The Lemon Fool

Even the most humble object can please me if the design is right. For example we.ve had a cheese grater for many years. The grater bit fits into a sturdy plastc oval shaped container. With the grater part removed a lid fits on top and it's ready for the table. It just works. I remember being impressed with the desigh of our daughter's folding push chair - lightweight, comfortable and easy to open/close and store.

Plenty of examples of poor design. One that irritates me, taps that when turned on immediately splash out of the sink/basin and back over you.
Easily fixed with non-spash nozzles on the tap (which most taps do not have). Or more expensively a sink so shaped as to direct splash into the sink not out.

Lamps that have nasty in out switches instead of far easier rocker ones. Most light fittings in general are rather rubbish.

Door hinges on most flat pack self assembly furniture - I hate.

Any designs impressed/irritated the hell out of - you?

Leothebear wrote:
Any designs .../irritated the hell out of - you?

Well actually, I have the same cheese grater. Bugs me a little that the shape isn't great for holding when grating. However the one real issue I encountered was after grating half a block of cheese. I removed the grater element to find that the lid had been left on the container. So the half-block had filled the gap between the recessed lid and the grater, and reformed into a semi-solid mass.

Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

MrFoolish wrote:Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

That's everything made in the last 10-20 years then. I appreciate water saving measures usually but not when they are not, like when you have to flush 6 times and pray.

Sorcery wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

That's everything made in the last 10-20 years then. I appreciate water saving measures usually but not when they are not, like when you have to flush 6 times and pray.

We can start installing proper toilets again now we've left the EU.

Sorcery wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

That's everything made in the last 10-20 years then. I appreciate water saving measures usually but not when they are not, like when you have to flush 6 times and pray.

The counter argument is bogs used to flush with nine litres of water but modern bogs might use as little as three.

So once in a while you need six flushes using 18 litres, but the 30 other flushes that worked perfectly well with three litres, saved 180 litres of expensively processed drinking quality water going down the pan. A net saving of 162 litres by my arithmetic.

Edit to add:
Yes ok, arithmetic that is wrong!

MrFoolish wrote:Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

... which immediately got responses about loos using lower amounts of water.

The two are not the same at all really. Truly poor design is a loo whose flush uses lots of water yet fails to get rid of deposits. Good design is the opposite to that - and for a bonus, avoids either splashing you or needing frequent use of a bogbrush.

UncleEbenezer wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:Poor design - those toilet bowls which refuse to flush a slightly oversized deposit. You all know what I mean and you all know of such a toilet bowl.

... which immediately got responses about loos using lower amounts of water.

It was exactly the right response to an idiotic comment about the EU.

GS

GoSeigen wrote:

UncleEbenezer wrote: ... which immediately got responses about loos using lower amounts of water.

It was exactly the right response to an idiotic comment about the EU.

GS

I like BB software that gets quoting right.

And also the joy of a good knob cannot be overstated!

Something that gets the right amount of feedback in to the fingers of the user - isn't too stiff or sloppy
- the ones on a New York Big Muff are great
- or chicken heads on an AC30

Bloody dual concentrics where they both move by accident though -- grrr! That's irksome!

-sd

EDIT: I possibly should have used the word potentiometer rather than knob?

servodude wrote:

GoSeigen wrote: It was exactly the right response to an idiotic comment about the EU.

GS

I like BB software that gets quoting right.

And also the joy of a good knob cannot be overstated!

Something that gets the right amount of feedback in to the fingers of the user - isn't too stiff or sloppy
- the ones on a New York Big Muff are great
- or chicken heads on an AC30

Bloody dual concentrics where they both move by accident though -- grrr! That's irksome!

-sd

EDIT: I possibly should have used the word potentiometer rather than knob?

Yes… https://youtu.be/9tsVJjE0qAw.

GoSeigen wrote:

UncleEbenezer wrote: ... which immediately got responses about loos using lower amounts of water.

It was exactly the right response to an idiotic comment about the EU.

GS

What on earth are you talking about? I mentioned the EU merely as a joke. Chill out man.

MrFoolish wrote:

GoSeigen wrote: It was exactly the right response to an idiotic comment about the EU.

GS

What on earth are you talking about? I mentioned the EU merely as a joke. Chill out man.

Sorry didn't see the invisible smiley.

GS

I'll tell you what bad design irritates me..... humans.
Why didn't they design humans with brains? I drove along a quiet road yesterday, no other traffic in sight. Approached a pedestrian crossing and the lights changed to red just before I got there. A guy was walking away from the crossing along the pavement on the other side of the road, staring at his mobile. He had obviously got to the crossing, pressed the button, saw there was no traffic and crossed the road, instead of seeing there was no traffic and crossing the road without pressing the button. Brainless. Pah!
doolally

GoSeigen wrote:

MrFoolish wrote:
What on earth are you talking about? I mentioned the EU merely as a joke. Chill out man.

Sorry didn't see the invisible smiley.

GS

You also didn't see the conversation went down the water saving rabbit hole before I mentioned the EU, so perhaps observation ain't your thing.

Sometimes the simplest ideas can be very effective. Among my design heroes is the unknown genius who put the snipper onto this:

Why, that's nearly as ingenious as my own idea of clipping the chuck key to the cable of my electric drill! (Patent pending, Dragons' Den here I come.)

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:Why, that's nearly as ingenious as my own idea of clipping the chuck key to the cable of my electric drill! (Patent pending, Dragons' Den here I come.)

Sorry, you're forty years too late. Mine was tied to the cable with string years ago, though my current drill is keyless, so the problem is sidestepped

Bad design: Wheelbarrows. Because of the design of most wheelbarrows you have to bend forward to move them which is bad for the back. They should have longer handles which are roughly parallel to the ground when lifted so that they can be moved whilst standing upright not bent forward.

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:Bad design: Wheelbarrows. Because of the design of most wheelbarrows you have to bend forward to move them which is bad for the back. They should have longer handles which are roughly parallel to the ground when lifted so that they can be moved whilst standing upright not bent forward.

You can get those. (Although the real art of barrowing is to put all the heavy stuff as far forward as possible.)

There are also builders' barrows that are narrow enough to go through a 27 inch doorway. Now those really are useful!

BJ

MrFoolish wrote:

GoSeigen wrote:
Sorry didn't see the invisible smiley.

GS

You also didn't see the conversation went down the water saving rabbit hole before I mentioned the EU, so perhaps observation ain't your thing.

Apologies, you're right, I have certain posters in the sin bin so I didn't see their posts, maybe why I missed the humour/irony.

GS

There are lots of examples of good and bad design.

I liked what was called Whisper Mode on a Merlin Helicopter. Taken from the film Blue Thunder, about an advanced police helicopter that had whisper mode. Ideal for hovering outside buildings.

Helicopters are known to be noisy and suffer vibration so having this system did actually make a difference in levels of vibration and some noise reduction. Its clever and fitted to some other Euro copters products.

Sometimes is something really simple like a triangler Plumb tub. Cheap and ideal when emptying water out of a radiator. It even fits around the inlet pipe So much better than a tupperware container trying to catch "most" of the water.

As for bad, isn't there a thread on here about Interactive Investors "improved" website or what about condensate boilers. Which stop working in winter! This is due to the cold freezing the outlet pipe which is outside and small for the tiny bit of water freezing and blocking up the pipe.