
The Holmes 1-Touch Heater - marcopolis
http://toastytech.com/guis/heater.html
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amelius
> The single button makes the unit appear simple to operate, but having
> operated one myself and as I watched a number of other people attempt to use
> them it was apparent that it was not so simple.

That sounds awfully similar to my experience with both Apple's home-button,
and their one-button mouse.

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onli
If you like that article, you might also like Donald Normans The Design of
Everyday Things, [https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-
Expand...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-
Expanded/dp/0465050654). It has a lot more examples for these kind of bad
designs, and it also explains why these designs are bad and what makes a good
design. I can't recommend it enough, everyone that ever might design a product
or a GUI should have read it.

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rwmj
My personal "favourite" are refridgerators with a dial for setting 1 - 5. Is
that Celsius? [no it's not] Is "1" a low or high temperature? Usually "5" is
the lowest temperature (presumably for "5 = most cooling power").

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ulucs
I really like 2d approaches on knobs: turn to adjust heat, and press it to
turn it on/off. My car stereo does this for volume and it's quite graceful to
use. Analog controls with continuous domains really go well together

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DKnoll
As a sysadmin I consider this a UI improvement. Please make space heaters
unusable. Your other equipment will last that much longer.

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keganunderwood
I'd prefer about 60°F (which causes a lot of complaining in many places so I
don't express my preference) but I hope the author is joking about using a
heater in the summer.

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pjc50
I have tragically been in an office where someone was so uncomfortable with
the consensus aircon setting that they had their own heater under their desk.

Open-plan offices are hard.

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nradov
Closed-plan offices are also hard in most buildings. The HVAC vents are set in
fixed overhead positions, and then the tenant has to subdivide it into
offices, meeting rooms, break rooms, etc. Those never seem to line up properly
with the vents, and the temperature sensors are in different spots, so some
rooms end up freezing and others too hot.

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pjc50
(2005) with 2000-era web design :)

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rwmj
You mean, it doesn't require Javascript to render the page? That's a feature,
not a bug.

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Dowwie
A brutal-designed web site about bad design! I thought I stumbled upon a time-
capsule web site. Neat.

I recommend the /r/crappydesign for more of these design gems

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rwmj
Did you have an actual problem accessing the web site?

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onli
It really is bad designed though. Tiny and too wide text especially, and it
also has a totally confusing site hierarchy that is not reflected in the
navigation menu to the left, that seems to have no link with the navigation at
the top.

