stupidity in design, part 3: usability

One would think that the point of designing something is so that the user can, well, use it. Oftentimes, though, products sport baffling design choices that lead to confusion and frustration.

On the one hand, there's design of excess. This is when people try to cram as much crap as they can onto the thing. I understand the desire to give many options, but when I see these:

What I really see is this:

(Above: Heeeeelllllppp meeee)

For the longest time, I didn't know what the difference was between 'menu' and 'guide'. Some remotes have a dedicated picture-in-picture button, whereas others you have to go through some portal to another realm before you can find it. To go back to the previous channel, it can be 'recall', 'back', or 'prev', and it will inevitably be located in some completely different location in each remote. It might as well be the 'go fuck yourself' button.

Of course, on the other hand there's the design of oversimplicity. I'm looking at you, Apple. Sure, their products are sleek and hip and oh-so-purty, but goddamnit sometimes it's a pain figuring out how to work the products. Take the iPod Touch, for example. It has a total of four buttons, but one's for power and two are for volume. That leaves one for functionality purposes, with the rest relying on the touch screen.

That would be fine and all, except I don't know what exactly that button can do. There's no manual. There's no hint in the interface. Nothing. It's like throwing your kid into the deep end of the pool to teach him how to swim.

(Above: "Good luck, son! I'm sure you know what to do from here!")

It took a random pushing of the buttons while the iPod was in my pants for me to figure out that you could play and skip songs without 'unlocking' the thing. It took a while after that to figure out how my pants did that.

But excess and oversimplicity are nothing compared to what I call design of contortion. When designers want to combine both simple outward appearance and many functions, it often leads to awkward situations. We're talking "audibly sharting whilst in a suddenly quiet room with your girlfriend and all of her close friends and family present" awkward. Apple keyboards do that with the shortcuts, as do PCs, though to a lesser extent.

The worst, though, is my watch. My crappy little digital watch that I've had since high school. It was an Armitron digital watch, and it worked well, except when I needed to change something.

Then it was a matter of holding 'mode' for 3 seconds to change the alarm, but another button if I wanted to change the time, but if I already pressed the button to change the alarm time, then I couldn't change over to the time-changing section. The fuck?

(Above: Yea, it's kinda like this.)

And because I got the watch so long ago, I don't have the manual anymore. So, after 6 years with the watch, I still don't know how to change the day and date. I think it's currently a day or two off ever since I changed the battery a few years ago.

If the same designers who design this stuff keep on designing, eventually everything will be button-less, and people will have to tap out commands in morse-code. At least it'll look cool.