On this page I continue to vent my gripes about why so many things just don't seem to work well. This takes the form of links to sites showing general and specific examples and guidelines concerning instances of bad design and how we might inprove our lot -- easily in many cases.
A page will be added concerning design methodolgies, invention, and innovation.
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. . . Computer Interfaces ___ General principles of design ___ Highway navigation ___ Hotels
. . . Logos ___ Noisy library ___ Older persons ___ Signage ___ Software design ___ Stores ___ Upper case
. . . Various examples of bad design ___ Web-site design
Designers Behaving Badly Bad Technology Interfaces: http://www.ergogero.com/pages/baddesigntechnology.html Back Technology Interface Design.
The Worst of Them All. I decided to kick off this section with the worst example of interface design that I could think of. By worst, I mean the one which 1) hurts the most people the most often, 2) is allowed to continue for a long time with no correction and 3) is created by people who should know a lot better. By this criterion, the clear winner is the Microsoft Internet Explorer Tool Bar. Here is a picture of the tool bar . . .
Physician, Heal Thyself. Here's an example of very common problem. This is a piece of the home page for site called "National Coalition on Ergonomics." . . . Excellent site!
Media players and design flaws in general
Bad Human Factors Designs: http://www.baddesigns.com/index.shtml A scrapbook of illustrated examples of things that are hard to use because they do not follow human factors principles. By Michael J. Darnell. Offers subscription service of monthly updates. Excellent site! Its main subsite is:
Bad Designs - Table of Contents: http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html It contains examples, with photos, in the following categories:
Things: Things that don't work the way you expect. Different things that are too similar. Things that are hard to see; don't work well together; get in your way; are hard to handle, remember; or don't fit you. Things with "ergonomic" designs. Displays. Signs, Names and Labels.
See also his other site:
Rhetoric for Engineers Human Factors: http://www.tcnj.edu/~rgraham/rhetoric/human-factors.html Keep in mind that good human factors designs merely avoid everything on this list. Sound easy? By Michael Darnell. Excellent!
The Design of Everyday Things: http://students.cs.byu.edu/~butler/uidesign/des1.html This appears to be a summary of key aspects of the book: The Design of Everyday Things ©1988. Donald A. Norman, Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-26774-6. It gives an excellent summary of key design factors, including weak demand premium, usability, constraints, and feedback.
CBD-132. Glass Thickness for Windows: http://www.nrc.ca/irc/cbd/cbd132e.html Canadian Building Digest. W.G. Brown.
. . . improved procedure for determining appropriate glass thicknesses for windows of different sizes subjected to different wind pressures. The design problem is essentially that of striking a balance between a low probability of failure and glass costs.
The strength of glass is highly variable. Tests on 30 identical window lights will show failure pressures differing by as much as 3 to 1. . . . Examples of wind pressures in major Canadian cities.
Invention by Design: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/2785/book_invention.html Invention by Design by Henry Petroski.
Invention by Design is the latest book by Petroski which concentrates on the design of everyday things around us. In his previous book, The Evolution of Useful Things, Petroski looked at how common everyday objects like paper clips and eating utensils came into being. In Invention by Design, Petroski is more interested in showing the design process behind various everyday objects as well as large-scale engineering projects like bridges and skyscrapers. As in his previous book, Petroski says that the main reason for new inventions or improvement in current designs is due to perceived failure of the product to fulfill a task. One may think, for example, that a single design for a paper clip is good enough. But, as Petroski shows through the various patent applications for paper clips, new types of paper clips have been proposed. Some can hold a thicker stack of paper, some claim to stop paper clips tearing the paper, and so on. It really is amazing how many different types of paper clips can be proposed to do the 'ordinary' task of holding pieces of paper together.
In later chapters, Petroski looks at the design of the aluminium can, including the various pull/push ring designs and shows that sometimes, environmental or material concerns drive the design of a product. In the chapter on pencils, he gets more mathematical and gives an interesting analysis on why the points on lead pencils tend to break into a certain shape, based on the forces acting on it. . . .
See also Signage.
Designers Behaving Badly Born Under A Bad Sign: http://www.ergogero.com/pages/baddesignsign.html The Bain of Spain Makes You Miss The Lane. My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Spain, where we spent much of our time lost. They haven't quite got this sign thing down. In addition to the general absence of signage in towns, they created some of the most confusing signs I've ever seen. . . . Excellent site!
Inventorying Highway Signs: http://www.usroads.com/journals/rmj/9703/rm970304.htm The State of Connecticut s Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) is adapting the videodisc-based system used to photolog its 3,900 miles of highway to the task of inventorying its road signs and supports. . . .
According to one study, defective signs figure in 20 percent of tort liability actions and are cited as a main cause in 41 percent of serious crashes. . . .
Tracking Down Bad Design: http://www.wgaarchitects.com/archives/bad/bad.html . . . The first thing that Henry Wong checks out when he enters a hotel is the washroom. "This is one area where you can tell how much thought they put into designing and caring for a hotel," says Wong, principal architect at Toronto-based Wong Gregersen Architects Inc. . . .
Several years ago, when the Chestnut Park Hotel on Chestnut St. in Toronto was purchased by Hong Kong tycoon Henry Wu, Wong did the redesign to convert the hotel into the Metropolitan Hotel. We stayed at this excellent hotel one night, in meeting a friend of ours arriving from Buenos Aires.
Owner Wu, a baby-faced 33-year old who is working on his doctorate degree in computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added deluxe surround-sound hi-fidelity systems in certain rooms. It's not every grad student that has $30 million to spare -- but, I, for one, am glad that he did! It is worth a visit to Toronto to just walk into the lobby of this beautiful hotel. Excellent site!
Metropolitan Hotel: http://www.meetingscanada.com/cmc/profiles/192/ . . . the hotel is a joy to discover.
Metropolitan Hotel Toronto Meeting Planner's Site: http://www.metropolitan.com/meeting/toronto/
See also Examples of blasphemy in the advertising world.
On logos and icons: http://quahog.org/hillman/prose/logos/ My question, as a former print shop art-tart has always been: Why a logo at all? Logotypes are fine if they provide a simple means of identification. The Shell Oil and Apple Computer logos, for example are damned good. . . . JS Cleaning wanted their logo to be the J and S intertwined and made to look like a vacuum cleaner. Sheesh. I mean, yeah, the end result kinda looked like a vacuum cleaner, and one could, upon squinting, go along with the idea that there were a J and an S lurking in there somewhere, but why bother? . . .
Quiet, Please. This Is a Library After All: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/arts/music/27HORO.html?todaysheadlines New York Times Jan 27, 2002 By JOSEPH HOROWITZ. When Lincoln Center opened 40 years ago, it was notoriously bedeviled by acoustical problems. . . .
The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, a branch of the New York Public Library, houses on its third floor the most important research collection of performing-arts materials in the United States. Three and a half years ago, the entire library was shut for extensive modernization. Thirty-eight million dollars . . . was spent on the project, which is separate from the redevelopment of the rest of Lincoln Center now being contentiously discussed. The library reopened, as the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, last October. The third floor, the research division, is now a more efficient purveyor of films and videos, and the card catalogs have been supplemented with terminals galore. But . . . the research division is no longer a pleasurable place in which to read . . .
The problem with the new library is the redesigned third floor. Before renovation, it housed separate reading rooms for its four major research divisions: music, recorded sound, dance and drama. The new library has a merged central reading room; the ceiling is lower than before, and so is the total square footage allotted to public tables and chairs.
Not only does the room feel cramped; it is also incongruously noisy. It opens directly onto a bank of elevators, a coat check and a photocopy room, all previously segregated. It includes four large desks staffed by as many as six librarians, and a busy retrieval point for all requested materials. This is the space, full of walking and talking, in which users are required to do their reading and listening. . . .
One might be under the impression that this is just one more example of incredibly stupid design -- but only if one assumes that the library was designed to serve the public at large, rather than its staff only. Perhaps a false assumption?
A second interpretation is that it is an example of good design -- under the assumption that New Yorkers are so accustomed to living with noise levels of 80 db that semi-silence would be unbearably distracting, or that most of them are, thereby, almost deaf anyway, and would not even notice this extra bit of noise.
We were with friends from Buenos Aires once in a restaurant in England having lunch, when I remarked upon how unpleasantly loud the music was, and that perhaps we could ask for the volume to be turned down -- or, much better, off. My friend, a psychiatrist, countered that I was probably under the false impression that the music was for the benefit of patrons. It was not for patrons, of course. The music was there for the benefit of the staff, and -- the staff being all young -- the music was all loud!
The moral? Sometimes it takes a psychiatrist to diagnose a problem with an audio system! Sometimes bad design for one purpose can be good design for another.
Designers Behaving Badly The Old Man and the See: http://www.ergogero.com/pages/baddesignolder.html The Old Man and The See: Misdesign for the Older Consumer.
By The Twilight's Last Glare. This is a cash register from a Loblaw's supermarket in Toronto. It is meant to be viewed by both the clerk and by the customer to check his/her purchases. The older person in front of me couldn't read the screen at all. There are two major problems . . .
North York Public Library started putting their videos in clear plastic boxes. However, . . . Excellent site!
See also Highway navigation.
Can't You Read the Signs: http://www.signweb.com/design/cont/nuts981124.html Graphic layout effectiveness is measured in seconds. Poor design frequently illustrates the politically incorrect truth that the customer isn't always right. Some customers assume that, in terms of a sign's message, more is better. Equally dangerous are customers with the temperaments, but not the talents of graphic designers. As a sign professional, perhaps the most ominous question you can be asked by your client is, "How many words can I fit on a 4-by-8-foot sign?" . . . Good examples, photos.
creativepro.com - dot-font Electoral Typography: http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/9919.html . . . Design Kills . . . In fact, bad design can kill. Confusing highway signs have undoubtedly led to many a roadside fatality -- not to mention a lot of lost time and tempers. One of the most appallingly instructive lessons in the importance of design is the case of the airport at Dusseldorf, in Germany. There was a catastrophic fire in the airport a couple of years ago, in which a number of people died. After the fact, it was determined that some of those people died because the signage in the airport was so bad that they couldn't find their way out. . . .
Opinion - Red-light cameras ripe for misuse: http://www.reporternews.com/2000/opinion/red0616.html . . .
Washington is notorious for its ambiguous signage, and at one intersection not far from the U.S. Capitol, it is unclear where precisely traffic is supposed to stop for the red light.
Moreover, the red-light camera was positioned in the wrong place. The result: Thousands of drivers were being unfairly ticketed.
Before the error was discovered and corrected, this particular camera had collected almost $1 million in traffic fines. . . .
The red-light cameras are done under a contract with Lockheed Martin, which gets a 40 percent cut of the fines. The capital’s 37 cameras have so far generated $4.3 million in fines since last August.
. . . potential for abuse in these cameras, especially if a private company stands to profit along with the city.
. . . the cameras may become so profitable as to trump legitimate safety concerns, or even become a counterincentive.
There are a lot of ways intersections can be made safer — better lights, signs, street markings, rumble strips, railroad-style gates, even an old-fashioned traffic cop — but these all have the drawback of costing money, not raising it.
Should we re-title this as Ambiguous signage for fun and profit?
A case study in bad software design: http://msbc.simplenet.com/opinion/97_03_07.shtml Recently-discovered security problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer. It will illuminate several areas of poor design and sloppiness on the part of Microsoft.
Designers Behaving Badly Stores: http://www.ergogero.com/pages/baddesignstore.html Don't they want me to buy anything? This is a picture the nearby Liquor Control Board of Ontario Bayview Village store, the chain's largest and flagship store. It's one of the worst stores that I shop in. (I don't have a choice since the LCBO is a liquor monopoly.) You can tell that a designer was at work because it looks beautiful, but you can't find anything in the damned place . . . .
No Happy Meals Here. This picture shows a McDonald's in my neighborhood, and it is typical of the layout. It is one of the worst designed stores around. Who is in line? . . . . Excellent site!
North Carolina Association of Government Information: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/9486/983meet.html Graphic Design for the Rest of Us . . .
3. Upper Case Used for Body Copy
Psychologists have determined that when we recognize a word on a page, we are usually recognizing the entire configuration of that word-the visual pattern it makes on the page-and not just its individual letters. When a designer puts the word "apple" in capital letters, to make "APPLE," the visual pattern that we're used to associating with apples is replaced with something that has to be read letter by letter. So it becomes much harder to recognize. Use caps only for headings or special emphasis. . . . Excellent site!
Web Page Design Tips: http://www.sunybroome.edu/~hinton_r/Webtips.htm#6 . . . Do Not Use All Caps. The All Caps style slows reading time because it doesn't provide the visual cues the reader has been subconsciously trained to expect The All Caps style is considered visual shouting on the Internet. . . . There is an irony here, in that this site uses too many caps, and has a hyphenation error. For example, the heading would have been much better written as follows: Web-page design tips. This subpage is part of the site Web Page Design Tips http://www.sunybroome.edu/~hinton_r/Webtips.htm.
Writing Revisable Manuals chap4.htm Typographic Conventions: http://www.techcommunicators.com/dkmanual/chap4005.html . . .
Some older manuals used all UPPER CASE HEADINGS. This was often necessary when using typewriters because of the lack of other possible heading attributes. All upper case letters, however, slow reading speed because of the loss of characteristic word shapes — words in mixed case have a shape which aids in their recognition. Avoid using all upper case in a manual, except for short acronyms.
Ironically, this site has a blatant error in it: "UPPER CASE HEADINGS" should be "UPPER-CASE HEADINGS".
Various examples of bad design
Design Disasters: http://www.sheridanc.on.ca/~randy/design.dir/admindocs/disaster.dir/disaster.htm Randy Smye, Sheridan College. . . . criteria for what makes a successful or "good" design. We now have four benchmarks: . . . FUNCTION Architecture and Urban Living: the "high rise" apartment tower. ECONOMICS Transportation and the Impact of the Automobile. SOCIAL "Human Factors" with Appliances and Computer Software. APPEARANCE If it's tacky, do you want it?
Examples of Bad Design: http://antoine.fsu.umd.edu/phys/hoffman/Some%20Examples%20of%20Bad%20Design.htm Photos.
Example of Design Failure: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/courseware/cs160/fall99/lectures/task-analysis/tsld004.htm BART “Charge-a-Ticket” machines.
Fred's Journal of Bad and Good Design: http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/fredm/projects/baddesign/ Fred G. Martin, MIT Media Laboratory. Example of good Idea: Digital Camera Records to Floppy Disk. Sony's "Digital Mavica" MVD-FD7 Floppy Disk Camera. Downside: software. Great site!
G.O.A.T. Gallery of the Absurd: http://www.ichizen.com/goat/goat_ergonomics.htm . . . Images shown here are original, unaltered photographs taken in generally public places.
h a l f b a k e r y: http://www.halfbakery.com/ It's the thought that counts. Here is a site where you can see others' bright ideas (in a variety of fields) and submit your own. What better subpage there to visit than the following:
ML-DESIGN: http://www.hazardcontrol.com/ml-design.html Manual Lifting: Product Design and Labeling. EXAMPLES OF DESIGN FAILURE. Copyright restrictions prevent me from even summarizing what the examples are. I may have already copied too much! Strictly speaking, I should not even have copied the title of this document, and maybe not even the URL, I presume, according to the copyright notice. Maybe you should just not bother to visit this site. Maybe this serves as an example design failure in being too restrictive in publishing a Web page. Why even publish it?
ERGO-GERO Human Factors Science: http://www.ergogero.com/index.html Design for Aging. Computer Interfaces. Medical & Consumer. Signs & Displays. Visual Merchandising. Creating Conspicuiy.
Designers Behaving Badly Personal Bugaboos: http://www.ergogero.com/pages/baddesignpersonal.html . . . coffee carafes spill when they are tilted . . . The car audio tape player is a far greater danger than cell phones in creating accidents. . . . light switches on my upper hall landing . . . the remote for my old Mitsubishi VCR . . .
Popular Velcro Shoes http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Popular_20Velcro_20Shoes#981845944-5-1The wave of the future! Why do adults need to tie shoes, even if kids don't have to? It just seems so old-fashioned and inefficient. I have been seeing shoes with zippers lately as well. This is progress. Why are we still tying shoes when we can be zipping or Velcroing and saving valuable time. There should be a movement to get rid of shoelaces and put mostly Velcro and zipper shoes on the market for adults.
David Kelley on the role of product design: http://www0.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/qa092500.htm David Kelley is a legend in the field of industrial design. The Stanford engineering professor is probably best known for IDEO, the Palo Alto-based design and innovation firm he founded 20 years ago. IDEO has helped design such items as the Palm V, the Handspring Visor and Oral-B's Squish Grip children's toothbrush.
Q What are some great examples of product design failures?
A The Edsel. That's about not being in tune with the fashion of the time. They could have sold a ton of them if it had just had an appearance that resonated with the people.
That's why you prototype, and get people's reaction before you spend a billion dollars. The Twingo -- a Renault car -- had a funny look, but people fell in love with it. The same thing with the VW Beetle. I don't know if they were serious or not about bringing the Beetle back, but the concept car resonated so much with people. If the guys with the Edsel had done the same thing, they could have seen how much people hated it, and saved a lot of money.
Design Matters! Chad you deny it: http://www.devkinney.com/web8/designmatters.html Down in Palm Beach County there are 19,000 ballots from the 2000 presidential election about to go in the dumpster. Most of them have Al Gore’s name punched out. But each one also has Pat Buchannan’s name punched out. Sorry! can’t have both, so won’t have either!
How could such a disastrous event, costing Al Gore the presidency, be allowed to happen? Answer: that enterprise killer, Poor Design! To save space and use larger type, names were listed on each side of the row of punch out boxes like so: . . . You have to see the picture to see how this instance of terribly bad design happened! Absolutely stupid designer!
LePoorDesign.com - Celebrating the Power of Bad Design - Florida butterfly ballot: http://www.lepoordesign.com/ On November 7th, 2000, voters in Palm Beach County, Florida went to the polls to cast their votes on the infamous "butterfly" ballot. Designed and approved by Theresa LePore, the democratic County Election Supervisor, the ballot set a new standard for "wreaking havoc" with bad design. It will be difficult to match.
But knowing that the full potential of bad design had not yet been tapped, designers across the country were quick to propose new ballots and voting methods. . . .
Texas Tragedy: Faulty Design?: http://architecture.about.com/arts/architecture/library/weekly/aa111899.htm The Texas State Engineering Board is exploring whether regulations outlined in state construction law apply to the wooden bonfire structure which collapsed last week at Texas A&M. Twelve students were killed and more than two dozen injured when the 4-story high pyramid of logs assembled for a pep rally bonfire collapsed.
Texas is a state in which they should not even build log cabins (the technology is too advanced for Texans). There is a gun rack on the back of every one of their fanciest vehicles -- a half-ton pickup truck, unwashed lately -- and there are bullet holes in all traffic signs! George Bush lived there once, and still remains there in spirit -- the spirit of the old rugged cross of his Christian hillbilly compatriots of the Religious Right.
Texas A&M should stick to basket-weaving -- if it survives the lawsuits (which I hope it does not!).
Tracking Down Bad Design: http://www.wgaarchitects.com/archives/bad/bad.html Hotel bathrooms a sure tip-off, architect says. HenryWong, 48, who has designed hotels in North America and Asia, recently compiled the results of a 14-page survey that asked 300 hotel operators, managers and business travellers what bugged them most about hotels. He got an earful.
Several years ago, when the Chestnut Park Hotel on Chestnut St. in Toronto was purchased by Hong Kong tycoon Henry Wu, Wong did the redesign to convert the hotel into the Metropolitan Hotel. Owner Wu, a baby-faced 33-year* old who is working on his doctorate degree in computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added deluxe surround-sound hi-fidelity systems in certain rooms.
[* WRP: Where does a "poor" grad student get $20 million to own a hotel? Or is it $50 million?]
In November, Wong travels to New York as a finalist in the Gold Key awards, the Oscars of hospitality design, for his work on the Hemispheres Bistro restaurant in the lobby of the Metropolitan Hotel.
We stayed there once to meet a friend from Buenos Airies. It is excellent! Take a peek: . . .
Metropolitan Hotel: http://toronto.com/E/V/TORON/0012/08/24/cs1.html
Metropolitan Hotel Web site: http://toronto.com/E/V/TORON/0012/08/24/
See also Upper case.
Web Pages That Suck -- learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad design: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ Fast Company magazine calls WPTS the "Best for Improving Your Site's Look and Feel."
The Standard Flash Backlash: http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,22330,00.html?partner=xdrive . . . since its introduction in 1996, Macromedia Flash has done no less than foster the democratization of Web design. Whether that's a good thing, however, is an ongoing debate. A little power can be a dangerous thing, especially in the hands of amateurs. . . . Critics have dumped on Flash for encouraging gratuitous animation and consuming resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core values and promoting, rather than inhibiting, interactivity. A browser's "back" button can't be used in a Flash environment, for example, and searching a Flash page is awkward at best.
My (WRP) opinion? Flash technology should be called Flush technology (as in Flush it down the drain) -- to be used when you do not have much to say, and you say it in the most irksome and wasteful of ways! Alternative moniker? Glitz tecnhology: all sizzle and no steak!
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You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca