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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Crap Design

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22:35 / 31.01.06

I mentioned in another thread that I thought mobile phones could do with an ergonomic rethink. But thinking about it, they are as nothing compared with lots of other everyday items. This is a thread to draw attention to these things, pour scorn on them and, if you're so inclined, to suggest solutions.

First up, cling film (saran wrap) boxes. These things:

Dunno if it's just the brands I've known, but they seem to be designed for the express purpose of sawing through your fingers when you open the box. The serrated blade runs the length of the edge adjacent to the side that the opening flap is glued to. In other words, opening the box requires you to run your fingers under a flap, and in so doing, run your knuckles over the blade. I'm guessing that you know what I mean. Crap design. But for some reason, it endures.

What else?

09:36 / 01.02.06

The suitcase.

Is there a less comfortable or effective way to distribute weight for carrying by a human being? Let's have all the weight supported by a single handle, and have someone carry it at their side.

Backpacks are nice. Weight distributed across the back with straps, which is nice, because your spine and shoulders are good for load-bearing. But suitcases? Feh.

Poke it with a stick

20:39 / 01.02.06

The umbrella. Nothing against it per se but, if you live anywhere in the UK, chances are yours will only last a few weeks before getting damaged and not much longer before total and utter destruction results. Wind and rain isn't that infrequent a pairing after all, surely there has to be a more robust version just waiting to be designed?

13:06 / 04.02.06

I thought there would be more replies to this.

How about this: Chop sticks. Particularly ill-suited to eating rice, soups and noodles.

And front doors. Who are they designed for? They open inwards, so very easy to kick in to gain access, and nearly impossible to kick out to escape. Ideal for someone who wants to burgle you; lethal if your house is on fire.

13:30 / 04.02.06

Sportswear in general. Tracksuits, hooded tops, football shirts, baseball caps etc - all this stuff only looks good on you if you're a professional athlete. And even then, you're pushing it, I fear.

14:40 / 04.02.06

Totally disagree on the chopsticks front. They're only crap when used by untrained westerners to eat badly prepared approximations of asian food.

14:49 / 04.02.06

Bobosso has just expressed the opinion that fridges are usually badly designed in that they are often very difficult to clean, and, of course, fridges are exactly the sort of artifact you would want to be clean.

14:55 / 04.02.06

Ooh, nice to have a bit of disagreement.

Dunno if you meant to post that in the Fashion Dictator thread, Al, but that seems like a weird choice here. Sportswear, as everyday clothing, functions extemely well, I reckon. What's crap about it? Is it just that it doesn't *look* very sharp?

And Boboss, if you were presented with a plate of rice to eat, would you reach for chopsticks over anything else?

15:03 / 04.02.06

Well, I would reach for a knife and fork, but I'm British and that's what I know. However, were I Vietnamese and presented with a bowl of sticky rice, I'd probably bring that bad boy up to my face and start shovelling it in with chopsticks.

15:05 / 04.02.06

They're only crap when used by untrained westerners to eat badly prepared approximations of asian food.

Well, I dunno about badly-prepared, don't reaaaally think it's a matter of the right, 'authentic' way versus the wrong wrong wrong way, but there are two slightly different ways of cooking rice, aren't there? If you like your rice rinsed and un-sticky and every grain to be separate and freeeee, then chopsticks don’t work so well. Slightly stickier rice and they work a treat. Though I’m crap with ‘em.

15:06 / 04.02.06

In Asia chopstcks are part of a system of eating, and when used within that system, by experts, they got utility coming out their, um... ears.

You know all this.

15:06 / 04.02.06

Or, what you just said. Though I’d still quibble with ‘badly prepared approximations’. Just because.

15:08 / 04.02.06

I said badly prepared because most Asians that I know wouldn't dream of eating rice that wasn't sticky with chopsticks, for obvious reasons.

15:10 / 04.02.06

Yeah, and I pointed out that it’s more a matter of difference than ‘badness’.

15:44 / 04.02.06

Aaaaannnyway...

Smoothly’s right about the crapness of front doors, I think, and I’d also like to say that *windows* can be pretty crap, too. I don’t believe that the amount of light they let in really offsets the amount of heat they're letting out, all the time, just because they're, like, great big holes in the wall covered by nothing more than a thin sheet of glass. And! Windows + curtains are completely rubbish for keeping heat in and noise out.

I lived for a short while in a house with proper wooden folding-type shutters. Now, they work. If windows must stay, then shutters really should be made compulsory.

16:02 / 04.02.06

We were crossposting, Bedders. Your point was taken.

16:04 / 04.02.06

Yes yes, you're right about chop sticks being more efficient as part of a system of eating that includes bowls, sticky rice and an etiquette that permits lifting one's bowl to the mouth and shovelling. And indeed, with practice, people can pick up practically anything with them. I just meant that they seemed like an unlikely approach to take to the particular challenges of that cuisine.
And I was reaching a bit to try and perk the thread up a bit.

On the subject of doors, handles tend to be a bit low, don't they? I'm thinking of internal doors in particular. I'm not very very tall, but I always think the handle should be about a foot higher than they are. Stand in front of the door. Bend the arm to 90 degrees at the elbow; there.

16:23 / 04.02.06

Hmm, as a little 'un (five foot eight), I'd be a little embarassed if door handles got any higher, in that I think a change of that nature would serve to accentuate my lack of height.

But yeah, front doors could do with a look, I reckon.

What about fridges, then?

16:34 / 04.02.06

I'm only a few inches taller than you, and I reckon I'd be happier for the handles on the doors to be 2 feet higher than where they are now (currently about crotch height in my gaff). At least if they're high you can use the range of movements of your arm and pull down rather than push down. As it is I have to kinda drop one shoulder or kinda bend at the knee to get the necessary leverage.

Not sure I'm with you with fridges, Boss. They seem relatively easy to clean in my experience (a single sheet of molded plastic as a shell, removable shelves, rounded corners...). Not quite sure what the problem is.

18:02 / 04.02.06

Good thread idea this. Nothing infuriates me more than bad design.
The debate about fridges reminds me That I've always thought plumbing fixtures are unnecessarily hard to clean: everything from taps to toilets seem to have lots of nooks and crannies that seem designed to trap dirt.
As an aside I did see a toilet that had got rid of the rim under which mank and germs lurk by kind of jetting water around the circumference of the bowl. Difficult to describe, but much better.*
Incandescent lightbulbs are pretty rubbish as well. Hugely innefficent at what they do, though I guess they're being phased out.

*In case anyone thinks the amount of time I spend considering the cleaniness of bathrooms strange, I used to have job cleaning hotel rooms and therefore had plenty of time to think about it.

All Acting Regiment

23:39 / 04.02.06

Does anyone remember when programs on CD rom still came in big chunky cardboard boxes? And to top it off they'd have a secondary hardcase inside. So much space and paper wasted over a fucking box regulation.

02:42 / 05.02.06

Sportswear, as everyday clothing functions extremely well, I reckon.

Well but this is thing, does it? I'm not sure if it does. What's the point of clothes in general? They'd seem to be about either a)protecting oneself against the elements, in say, Norway, or related, or b)looking hott. Sportswear fashions in a temperate climate would appear to fall down on both fronts. Basically, whither the suit?

17:58 / 05.02.06

Sure, one of the main functions of clothing is to protect the body against the elements, in Norway and everywhere else, but there are other considerations within that function - is it comfortable, does it restrict movement or make you sweat, is it easy to wash and maintain, etc etc. Sportswear, it seems to me scores well on those fronts. I think it can look quite hott too, but that's personal preference.
You're pulling my leg, aren't you. You lounge around on a Sunday afternoon in a thornproof three-piece, do you?

07:35 / 06.02.06

I'm not really committed to the fridges thing, but I thought I'd raise it because my gf brought it up - as an ex-cleaner I suspect she has vastly more experience cleaning fridges than I.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:45 / 06.02.06

You lounge around on a Sunday afternoon in a thornproof three-piece, do you?

In town? Don't be silly.

07:58 / 06.02.06

I've said it before and I'll say it again: metal teapots.

More recently: the removable plastic seals that you get on certain milk cartons; the ones with the wee handle that you're supposed to hook your finger under. They are diabolical.

I don't know if these things have a proper name, so I'll just have to describe them. You get them on the 2-pint jobs with the tall, card body and a round plastic screw-top lid. The seal appears to be part of the molded plastic top itself, forming a solid disc at the top of the spout, immediately below the lid. The plastic is thinner all around the outer edge of this disc, thus - supposedly - making it possible to tear it off.

How do you tear it off? There's a little handle or strap on it (it appears to be welded on). The idea is that you hook a finger under this handle and pull the seal away from the lid.

Ha!

1 - The handle is tiny. I have lovely, slender, delicate fairy hands but even I can just get the tip of my index finger under there, or half my little finger. Oof, you don't want to be pulling at something with your little finger, do you?

2 - The handle is very thin and the seal is pretty sturdily attached. It takes a fair bit of force to remove that seal. Thin handle + force against finger = twofold discomfort: nasty pulls on your finger joints AND cutting into of flesh by plastic strand.

3 - The welds that join the handle to the lid are far too weak for the force required to tear the seal (which would be much less if the ends of the handle were attached nearer to the edges, incidentally). 90% of the time one of them snaps, and then you're screwed. Your only option then is to cut the bastard seal off, which means stabbing at it with a sharp pointy knife. I wonder how many other people have wished they were sticking that knife into the FOOLS who designed this thing, and the other FOOLS who agreed to put it into production? Gah!

Tryphena Absent

11:57 / 06.02.06

On the subject of doors, handles tend to be a bit low, don't they? I'm thinking of internal doors in particular.

This is interesting because in the 1930s internal door handles were around a foot higher than they are now. My bedroom door in my parents house is an original internal door and I much prefer the position of the handle.

If you can just imagine a door handle on the right hand side below the square panel:

12:31 / 06.02.06

Sometimes I like to think how long it must take people to search the net for pics to illustrate their points. I consider Nina searching through pages of doors and Smoothly finding pages of inappropriate pictures of plastic wrap.

I agree with Saveloy about those stupid ringpulls (in fact many different ringpulls are tricky bastards), however I love the development of those screw top bits on drink cartons. Now longer do we have to fuck about performing origami on those old-fashioned drink cartons, with the ends getting progressively soggier with each poor. And they made it difficult to drink directly out of the carton. Not that I do that.

In fact I think a major subsection of this topic could be devoted to package opening strategies. Who hasn't cursed that fucking red string that always breaks?

12:33 / 06.02.06

Bingo, Nina.
It’s as if at some point in the last 70 years, some fool hung a door upside down and the mistake just spread.

21:37 / 06.02.06

Something more modern for you:

those stupid three-button interfaces on train toilets, specifically, on Virgin, and others like them.

You push the "Open" button to Open. Fine.

Inside, the "CLOSE" buttons blinks at you.

So you push it.

The door closes. Then the "LOCK" button blinks at you.

You push it, the door locks.

And then the "OPEN" button blinks again

So you push that, because you push the blinkenthings, and the FUCKING DOOR OPENS and you look like an idiot.

It's so nearly right - I like the lights guiding me. But locking/unlocking aren't independent operations; you need a throw switch or something. It blinks to show you what to do next, but fails to tell you that you need to take a dump before one of those actions. It infuriates me because it's so helpful, and then so confusing. It needs a lock/unlock switch with states, rather than a "lock" and "open" button that are not related or interlocked.

It makes me angry every time I shit on the way to Scotland.

11:32 / 07.02.06

Nice thread idea Smoothly...

This I guess is less relevant for our American cousins, but why do cars still have clutches and gear sticks? Why aren't they just automatic? Obviously drivers still like the action and control but nonetheless it seems like having to do that for yourself should have faded into obscurity by now?

11:35 / 07.02.06

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, why are all watches not just digital now? What's the value (really) in being able to read a clock-face?

12:16 / 07.02.06

I'm with you on the manual car thing. Unless you're racing, why do you need such control of when to change gears? 99% of the time you're simply changing at the same time that the automatic transmission would. And I've heard a lot of manual drivers say that they're better for acceleration because you can drop a gear while in higher revs, but if you slam down the pedal in an automatic it drops a gear and you can hoon off. So why do people want to change up and down gears at every single set of traffic lights when the car could do it for them?

13:16 / 07.02.06

That’s a good point on the gearbox thing. I always assumed that automatic gear-boxes were unsophisticated devices that would monitor your speed/revs and change accordingly. I worried that if I was doing 60 in 4th and accelerated, it wouldn’t know if I was trying to overtake on a country road, or move into the outside lane of a motorway (ie. how would it know whether to go to 3rd or 5th?). Then I actually drove a modern automatic, and it changed gear better than I did.

I have no idea why anyone drives anything but an automatic in town, but pretty much every minicab I get in is a manual. Go figure.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I also don’t understand why brake lights don’t get brighter the harder you press the pedal. How many motorway tailbacks and accidents are caused by drivers under-reacting or over-reacting to the undifferentiated flash of brake-lights ahead of them?

14:19 / 07.02.06

Indeed, it would be terribly useful if you could tell whether someone was braking hard or just feathering it a bit through over-cautious driving.

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