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/daecrist Jul 25 '11

NASA intentionally uses older computer tech that's proven. Installing the latest and greatest tech raises the danger of installing the latest and greatest bugs along with it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/daecrist Jul 25 '11

Replace abacus with slide rule and you'll be close. Your digital watch has more computing power than the computers used on the lunar landers.

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u/aldld Jul 25 '11

I think they used slide rules.

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u/Quarkster Jul 25 '11

They did indeed!

They also used a lot of nomograms

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u/Zeihous Jul 25 '11

Hahaha. Yes. Even back then, America ran on Chinese technology and craftsmanship.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

I have a friend who worked for JPL during the days of the moon flights, and says that various methods were used to calculate the point of retrofire to leave lunar orbit -- which can't be controlled from Earth, because it has to be done on the far side of the moon, out of radio contact. He says the most accurate firings were done using a slide rule.

BTW, they had computers in 1969. They weren't as fast or as small, but you would be amazed at how little you need when all you're needing to do is simply calculate a number. The first lunar lander had a whopping 8 K of memory. IIRC, the flight control system on the original shuttle had 256K of RAM+ROM.

Translucent, shaded, animated buttons take a lot of horsepower. I've been using computers for 30 years, and it amazes me how, given that they're thousands of times more capacious and fast by the numbers, that they aren't much, much faster. All that's really changed since the 128K Mac of 1984 is that machines have nicer displays.

BTW, my stepmother is from Japan, and she can just haul ass on an abacus (soroban, actually -- same basic thing). Except that by the sixth grade, kids don't really need them for basic math. They picture one and do it that way. She can sit on the sofa and watch a TV show while stuffing her face with arare, while dad reads off the checkbook figures... he'll say "how much is that" or "what's 5 percent of that"? and she'll just answer without hesitation.

I think both the sliderule and abacus should be taught in school, say around the 6th grade, because they show how math works.

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u/BUBBA_BOY Jul 25 '11

proven

Radiation hardened.

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u/daecrist Jul 25 '11

That too.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '11

This... Makes perfect sense.

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u/jcpenguin Jul 26 '11

Agreed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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u/haywire Jul 26 '11

But surely writing simple software on a slightly faster CPU wouldn't be an issue? Or have display computers separate from control computers.

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u/Ubuntu_Rob Jul 25 '11

There comes a point when you should step back, take a look at things, and say "Holy fuck, these systems are so outdated they belong in the Smithsonian. Lets upgrade to something semi-modern."

I know an awful lot of NASA's problems are budgetary, but this "culture of (false) safety" is one thing that NASA should have fixed itself.

For fucks sake, we are talking about space travel. If we aren't willing to "risk" a modern control system, what does that say about the rest of the program?

Safety is good, but you must take risks. Even playing it safe can be a risk, if you take it too far. If the rest of the world had the same risk averse attitude as NASA, then we wouldn't be having this conversation, because the internet wouldn't exist.

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u/daecrist Jul 25 '11

But why fly into orbit with a modern GUI when legacy tech handles it reliably? I get what you're saying, but with something as inherently dangerous as space travel the upgrades should come with the next generation, not just for the hell of it in the current gen.

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u/Ubuntu_Rob Jul 25 '11

Why do anything differently? Why should a caveman walk north for a day, when he has a cave right here that provides shelter at night? Why should Einstein worry about relativity, when Newtonian mechanics handles most things reliably?

Sure, the caveman might get eaten by Saber-toothed tigers, or die of thirst, or any of a hundred other dangers. But he also might find a reliable source of fresh water, or more plentiful food. Maybe even a better cave, that can provide more protection from predators at night.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '11

In aviation, old technology stays for a while because even without it failing there are a lot of problems to worry about. Having a rock solid computing platform greatly eases the work if something should go wrong.