust the heat or tune the radio. The controls were simply...there.
Touch screens require the driver to watch the screen and not the road. And making the driver dive through multiple screens to perform a function is criminal.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:58 PM on March 7, 2006

"Frequently accessed items like volume and track skip should have dedicated easy to find controls."


posted by stenseng at 5:02 PM on March 7, 2006

Good design: I have this potato masher that instead of using a grid (hard to clean, lots of corners for dried mash) is a single sinuous flow of wire. Much easier to clean, mashes just as well.

Isn't that the traditional design for these? The grid ones are some kind of newfangled attempt to reduce lumps, or something.

I'm still childishly impressed with one feature of an otherwise unremarkable cheapo portable CD player that I bought to take with me on a business trip: there's a little ribbon anchored at the edge of the battery compartment. When you put batteries in, the ribbon lies across the bottom of the compartment underneath them with the loose end sticking out. When you want to change the batteries, you just open the compartment and pull on the ribbon and the batteries pop right out. To hell with the little machine that turns a bunch of 0s and 1s into music for me. That's nothing. But that little ribbon is just a way cool triumph of design.
posted by dilettante at 5:08 PM on March 7, 2006

The worst product I own, when it comes to WTF-ness, is a fan which has a settings dial like a pill bottle. You literally have to push the dial in in or it just turns without changing the setting, so when I turn it on I have to get out of bed and stand up and use two hands to turn it.

And that, gentlemen, is my story.
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:12 PM on March 7, 2006

The best-designed thing I own is my teakettle. It is elegant and simple. It does precisely what it should and no more. It's easy to fill, easy to clean, and has a nice loud whistle to tell me when the water is ready. My one criticism is that it's a little too easy to overfill.

The best-designed thing I ever saw, but didn't own, was a pallet jack at a roofing company. They had found it in the back room of the warehouse/shipping dock they were using as an office.

It was enormously old... I think I determined that it had been built in the 1920s. (I'm not completely certain of that anymore.) All they had to do was lubricate it up and it worked perfectly, and continued to work perfectly the entire time I was there.

To move a pallet, you slid the jack under a pallet and pumped the handle; this slowly raised the load-bearing platform, using extreme leverage. Each full pump of the handle moved the platform only a small amount, multiplying your strength many times. Eventually, this lifted the pallet off the ground.

You could lift gigantic loads, thousands of pounds, and move them around fairly easily. When you were done, you pulled a trigger, and the lift dropped back to rest position, letting you remove the jack. I found it particularly impressive that it had no motor whatsoever; the entire thing worked completely on muscle power, and was still giving yeoman service after seventy plus years.

In looking over just how well-built and designed that thing was, the lesson that I came away with was that people were smart a hundred years ago, maybe even smarter than they are now. Presumably, the people in caves were just as smart. The only thing separating them from us is the body of knowledge we've generated in between. That's all.

That one piece of industrial design had me thinking about that, off and on, for weeks.

You can find beauty in strange places. The humble, slightly beat-up perfection of that pallet jack has stayed with me.
posted by Malor at 5:14 PM on March 7, 2006

dilettante, isn't that ribbon de rigeur? I haven't seen anything battery-operated without one for years -- maybe ever (I was born in '86, though).

Bad design: My cell phone. Most of the time, its designers were not doing too much crack -- it folds okay, the buttons are decently discrete if not superbly so, the screen is useful. However, right before they decided to talk about software, I have the feeling that they all took a bathroom break. Because, I mean, who could possibly want a cell phone to include an alarm function?

Along similar lines, who could possibly want a 2004 computer to include a 3.5" floppy drive? Well, okay, I guess not everyone -- but it would've been nice to've had the option.

My new motto: Assume nothing. If I'm buying a toaster, I now have to make damn sure there's a lever to press.
posted by booksandlibretti at 5:18 PM on March 7, 2006

Oh, duh, I forgot my pick for good design: tissue boxes.

Seriously. Folding the tissues like that, so they come out one at a time, and the one you pull always brings the next one halfway out? It doesn't work perfectly (sometimes tissues rip), but it's a hell of a lot better than anything I could invent or implement.
posted by booksandlibretti at 5:21 PM on March 7, 2006

> Worst design? M-16
>
> Can’t think of the best.

Model 94

posted by jfuller at 5:23 PM on March 7, 2006

dilettante, those ribbons used to be found in nearly every battery powered device. The fact that you find the presence of one remarkable today shows how little designers care any more.
posted by localroger at 5:29 PM on March 7, 2006

We spent last weekend looking at two minivans: the Nissan Quest and the Honda Odyssey.

Nissan felt like a feature-laden beast, one that I'd likely be afraid to use, simply because I'm sure I'd break something...while the Honda clearly has human-centered design principles at heart. Smarter feature design, smoother fit and finish. Overall a much more thoughtfully designed vehicle.

Nissan = eMachine
Honda = iMac
posted by diastematic at 5:29 PM on March 7, 2006

booksandlibretti -- my wife uses the alarm function in her cell phone all the time. She travels a lot, and doesn't carry another travel alarm, and wristwatch alarms aren't loud enough to wake her up.
posted by localroger at 5:34 PM on March 7, 2006

"The Telecaster is an example of really good design.

Though most of the people that buy them should return them. Please. Like, please don't play that near me anymore. Thanks.
posted by sourwookie at 2:02 PM MST on March 7 [!]

sourwookie: No kidding. I've got almost 300,000 miles on mine. Just wish it had a cup-holder.
posted by notmydesk at 2:02 PM MST on March 7 [!]"

That's a hell of a lot of miles on a guitar, and what the fuck would you want a cupholder on it for?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:42 PM on March 7, 2006

localroger, I'm sorry, I guess I was being a little too bitter to let my point come across. I, too, would very much like to use an alarm function on my cell phone -- but I can't; it has none. I was under the impression that it was a universal, or at least an extremely common, feature, so I didn't even think to check.
posted by booksandlibretti at 5:44 PM on March 7, 2006

So what bad design choice was responsible for that crappy, truncated, supportless, sensationalist "article?"

For a spectacular, long, well-researched and non-sensationalistic article, look for "The Complexity Problem" by John Sedgwick, which appeared in the March, 1993 Atlantic Monthly. I couldn't find it online, but you can pay for an archived version here.

camgee: Donald Norman is indeed the hero of all this, and his book The Design of Everyday Things is the primary source for designers trying to figure out how to make things easier to use. Another good one is The Inmates are Running the Asylum.

www.baddesigns.com has a lot of examples, along with suggested fixes. It all starts to sound like Pierre Bernard in his Recliner of Rage after not too long, but a lot of it really makes sense. Ironically, the site itself suffers from ugly design. But at least it's easy to understand.

But back to the important topic at hand here--I love my new iPod. But iTunes lacks feedback when it fails to import songs. And yeah, I scratched the video screen before I got around to buying a case. (But I do love my nubbly, electric blue case.) And I had to read the instructions to figure out how to turn it off. But it's still the coolest thing I own.

booksandlibretti: Here you go.
posted by hydrophonic at 5:48 PM on March 7, 2006

dilettante, isn't that ribbon de rigeur? I haven't seen anything battery-operated without one for years -- maybe ever (I was born in '86, though).

This is the only battery-operated thing I have that has the ribbon. Overall I guess I don't have that many little battery-operated electronics, so maybe I've just displayed my ignorance charming naivete with this one.

Malor, I used to work in a warehouse that was still using skidjacks like this in the early nineties. We used to skate through the aisles on them after unloading.
posted by dilettante at 5:49 PM on March 7, 2006

iPod schmipod, I much prefer the Rio Karma, even though I'm clearly in a tiny minority on this one.
posted by clevershark at 5:51 PM on March 7, 2006

Actually I'm quite surprised that more cars don't have a heads-up display showing things like current speed and gear (practical for those of us who drive cars with a Tiptronic transmission). It can't be that difficult to engineer this kind of thing -- a simple backwards LED display designed to reflect off the inside of the windshield at night.
posted by clevershark at 5:55 PM on March 7, 2006

dilettante, that'd be fun! But this area was open on one side with the standard four- or five-foot dropoff for loading trucks, and I'd have been too nervous even if I'd thought of it.

And it wouldn't surprise me at all if they're still using these things in the NEXT early nineties.... they're that well-designed. And the specific one I was using might still be around, it was incredibly solid.

'Course, by then, we might be using antigrav sleds instead. :)
posted by Malor at 6:08 PM on March 7, 2006

manhasset, I was referring to the fact that on pre-clickwheel ipods, you could pause the ipod when you were trying to skip a track because you're finger slipped or you were trying to use it without looking directly at it (say in the dark or when in your pocket.) hold only works when you don't want to use it. this is a step down from traditionally buttoned walk and discmen which forced you to depress buttons. Having a device that did something you didn't want simply because your finger brushed across a different button by accident was infuriating in the extreme.

obviously the clickwheel fixed this.
posted by shmegegge at 6:11 PM on March 7, 2006

oh, and thanks for that link. that's nuts.

my other choices for best and worst design:

worst - people
best - nuclear bombs.
posted by shmegegge at 6:12 PM on March 7, 2006

The Psychology of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman explores this topic in detail.
posted by scubbadubba at 6:16 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad: The RioVolt SP50 MP3/CD player.

The UI has a total of eight semi cryptic buttons("Do I press Mute/Enter here, or Mode/Select?") and a two line LCD display

I actually carried around the instruction manual (Take a look.(PDF)) just so I could remember how to search directories. Searching alphabetically almost always caused the thing to lock up.

All this, and it ate batteries so quick that three pair of 1500ma NiMHs were barely enough to get through a six-hour plane trip, as long as you didn't spend too much time futzing with menus.

Good UI:
Hamilton Beach's Brewstation. It's a feeding station for Coffee.
posted by Orb2069 at 6:27 PM on March 7, 2006

What's the most infuriating product you've ever used?

My Sony 5-disc tray-style CD changer. Doesn't pick-up 10% of the CDs I put into it. Goddam thing NEVER worked right.

Runner-up: The Canon copier at the office. It has -- I am not making this up -- a "STOP," a "RESET," and a "CLEAR" button, and as near as I can tell none of them do anything.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:30 PM on March 7, 2006

One might well disagree with me on this too, but the media library browser in Winamp 5.1x was much better than the html-and-javascript based nonsense introduced in Winamp 5.2. Ever click on a ML entry in 5.2 and get a Javascript error?
posted by clevershark at 6:38 PM on March 7, 2006

Feature creep tsunami: 1968 Trimline Telephone vs. 2005 Motorola Q. Note the inverse relationship between decreasing size and number of features/controls.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
posted by cenoxo at 8:53 PM on March 7, 2006

Bad design: QWERTY keyboard layout.
posted by jivadravya at 9:00 PM on March 7, 2006

Packaging for stuff like cheese or chips, designed to make it difficult or impossible to re-close, thus requiring more packaging to keep it fresh. When I'm Emperor, this will be illegal.

Wall warts! Too many that do the exact same thing. Surely we can do better. At least the adaptors that sit on the floor are easier.

Canon Powershots with no batter-level indicators, after several generations. STUPID.

LG Washing machine, electronic controls with no indication of point in cycle or time until finished. Also no setting to simply drain (instead only rinse-and-spin). No buzzer to indicate trouble, just endlessly cycles through attempts to spin an unbalanced load...continually using water and power.

Pool pump that will attempt to pump air until it burns out, rather than detecting trouble and shutting down. Perhaps a deluxe model fixes this.

Dishsoap and shampoo bottles that are tall and narrow, so they fall over too easily.

Battery-powered razors (Phillips) that can accidently turn on, and drain, in luggage.

All furniture and appliances with sharp edges/corners at shin-height.

TV Remotes that don't have a slot on the TV to recharge their batteries. Never saw it done. Why not? And why don't they all have lights for the buttons? My Panasonic projector has that practical feature. VCR/DVD FUN: What is the purpose of an EJECT button on a remote, other than to make a cat jump straight up?

Computer cards with tiny engraved labels on jacks (Soundblaster), nearly impossible to see and cryptic in design. And why do they put USB ports on the bottom of tower cases? Do they think towers sit on desks? (this is being corrected on many cases). And then those idiotic DIN plugs for keyboards. Nearly impossible to see how to line up.
posted by Goofyy at 10:19 PM on March 7, 2006

Good Design = Spork
Bad Design = Chopsticks
posted by Devils Slide at 10:54 PM on March 7, 2006

http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html
posted by joelf at 11:15 PM on March 7, 2006

That's a hell of a lot of miles on a guitar, and what the fuck would you want a cupholder on it for?

Don't even get me started...
posted by sourwookie at 11:17 PM on March 7, 2006

It's funny how much better designed my Rio Karma is than any Ipod. It's made to fit a human hand, not to look like an elegant box. And it play .ogg and gapless!
posted by washburn at 11:27 PM on March 7, 2006

Ever picked up a Hasselblad 500CM? It's the most beautifully crafted and useable piece of engineering, ever.
posted by strawberryviagra at 11:34 PM on March 7, 2006

Oh. I see I'm not alone on the Karma. Hooray!
posted by washburn at 11:34 PM on March 7, 2006

joelf, i'm perusing that page at the moment to great pleasure. thanks.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:24 AM on March 8, 2006

Yay Karma! Although I wish they would open-source the firmware now that Rio has officially been abandoned.

Bad design: the Motorola sync software that came with my Razr. And the software on my Razr. And the buttons on my Razr. Just about everything but the prettiness of my Razr.
posted by antifuse at 2:59 AM on March 8, 2006

the karma uses a nipple mouse = bad design.
posted by shmegegge at 4:50 AM on March 8, 2006

I laugh at the little Apple soldiers doing the busy work on defending their brand -- for free.
posted by NewBornHippy at 5:12 AM on March 8, 2006

The modern toilet is an example of good design. It's unobtrusive, doesn't attract undue attention to itself, and performs precisely the function it is intended to, and no other.

Then how come my ass always gets splashed?

*stands back to await to the smash returns*
posted by It ain't over yet at 5:56 AM on March 8, 2006

...and another thing: what's so fucking magical about sending a "terminate print job with extreme prejudice" signal to my printer when I accidentally tell it to print 435 pages instead of the one page I really wanted? Yet no printer company seems to have mastered this; I still get a lot of useless junk printed out before the command catches up with the printer.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:03 AM on March 8, 2006

(opens tin of salmon, feeds to pet peeve)
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:05 AM on March 8, 2006

Why QWERTY was invented.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:16 AM on March 8, 2006

Cordless phones seem to have one button, sometimes labeled "Talk", and another labeled "Off". Now, I understand that people might not know how to hang up by pressing Talk again, but how about one big button that is green on the top half, and red on the bottom half. I bet people would figure it out.

Directv satellite receivers are terrible, Dish network's are worse, cable STB's are apparently not tested on people at all, and Tivo's design seems obvious. The strange part is the designers of these other boxen don't seem to have ever even seen a Tivo, judging by their horrible, horrible interfaces.
posted by dglynn at 8:04 AM on March 8, 2006

All the of iPod bashing I've seen so far has been stuff that isn't a problem with the device at all (yes, acting as a USB mass storage device is possible) or because someone isn't using it correctly (setting the switch to "hold" means the device won't accidently turn on).

So instead I offer up my list of problems the iPod really does have. From someone who actually owns and uses one.

1. Spin wheel sensitivity. Try to select an artist beginning with M. Chances are you'll overshoot M and have to backtrack.

2. Want to jump to an artist, album or song beginning with the letter X? You have to scroll through all the other entries to get to it.

3. Playing a song from a playlist or randomly and want to quickly jump to either other songs by that artist or other tracks in that album? Not possible unless you scroll back up the menu tree and then back down again.

4. No support for an LCD on the remote. If you want to understand what you're listening to or jump to a specific track in a playlist/album then you need to pull the device out of your pocket. The Sony MiniDiscs have had this for ages.

5. When using the iPod as a mass storage device on a computer which doesn't have iTunes then it can take a unforgivably long time before Windows gives it a drive letter.

6. iTunes duplicate finder only considers song titles. In reality I'm more interested in looking for (and removing) files which have the same title, track number and album name as they are quite obviously duplicates.

7. On #6, since they are obviously duplicates, why can't iTunes remove them with one button press?

There are more, but I can't think of them right now. Oh and I used an Archos jukebox and the UI stank.
posted by mr_silver at 10:16 AM on March 8, 2006

I dunno, I think the iPod is great visual design. But as has been alluded to upthread, aesthetic and functional design are very different things.

Looking around my apartment...

Good design: my dishwasher. Three buttons: one turns it on and off, one pauses a cycle (and restarts it, or starts a cycle to begin with), and one for cycling through the different settings. The best part is that if I set it to an economy load, it remembers that the next time I turn it on. Using it is a matter of loading dishes, adding soap, and pressing one button to get it going.

Bad design: my (also LG, but I think a different model than the poster above) washing machine. It has no drain setting, it unbalances if you look at it sideways... argh. I hates it.

Fucking great design: my kettle. Fill with water, flick the switch. Turns off as soon as the water is boiled.

Good design: clothes dryer. Simple to operate, and fluffs the clothes for a few minuts if you forget to take them out immediately. Prevents wrinkles!
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:19 AM on March 8, 2006

Scott Jenson who worked at Apple on System 7, Newton, and the Apple Human Interface guidelines is one of the few designers who truly gets that Less is More See his BBC Article on mobile phone design and the book The Simplicity Shift
posted by Lanark at 1:27 PM on March 8, 2006

Re Dvorak: The standard telling of this story turns out to be false in almost every important respect.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:39 PM on March 8, 2006

(Skip down a bit to the section labeled "The fable.")
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:40 PM on March 8, 2006

My favourite moment of iPod design zen was when a friend said "It has a totally intuitive interface once you figure out how it works"
posted by srboisvert at 1:46 PM on March 8, 2006

Any clock (I'm looking at you, clock-radio) that only allows you to increment the time, but has no debouncing circuitry in the switches.

6:43 >click< 6:44 >click< 6:46 >crap!<

This goes double for any VCR that won't let you set the time(s) by typing on the remote keypad.
posted by Crosius at 2:59 PM on March 8, 2006

ZenMasterThis--Thanks for that Reason link, it's a great article.
posted by OmieWise at 5:43 AM on March 9, 2006

"It has a totally intuitive interface once you figure out how it works"- srboisvert's friend.

Back in January I was in a rural bar with an elderly gentleman who was trying to puzzle out his new-ish iPod (Gift from kids?) - He had no idea how the selection donut/circle/touchpad/whatever-you-call-it worked, and since he'd never seen anybody else work one, he (And the barmaid) were totally stumped as to how to select a song other than the one currently playing without >>|'ing to it.

Hint: Good design probably dosen't involve having the same surface serve as a rotate and a pushbutton, particularly if you're going to only print one set of indicators on it.
posted by Orb2069 at 9:20 AM on March 10, 2006

Smedleyman - I'll see your M16 and raise you the L85A1.

What dickhead designer decided to place the magazine release where holding the rifle close to your body makes your magazine fall on the floor? Oh, and let's not get started on left handed use. Thankfully, 20 years later on with the A2 model it's now an incredibly decent rifle, extremely reliable, accurate and useful (assuming there are no right hand turn walls anywhere nearby).

You may all now carry on bitching about iPods or whatever.
posted by longbaugh at 9:33 AM on March 10, 2006