Bad Design

Things are designed for their beauty, their cost, their useability and sometimes just for fun.  It is surprising how often we come across things that seem badly designed given the possibility for greatness in design.

At my work we have all struggled to use our very beautiful entry doors.  They are polished and shiny with hidden hinges.  They are completely symetrical, so that from either side of the door, the door appears the same.  So we are all pushing and pulling when we should be pulling and pushing.  I expect some designer won an award for the doors, but it wouldn't be a useability award.  Here they are:



My co-worker tackled the challenging doors with an office labeler and some discretely placed hints that have so far not been disturbed by the interior design police.



Sometimes the ingenious methods people come up with to deal with bad design are as enjoyable as good design would be.  How many cents did it take to solve the design problem. 5?

In this next photo, can you spot the problem with the card swipe instructions here:



Thats right, the diagram adjacent to the cardswipe indicates that the magnetic strip needs to be on the left...  BUT in the digital image on the right, the orange screen clearly displays the magnetic strip on the right.   Left? or Right?  Well I assumed the hardware was more closely tied to the diagram attached to it and believed the diagram.  "wrong!"  It was the digital image on the orange screen that got it right.

Now how many thousands of dollars go into deploying something like a gas pump, and how many people reviewed the design etc. before it got to me the customer.  (And how many thousands of people a year have to re-swipe their card because of this bad design?)

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did, I'll post more as I find them, so be sure to check back.

Cheers,
Greg.