Bad Design that you are Forced to Have

The rat thing is totally false. Sheesh.

In case you need logic: First, it was the cold water that was pumped up and stored on the roof, to allow gravity feed. That’s still true in major cities. Storing hot water on the roof would be idiotic – it would cool off. (Exception: solar-heated water tanks in hot climates.) Second, you would never have an open tank for rats to fall into. Carcasses haven’t been a problem in drinking water since open wells stopped being used. Third, why would rats be up on the roof? There’s no food there, and they don’t like those kinds of habitats anyway.

If there’s a historical reason for two single taps, it’s that people used to wash by filling a basin or tub. It didn’t matter if the water was mixed in the tap because it was mixed in the basin or tub.

Separate taps is more historical. Municipal water to the house was originally heated in a pot on a stove or over a fire. Self contained water heaters came later, and still hot water was poured into a bucket or basin and then carried to areas of domestic use. I suspect there was also a historical design issue: stream mixing valves small enough to fit in a domestic situation.

In many countries with less developed and unreliable water supply it is common to fill a tank on the roof, either when the municipal supply is on or via a water truck delivery. Storing water over time is a sure method for bacterial growth, also, the original supply may be less than sanitary or unknown. Homes developed separate sources of drinkable water, sometimes via a different style tap for obvious identification (I’ve frequently seen exaggerated long and very thin goose-neck style taps for drinking water). An interesting side effect, for example years living in Jordan, is that the desert sun heats up the water in the roof top tank and it gets weirdly annoying never having cold water from the bathroom tap, i.e. no cool face splash after shaving!

On the topic of faucets I hate the ones that are so short that your hands end up hitting the back of the sink when you try to rinse them. I could understand if you were tight on space and still wanted some room to splash your face, etc., but I see this in large sinks in large bathrooms. Just give me another inch!
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a pet peeve of mine as well… groady!

I get little irritated with W & T zoom option on my video camera. (Wide & Telescope) :unamused:
My logical mind overrides my natural motions/instincts…With few extra seconds or quick experimentation makes it smooth.
I feel + & - zoom symbol OR zoom in & zoom out are little universal.
How do you cope with it?
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Yeah the W/T thing is way past its time. It probably made sense to some engineers and photographers when they made that first camera.

Another one is 1/0 for on/off. I have that in my car but it’s marked I/O, which arguably looks better but makes even less sense because it usually stands for input/output.

One of these came in one of the bathrooms in my house… a Kohler-Mira Sport Shower. It’s an electric shower, so it has one cold water line in and heats up the water in the little box.

It has the most fantastically terrible user experience - when you turn it off, it cools off the internal water heaters with cold water (according to my plumber). So every time you finish a hot shower, it blast you with cold water for a couple seconds. Seriously.

What kind of designer/engineer does this to people!

What you are referring to is not “1/0” or “I/O” but rather IEC5007 and IEC5008. These are items described in IEC417, the international standard that defines symbols for electrical devices. These are lines and circles used in different arrangements to describe switch functions. Very often, they are used improperly.

Holy crap! How much current does this thing draw?!

I suspected I might have been wrong on that one. Which strengthens my point that it is bad design since it makes little sense to an average person.

Which strengthens my point that it is bad design since it makes little sense to an average person.

The decision to use I/O or 1/0 is based on computer usage of the binary system whereby 1 = on, 0 = off.

But then, most of us aren’t computers … :unamused: Methinks it just looked cool back in the 80’s and designers started using it on consumer products i.e. computers.

This one, IEC5009, Stand By, is ridiculously obtuse. Is it off, or is it on? What it’s supposed to represent is the crescent moon (sleep) with “on”… sleeping on? On, but asleep. On and Off?

Of course in the U.S., you might also find the crescent moon on the door of an outhouse. Resting? Dumb.

Cycling accessories in general.

I hit this pain barrier each winter. Super expensive lights which smash so easily when you drop them, attachments for the lights which wobble and then fall off, lights which you spend hours fiddling around with in the dark to attach and remove and bike locks that are impossible to operate in the dark.
Hi visibility covers for your day pack that are fiddly to put on and remove and render the pack impossible to get into once they’re in place.

If you see someone wearing head to toe fluorescent waterproof gear, outside the tube station swearing near the bike racks - that’s me.

Microsoft Windows

Toasters !!

How can it take that long to slightly brown some bread ?
I think I have seen some with covers that trap the heat in to make it go faster but overall they seem massively inefficient

How quickly white bread toasts depends on how much sugar is in the bread, the more sugar the quicker it toasts.

Also white bread reflects the heat, so it takes ages to get a little brown, then as the bread toasts and gets darker it absorbs more heat and browns faster.

So:
white white white white white white brown BURNT!!!

Some necessary features should be part of the design & at least consider while designing… I know few car brands who sell rearview mirror as accessory…How came some thing essential feature is an accessory?

yo,

Your first post - the Cisco Router… oh man, I think I know the designer who worked on that (!)

I won’t name any names but I do believe it was subject to some late 90’s influence.

(my first post - love this topic!)

A lot of public transportation upholstery and flooring treatments in public areas (theaters, etc.) are intentionally designed to NOT show stains from food, vomit, etc.

So look closely next time before you sit down on the plane!

I saw one this weekend, and was reminded of another at the same time…

First one has to do with the I/O nomenclature and the fact that people can’t remember what is what. This is a boiler for a house and it was so confusing that my friend wrote notes on it to remind himself.

As he put it, “I don’t change it often and every time I have to test the setting to remember which is on and off… it’s an expensive mistake if head out of town and you turn the heater ON when you meant to turn it OFF”

The second is the low water use toilets that are common in some areas… you know the ones with the tiny bit of water the bottom, not a lagoon, within a try funnel of ceramic. So if it takes several flushes and a swish with a brush to leave it in a decent state, is it really saving water?

Travis: It’s hard to design something that works in all languages. The best thing that I’ve found in place of 1 and 0 is a empty circle (off) and a full circle (on). I havne’t tested it to verify the efficacy though.

Also, those toilets are pushed by standards organisations and building codes, not users. I like the idea, but they do seem to be nasty in reality.