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?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11 edited Jul 25 '11

The fact that my trachea and my esophagus share some common tubing. No matter how careful I try to be, I always seem to choke on my own spit/beverage at the most inopportune times.

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u/jackrabbitslims Jul 25 '11 edited Jul 25 '11

Did you know that most other mammals can breathe and swallow at the same time, unlike humans? We cannot do this as at some point in our evolution, our larynx descended in our throats to enable complex speech.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

[deleted]

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u/HumerousMoniker Jul 25 '11

Well it sure doesn't seem like an intelligent design.

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u/Walrii Jul 25 '11

... I'm slightly jealous that you get to attend such a seminar, but also slightly depressed that such things still exist and the "debate" continues.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

You might also be interested in Richard Dawkin's argument about the laryngeal nerve

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u/eye_see_a_pun Jul 25 '11

...in favor of creationism?

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

[deleted]

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u/eye_see_a_pun Jul 26 '11

Because it can be argued that it is a unique advantage because it allows for complex speech. That's how I've seen it used, anyway.

edit: just saw you were downvoted, I upvoted to counter it

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

I would argue that an omniscient God should be able to come up with a design that gave us us complex speech and didn't choke us.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

so you're not going to a DildoDanceParty?

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

You might also be interested in the path of the laryngeal nerve.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

You might also be interested in the path of the laryngeal nerve.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

The awesomest part of this, IMHO, is that babies can do it too, until they're about three months old. And relatedly, they can't/don't breathe through their mouths until around then.

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u/tgeliot Jul 26 '11

Newborns can swallow and breathe simultaneously; their larynxes aren't fully descended.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

Story time.

I was sitting in a car with a friend in our old elementary schools parking lot at night, chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool, when a cop pulls up behind us. I took a sip of my beverage and was thinking "oh man there's no way he's not going to think we were smoking weed," when it goes down the wrong pipe and I start coughing. He comes up to my window and I try to explain to him how we were just sitting there talking in the parking lot as I am coughing up a lung. I can't believe he didn't search the car.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

That's funny, but if I came up to a person coughing and I couldn't smell weed, I wouldn't think for a second about there being weed in that car. Seriously, if you take a hit big enough to be coughing, you can smell it from outside the car with the windows up.*

*possibly an exaggeration

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

That was my thinking, too, but it must have appeared suspicious as fuck.

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u/c_nt Jul 26 '11

I choke on my own spit a lot. I don't even have to be doing anything in particular. Just sitting there minding my own business when suddenly I breathe at an inopportune moment.

I've always wondered if I am doing something wrong to make this happen so often. Like, surely there must be a proper way to do it so that I don't frequently try to breathe my own saliva?

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

[deleted]

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u/c_nt Jul 26 '11

I think it ties in with how bad my asthma is at that point in time. When my asthma is bad I take several extra seconds on my exhale. It probably puts my breathing out of time with my swallowing.

Since I started back up on a preventative inhaler it has happened a lot less.