A clock designed to be a specifically bedside clock needs to do one extra thing that a regular clock need not do, or it is not usable. As well as the clear imperative to Tell the Time. There is a key secondary imperative Be Visible In The Dark.

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I couldn’t resist this one. It comes from a business accounting package, and offers the confused user the opportunity to not save the information in the ’sale’ by pressing …. what?

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I sent an email the other day to a colleague and was slightly surprised to get a spam filter email as response. But I quickly rationalised this as a sensible and reasonable thing…I get a lot of spam…I’m not surprised…Maybe something I might end up having to do with an online account. Then I looked at the email and started boiling …

It read (or I interpreted) “You are a suspect…you are not allowed”. Had I really blown something up? I didn’t think so. I thought, I’m sure my colleague can’t know of this …so I clicked on, into more villainy and deceit… the next screen was worse…

So … if my colleague deigns to allow me in … now I’m getting more and more agitated. And the horrible thing is that the effect of this is reflecting on my colleague, not the awful reverse emotional design of this screen. It says “…if so-and-so chooses to allow email from your address”. This screen purports to speak for my colleague. It makes me think these are his words, not the words of this awful site.

The final screen just rubs it in, repeats the ‘choosing’ insult, then asks me if I want more information about spam blocker. Do I hell!

Interestingly, its perfectly usable. Didn’t stop me, and I found all the buttons. But it was definately NOT a good experience. In fact, this is the worst emotional design I have seen, obviously built from ignorance. And there is no need. The design should be focussed on providing a good experience for those like me legitimately trying to be in touch. It should support my rationalisations of security and safety and communicate apology and friendliness. The spammers dont care what you say, but your colleagues do, so don’t alienate them with design like this.

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Sometimes you come across something so poor, you just can’t believe someone who calls themselves a designer could ever manage to not think past the pixel.

Take a look at the scrolling area on the right of the screen here. You see the curved piece of design bottom right? It obscures the text so you can only read about three lines at a time before having to scroll again, just three lines. And again, just three lines (ad infiitum).

Perhaps Jakob is right, we should be stil focussing on usability, perhaps the web world just isn’t ready for the next step into experience design. Certainly, to design good experiences you got to have the basic usability in place, or you get a mess like this.

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I’ve seen some very poorly designed artifacts, but now I think I’ve seen the poorest. A machine that looks good, is attractive, has a task flow, but just can’t be operated solo. Its an air machine. It pumps your tyres. Can’t be that hard. But it is!

This machine is high tech. It has buttons so you can set the correct pressure for your tyre, and then all you have to do is press another button, and the machine will automatically pump the type up to the right presure. And it is in this cleverness that causes problems.

The nozzle of the air pump has no lock. It has to be held onto the valve on the tyre. And all but one tyre will be well out of reach when it comes to pressing the ‘pump my type up’ button.

So its impossible to use for one individual! Luckily Alison was in the car so she got to stand by the machine and press the button. This piece of brain-dead design makes the Puffin Crossing look inspired … I continue to be amazed.

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