Bad Design that you are Forced to Have

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.

Both good points, though the end result is the same - poor usability and performance. They could be better.

That is low tide.

I think it’s cultural, my experience of North American toilets is the luxury of so much water, that rises majestically before cleanly taking it all away. German/ Austrian toilets have an ‘inspection plate’ (I’ve been told from eating so much meat, there was/ is a need to check for parasites). Mediterranean toilets that can’t handle loo paper, so there is a delightful bin next to the bog. The odd combo Japanese urinal/ w.c., with the long handles so that it’s hard to work out which way you face it.

My favourite ever toilet was in Lisbon; a normal w.c but instead of a press flush it had a large numbered dial i.e. "that curry last night was an ‘eight’ ".

A dial? I love it. Makes sense. Surprised that has not caught on more. I couldn’t even find a google image of one.

Oh, man. Just about spit out my beer.

I hope the dial goes to “11”.

Those German toilets are whacky. Feel free to do a google search. I was afraid I’d lose my lunch, but apparently the gross images are a ways down the list (further than I dared look).

I’ve seen those German one’s before, but never heard that part about the meat eating (gross!) Hilarious about the 11 - I like to see that too. I wasn’t thinking of it at the time, but toilets do vary widely out there… I guess I’m lucky they aren’t as gnarly as the could be!