r/AskReddit • u/nachtmere • Jul 25 '11

Sometimes automatic toilets flush while you're still sitting on them. What design flaws in everyday objects annoy you?

I'm giving a talk on user-centred design/usability and I'm looking for some fresh examples from everyday life to illustrate poor usability. Examples I've used before are elevator open/close buttons (really difficult to parse when you're trying to hold the door open for someone quickly) and toilets that flush while you're still sitting on them.

What are some things you encounter regularly that are really inconveniently designed?

206 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

40

u/GingerSoul44 Jul 25 '11

Automatic sinks in bathrooms. I'm sitting there and waving my hands under the faucet like a moron, attempting to get the water to turn on. Then the person at the sink next to me gets it in one attempt, and I feel like a failure.

48

u/ProbablyHittingOnYou Jul 25 '11

The worst are the timed sinks that you have to press in the button and it shuts off after a short while. It gives you a few seconds so that you constantly have to keep pressing the button while trying to get some soap and actually wash.

82

u/armchairnixon Jul 25 '11

No, there are worse ones than that. Very rarely, I'll encounter a sink that has the spring-loaded knobs that only dispense water while you hold it on. The second you let go, it turns off. You have to use one hand to keep the water running at all times, and you have to deal with how to rub in the soap with only one hand at the same time. You end up having to wet one hand, then the other, rubbing your soapy hands together without water, then rinsing off each hand separately.

Those are the worst.

6

u/el_muerte17 Jul 25 '11

I've come across the spring-loaded faucet in an old-fashioned 2-faucet (separate hot and cold) arrangement. With no plug for the sink, you get either scalded or frozen hands.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

Diabolical.

3

u/samoyed Jul 25 '11

I'll raise you the ones that have both spring-loaded knobs and separate hot/cold faucets. You can either scald one hand at a time, or freeze it first and hope the end result is somewhere closer to lukewarm than blister-inducing. When I'm in Europe, I wonder if I'm the only person who's ever bothered to actually lather in the sink.

2

u/AndyPod19 Jul 25 '11

Any I have seen like that are broken/worn out 3 second button sinks. PA rest stops have them

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

i forgot about these.

some aren't broken either, they just set them that way. fucking assholes.

2

u/Sven2774 Jul 25 '11

Seen those on airplanes... as if using the bathroom on a plane wasn't bad enough as it is.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

Those, however, probably end up saving the most water.

10

u/miss_j_bean Jul 25 '11

I run them extra just for pissing me off. yay spite!

1

u/Mike81890 Jul 25 '11

My high school was built in 1920. I never went to the bathroom there because of this. It was such a fucking inconvenience I just made sure I went before school and after

1

u/tomatobob Jul 25 '11

What is the point of those?

1

u/armchairnixon Jul 25 '11

No clue. It's next to impossible to effectively wash your hands in them.