Bad Design Examples

I have a pair of Tenqa Remxd bluetooth headphones that I really enjoy, especially considering the $40 price tag, however, the initial process of pairing them with my iPhone took about 45 minutes. These headphones are poorly designed primarily due to poor mapping and a lack of feedback. The headphones are paired by holding down the play button and waiting for the LED to flash. This is impossible to determine without an instruction manual and furthermore, doesn't always work. As it turns out, the play button has to be held down prior to turning the headphones on and kept held down until the device flashes. Additionally, the flashing that indicates that the headphones are discoverable is a red and blue alternating flash, which is similar to a blue only flash that occasionally occurs for reasons I cannot determine.

The other day I discovered a new Monster energy drink called Ubermonster. The bottle for this drink is extremely poorly designed - it looks like a twist-off cap, but it isn't. Also, most bottle openers are too small to accomodate this lid. I opened mine using a pair of pliers. It took about 5 minutes to open, and I sliced my finger open in the process. As a side note, this drink also appears to be alcoholic, based on the design of the bottle and the advertising featuring "advanced brewing technology". Google-ing Ubermonster indicates that many, many people are confused about this bottle's appearance and that my frustrations with the lid are not isolated.

These are the exit doors in the basement of the Psychology Building. I can never open them correctly, which I now know has to due with a lack of visibility. This example isn't exactly unique, but I found it relevant due to my personal experiences with these doors. Shortly after I took this picture a girl confidently pressed on the door, smacked her head, and dropped her laptop down the stairs. She was fine, but her laptop didn't survive the fall. Another casualty of poor design.

This is a coworkers mouse that I was attempting to fix at work today. Other than being generally uncomfortable, my primary criticism of its design is that it doesn't afford the user the ability to turn it off without pulling the battery. I found this extremely unusual, and so did my coworker, whose computer did a variety of inconvenient things due to involuntary mouse clicks that occurred while I was examining it. This is a significant design flaw, as wireless mice are dependent on their battery to function, and the best way to conserve battery life is to turn the device off when it isn't in use.

Lastly, I address the issues with the iPhone's design. Yes, despite being one of millions of users that depend on the iPhone to function, its design is not perfect. The particular problem I have with the iPhone concerns mapping and affordability. Firstly, Apple's insistance on minimizing the number of hardware buttons means that the home button is responsible for accessing the home screen, activating Siri, and, little do most users know, performing a hard reset. The issue of the hard reset is my primary concern. When a phone freezes and no longer responds to a soft reset, most users respond by pulling the battery, something that the iPhone doesn't afford users the ability to do. Instead, iPhone users must perform a hard reset, a task that most users aren't aware exists and that is mapped to controls that nobody would think to try. A hard reset is performed by holding the sleep button and the home button simultaneously for roughly 10 seconds.