Poorly designed things that make using them difficult?

[Whatisthisfuckery]

Spice jars, who in hell has designed the dimensions of spice jars? What measurement of spices does one usually find in a recipe? Teaspoons. What can you not quite fit in a spice jar? A fucking teaspoon. Whose bloody bright idea was it to design a jar that makes it hard to dispense the most common measurement of the ingredient contained within?

Ahh, that’s better, I needed that rant.

Go on, rant away. What poorly designed thing makes you angry inside?

@goingtotown

Weetabix inner packaging, we open them over the sink.

hear hear.

Why oh why can't they sort this out

Lipsticks from the same company all in the same colour tube with the names printed in the tiniest of typefaces - are you listening MAC????

I have to put a blob of red, pink, coral or nude nail polish on them so I can differentiate or else it used to be like a mad game opening them all until I found the right one, which was always the last I opened! Why not just colour code the lids?

My local maternity dept gave out little cardboard bowls with a spout to wee into and decant into the sample bottles.

Another poster said similar, so I'm going to ask the hospital to look into this next time I go for an appointment. I've always been hesitant incase other women have some technique I'm missing...

Duvet cover buttons!!!!! I'm sure there is an angry bitter person sewing them up too small for the buttons.

WHERE ARE THE EASY POPPERS OF YORE!

@Dilbertian

My Kenwood stick blender. This is the lid of the mini food-processor attachment. It comes into direct contact with food. It gets splashed with food. If you open up the goblet to add ingredients, bits often get stuck inside the socket for the blade. Fair enough, so you wash it.

Only it's not washable. Not even by hand. This part of the food-processor, with all its little crevices and food-traps, cannot be immersed in water. Arggggggggggh

I clean mine with cotton wool buds. Ridiculous design.

Amen to the ruddy Hippo game stress! They never used to be like that in my day. And the ridiculous 'marble storage pod' that clips on the bottom can get in the sea, too. No sooner have I corralled the wretched things inside it, than my four year old gleefully pulls it off, sending them rolling back all over the floorboards. Where they've now remained for more days than I am strictly comfortable with.

[quote CaveMum]A lot of things like this are due to the world being designed by and for men - the dimensions of things like smart phones are based on the size of the "average male" hand; supermarket shelves positioned based on "average male" height, etc.

Read "Invisible Women" By Caroline Criado Perez, it will blow your mind!

invisiblewomenbook.co.uk/[/quote]
I remember that book being discussed here before and I meant to read it - thanks for the reminder @CaveMum! If I remember correctly the problem of the world being designed for men by men went beyond the irritations listed here. There were safety implications too I remember, for example crash test dummies not being weighted or designed as women with implications for the safety features in car design. Another example being drug trials often being carried out using male subjects so that dosing or constituents were inappropriate for women (let alone the lag in development of treating purely female health problems). These may be historical examples and not so relevant now I guess (hope).

Back to products. Any item sold in injection moulded plastic packaging and welded to a thick cardboard back (toys, kitchen gadgets, tools, scissors (as mentioned above)). HOW are you supposed to open them? Cut through both layers turning the plastic moulded front of the packaging into razor sharp shards?

Not quite the same but I'm a teacher so have to do lateral flow tests. Takes 30 mins officially for results and must be done before work on empty stomach then results logged on gov website. If it's inconclusive you have to take it again so can't eat or drink until you get a satisfactory result. I get an 'informative' text and email from the nhs every time i log a result informing me my covid test was negative. I fucking know! I took the test! I knew BEFORE YOU! I told YOU the results. And I'm HUNGRY!
Drives me absolutely mad twice a week....

Oh. I'm much crosser about that than I realised... 😁

apple carplay. useless fucking thing. switch engine on, connect phone, choose source as my phone and...nothing. go onto amazon music on my phone, select album and press play - this seems to entirely depend on how amazon music is feeling at that moment. sometimes it plays, sometimes it tells me there’s a streaming error. it’s slowly driving me MENTAL. i just want to listen to my music in the car, using technology specifically designed for this purpose.

(it’s a 2020 Toyota CH-R in case anyone knows the secret)

@Northernsoullover

Childproof washing pods containers. I can't open them. You need 3 hands! One per corner to depress the tab and one for the middle. Now my older teen and I open them together and I decant them. Bloody nightmare design

Oh yes this!!! I leave them open so I can access them more easily next time, thus negating the security of the lid completely.

@Whatamess666

Not quite the same but I'm a teacher so have to do lateral flow tests. Takes 30 mins officially for results and must be done before work on empty stomach then results logged on gov website. If it's inconclusive you have to take it again so can't eat or drink until you get a satisfactory result. I get an 'informative' text and email from the nhs every time i log a result informing me my covid test was negative. I fucking know! I took the test! I knew BEFORE YOU! I told YOU the results. And I'm HUNGRY! Drives me absolutely mad twice a week....

Haha I do lateral flow tests and the email/text is SO annoying. You tell them it's negative and then they text you to tell you it's negative. Argh.

@SwanShaped

My washing machine has a timer. Except it totally makes up the time. It can go one hour, 20 mins, 40 mins, 25 mins, half an hour then suddenly down to 9 mins, back up to 15 and then down to 5. I was so annoyed I looked it up in the manual. It said that all times are estimates and can vary.

I used to have a Zanussi washing machine that did this, the Engineer who repaired it once called them 'Zanussi minutes'

@YouokHun you’re welcome And yes you are right, there are many extremely serious implications of a world designed by/for men. A very current example being PPE that does not fit women correctly because it is based on male averages. Also things like police stab vests being designed around male bodies meaning female officers, with y’know breasts, find them extremely uncomfortable and in some cases unable to wear them correctly which compromises their safety.

Caroline Criado Perez has a weekly newsletter than you can sign up to on her website in which she discusses other current examples.

Oh and the Kindle version of Invisible Women is only £1.99 at the moment

Those washing pods are probably fine to use if you had man-sized hands.

I think so many things are not designed for me, a small but within normal range female.

Every car is built for a man. I can't see out the back (too short) . Seat belts are uncomfortable across my neck.

Did you know that women are much less likely to be involved in a road accident but if they are , they are 73% more likely than men to die? This is apparently because they don't bother to use proper female crash test dummies they just scale down the male one. Then use that dummy to stand in for 12 year old children too. Scandalous.

That was from Invisible Women too - cross post.It is a fascinating read

A vast number of things for we lefthanders living in a righthanded world.

Renault Megane. - the one with the bum. If you are going to have a crash then not a bad car to be in.

However its thick pillars and the angle of the windscreen pillar make an accident - particularly with a cyclist or pedestrian more likely. Very easy to loose sight of one. Rear over the shoulder visibility was also poor.

Sticky labels on jam jars etc that don’t come off cleanly.

Barcode stickers on wood at B&Q that come off but leave a near invisible residue that reappears when the wood is varnished/painted.

Over-engineered things. The plug on my bath. It’s one where you turn the knob on the side of the bath to lift the plug...except it never works! Something doesn’t connect properly so you turn the know but the plug stays down. Cue nail scissors in the ganky bath water trying to lever out the plug. Every time. I know it’s supposed to look nicer than an old style plug with a chain but you never had a problem getting the plug out with one of those did you?

Also ridiculously over-engineered: Guess Who. Whose idea was it to make the boards stand-uppable and the flaps open sideways so that children under the age of 12 are unable to play it without accidentally jiggling it and making all the flaps shut in the middle of a game. Also the pictures of the characters are so tiny on the selection panel part that it’s impossible to tell whether Fluff has whiskers or a pink nose or not..what was wrong with picking a card? Poor poor unnecessary redesign.

So called heavy gauge baking trays that buckle at 180c, which, when washed hold water between the layers causing rusty water to drip all over the floor when removed from the dishwasher.

Glass chopping boards and the people that use them, especially when they then moan about their knives being blunt.

@OkOkWhatsNext

I've got a plug with the twisty opening knob that's never worked since the day it was fitted. I solve it by tying a length of dental floss around the stalk of the plug and leaving the length trailing out in the water to pull at.

My washing machine has a timer. Except it totally makes up the time. It can go one hour, 20 mins, 40 mins, 25 mins, half an hour then suddenly down to 9 mins, back up to 15 and then down to 5. I was so annoyed I looked it up in the manual. It said that all times are estimates and can vary.

My car has estimated miles left and is stupidly annoying. Leaving the supermarket about 8 miles away it will tell me I've got 45 miles left, by the time I get home it will invariably say 15. Next time I go out, by the time I've backed off the drive theres apparently only 10 miles left. The drive is the length of my car btw!

And the plug in the basin in our downstairs toilet has about 2mm difference between being open and closed. My DC used to wash their hands in there after baking and it couldnt cope with any sort of crumbs or dirt. My DH had to take the whole thing apart!

Oh and non stick baking trays
They do stick!! And then you use something abrasive to get the welded on food off and that takes off the coating that was allegedly non stick ensuring thereafter that everything sticks!!

Incogweeto I'm so glad you feel the same! The last actual test is no bother at all anymore but the bloody text riles me up so much!