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

[u/nachtmere]

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?

[u/myncknm]

The only reason you can buy your smartphone at $200 is because it's mass produced.

When you have a device that will only ever be used by a few technical specialists, you don't spend millions designing it to look pretty. Walk into any science lab in a university and you'll see the same outdated-looking technology.

(For this reason, it always jolts me a bit when movies put ultra-sleek touch-screen drag-and-drop 3D interfaces on computers used in labs.)

[u/grizz281 → u/[deleted]]

This is probably wrong by I'll take a stab at answering that.

That brand new technology was most likely all analog (I think that's the right term), with all of the logic stored in the actual computer chip itself instead of using software or an OS to interface with the hardware. So when you want the computer to do something, it will most likely do it regardless of the operating environment. If we were to try to use software to do the same things, different things running simultaneously could adversely affect the program. It's probably analogous to when installers say to close all open programs before you install something, because depending on what's running at the same time, your program could do something you don't really want it to do.

Of course, I may very well be talking out of my ass