Ministry of Crap Design

[Trinoc]

AARRGGHH!!!

OK, you win! Beats Hemel Hempstead and High Wycombe hands down!

When I was at university in sunny Colchester in the late 60s / early 70s there was a roundabout on the ring road -- I think it was the one at the entrance to Colchester North railway station -- where the MOT experimented with new silly road layout ideas. Almost every time you drove past/over/round it there was a different temporary layout built out of cones and concrete blocks. The one I remember with most affection was a cluster of five mini-roundabouts -- one in the middle and one next to each of the roads coming into the junction -- where (if I remember correctly) you had to go around each of the satellite roundabouts in the usual clockwise fashion, but around the central one anticlockwise! I think that one lasted about 1 day.

[chaggle]

Not bad design but... In Plymouth there's a roundabout called Hexagon Square.

[Mulder]

What about parking spaces that take a whole car! Who came up with that ridiculous nonsense?

I just saw someone had moved a wheelie bin, that was left in a parking space, so they could park their standard size car across two parking spaces. Why didn't the designers think of that possibility, eh? Just tell me that!

[Trinoc]

Going against the tide with an example of good design -- though one I've only seen once and it was removed when the car park was "refurbished". A shopping centre in North London was originally (mainly) Japanese, then became general oriental, and is now sadly being demolished for (probably luxury) flats. Maybe it's a Japanese thing, but when the car park was first laid out there were two lines between each pair of car spaces, so that you aimed to park between the inner lines, with the space between them and the next car being enough to open doors. This got around the issue you find in almost all car parks, where people think it's OK so long as their wheels are within the lines, even if it means their doors are six inches from the doors of the similarly off-centre next car.

Needless to say, when the next owners brought in (presumably British) contractors to re-paint the lines, they saved on paint and reverted to only one line per space, and the usual door-opening problems resumed.

[chaggle]

Don't talk to me about car park design!!!

OK. Cars carry people, they have no other purpose. A car park services another facility - it might be a shopping centre, airport, station, the NEC - could be anything. When the cars are parked the people have to get from their cars to the facility.

So why are there never walkways, pavements or anything to keep the people (who are now walking) away from the cars that are being driven, reversed and otherwise manoevered into or out of too-tight bays or are cruising with drivers only looking for empty bays or burning rubber trying to get the f*** out of the place and certainly not looking out for walking people????? Eh?????

[Trinoc]

So why are there never walkways, pavements or anything to keep the people (who are now walking) away from the cars that are being driven, reversed and otherwise manoevered into or out of too-tight bays or are cruising with drivers only looking for empty bays or burning rubber trying to get the f*** out of the place and certainly not looking out for walking people????? Eh?????

Some supermarket car parks have pedestrian walkways between the rows of cars, with posts so that the cars can't drive over them -- it's about the only good thing I have to say about (some) ADSA stores. You can bet, though, that when a design review comes up, someone in finance will say "Look, we can get in 30% more parking spaces if we remove these walkways!".

[chaggle]

While we're on supermarket car parks, what is the purpose of the Tesco's "Pick up Point"? People I know just use it for regular parking on the grounds that they are there to "pick up" some groceries. But it must be for a different reason than the normal car park. What are the rules? Anybody know?

[polomint38]

While we're on supermarket car parks, what is the purpose of the Tesco's "Pick up Point"? People I know just use it for regular parking on the grounds that they are there to "pick up" some groceries. But it must be for a different reason than the normal car park. What are the rules? Anybody know?

It is for people on legitimate bussiness (I.E. me) to wait for as long as I want to collect my shopping. Everyone else should use regular spaces.

[al_capone_junior]

In fact packaging designers in general should be condemned to the bottom of the list for swine flu vaccination.

Or the vaccine batch with EXTRA thermerisol

OK I got one. Was on a plane yesterday and out of boredom I looked at the catalog in the seat back. There was a portable emergency tire-filler-upper, radio, AC/DC power pack, jump-starter all in one thingie that also had a friggin' USB port. They touted it for all sorts of extreme doomsday scenario type situations with some crazy seller language like "turn a life or death situation into a mere amusing anecdote." Like those life and death situations where the clincher is a friggin' USB port. Sheesh.

[Graham Lappin]

The recorded message on the ISP help line that I called when I lost internet connection that referred me to the website!

Later I discovered the ISP had an outage but they had apparently let their subscribers know by sending out an email.

[seren]

My laptop died and I had to buy a new one. I discovered that my old internet connection (via a dialup thingummy) doesn't work with MS Vista. I discovered this because as I attempted to install the drivers, I was faced with an error message that told me to visit the manufacturer's website for more information on why I cannot access the internet.

Fortunately I was able to go out and spend MORE money I haven't got on a wireless router, and now I am back, as you can see. Not happy with my (superfast) sarcastic laptop, though.

[Graham Lappin]

Not happy with my (superfast) sarcastic laptop, though.

With the risk of being Blitzkrieged, I don't have this problem because I have a Mac

[seren]

I'd still take sarcastic over "smug and self-satisfied".

[adl]

So I lived in Swindon for a couple of years and it coincided with my learning to drive. The Magic Roundabout is a thing of beauty for a 4-wheeled student, on the test itself of all things. I passed and moved on but that monstrosity has been a constant source of anecdotes in the years since.

[gareth]

Zoggs swimming goggles with "curved lens technology" for "180 degree undistorted peripheral vision".

These are fine until you put your head under water, when everything looks strangely blurred. The reason is not hard to figure out. A curved boundary between media with different refractive indices makes ... a focusing lens! Or in this case, defocussing. The effect is particularly disconcerting because, since the curve is in only one direction, the blurring is in just one dimension. Looking at the tiles on the side of the pool, with your head upright, the vertical lines are blurred, while the horizontals appear sharp. Its enough to cause a migraine.

It is not so much the fact that the designers of Zoggs goggles do not understand basic optics. (I hardly expect anyone under the age of about 40 to have had a science education). What really annoys me is that NOT ONE OF THEM COULD BE ARSED TO STICK HIS HEAD IN A FRICKING POOL TO TEST THE THINGS. They must have gone from drawing board to factory without a prototype ever getting wet. I suppose we should think ourselves lucky they don't dissolve or explode on contact with H2O.

These useless devices have been on sale in swimming pools for a couple of years now, presumably as a fashion accessory for "swimmers" who do not actually put their heads under the water. As the girl at the local pool said "we haven't had any complaints". Doh!