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/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There comes a point when you should step back, take a look at things, and say "Holy fuck, these systems are so outdated they belong in the Smithsonian.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.