Ever had a moment where you looked at a product and thought, “What were they thinking?” You’re not alone. We believe that we’ve all come across things that seem so poorly designed that you can’t help but wonder if the people behind them ever gave their creations a test run.
While many of us have encountered products that leave us scratching our heads, wondering if anyone on the design team actually tried using them, it’s a sentiment shared by countless. This issue caught the attention of Reddit user u/Stay-Thirsty, who posed an intriguing question on r/AskReddit: “What product was so poorly designed that you suspect the team that made it never used the product?” People from all over the internet began sharing their stories of design mistakes, and the frustration flowed in like a flood.
#1
Any sites with lots of text and ads in between. Scroll down, start reading, then the ad loads and your article shifts down a few inches. Go to click a link but suddenly the ad loads and you click that.
One of the biggest reasons I switched from iPhone to Android was so that I could use ad blockers on Firefox.
Image source: KerchBridgeSmoker, Ketut Subiyanto
#2
Pockets on women’s clothing.
Image source: Tubbygoose, Marco Arment
#3
Any stove or car with touch screens instead of knobs and buttons.
Image source: pintolager, BoneDaddy.P7
#4
Baby wipes.
Hey, you know when a good time to struggle with opening a package that says it has perforations but really doesn’t?
You want one? Here’s a chunk of 20.
You want a bunch? Here’s a tiny ripped corner.
You have 10 left on a trip and need to conserve? Too bad mother f****r, here’s the rest of the pack. Get your tired a*s to CVS.
Image source: Miklay83, Kim Love
#5
Faucets that are so short that you can’t fit both hands under them without touching the back of the sink. It’s so infuriating how common this is. I have to contort my hands to use them.
Bonus: faucets (most common in public parks and such) that are push activated and last only one or two seconds. Clearly not designed for proper hand washing.
Image source: chewystalebread, madgerly
#6
Any device that typically belongs in a bedroom that has an always on LED. I don’t need to see the LED at all times when I am sleeping.
Image source: Front-Two497, generalising
#7
Those sliding shower doors with an overlapping section that is impossible to clean without taking the whole door off.
Image source: StillHera, Thank You (24 Millions )
#8
All of the «tear here» markings on coffee packs, juice cartons, etc., mark the strongest/most tear resistant part of the package.
Image source: toru_okada_4ever, ashleigh290
#9
Cereal bags – why are they not zip lock yet?!?!
Image source: reallyfake2, Melissa Hillier
#10
Facebook. Used to be cool but now its 15 ads in a row and a rant from my friends friend from 3 weeks ago i already read a hundred times
Image source: hullutyokaveri, English106
#11
Womens underwear. The part that is supposed to get dirty is never far enough forward to catch what its supposed to catch.
Image source: NotThisAgain21, Brandie Heinel
#12
My dishwasher beeps several times loudly when the cycle is done. Loudly enough that you can hear it outside the house. If you don’t open the door, it will beep again 45 minutes later, and every 45 minutes forever until you do so. There is no way to silence this feature or reduce the volume.
Apparently there’s no such thing as starting the dishwasher at night and then going to bed in these designer’s minds…
Image source: SloeMoe, Joanna Bourne author
#13
Single ply toilet paper
Image source: yamaha2000us, Micah Sittig
#14
I had an automatic litter box that was fine for pee but the motor was way too weak to scoop poop and regularly got stuck. Also, poop tended to stick to the tines and make a big mess. I called the (small) company. The rep told me that the box design was tested using water and was never tested in a real life situation with real cats as no one there had a cat. She didn’t understand why this was a problem.
Image source: MildredMay, Ewen Roberts
#15
Toys that only have one volume: EXTREMELY LOUD!!!!
Whoever makes these does not have kids of their own.
Image source: agirl1313, Nenad Stojkovic
#16
The word “latinx” as a gender-neutral way to refer to Latinos.
Whoever came up with that nonsense had never even taken a Spanish 101 course. “Latinx” is simply unpronounceable in Spanish – even a 5yo speaker would know that – and the real gender neutral word would be “latine”, but even that is very rarely used
Edit: stupid spelling
Image source: biggaybrian, Pixabay
#17
Sanitary pads
Especially ones advertised as “zero bunching” – they most certainly do bunch. They will go straight up your bum crack. They can only have been designed by someone who doesn’t use them to have made that claim
Image source: ArcadiaRivea, Marco Verch Professional
#18
Pots with handles which get burning hot when you heat the pot.
Image source: Brukselles, Jernej Furman
#19
Software drivers for basically any HP printer made in the last three decades
Image source: ThadisJones, G B
#20
Okay, bear with me here… all these grocery items in plastic that have a ziploc closer as well.
The idea is great! Open, use, reseal.
But in my experience (and I’m not exactly old and weak) these don’t work as planned. Frequently they have the perforated section you can rip off, supposedly to allow access to the ziploc portion. Many times there’s glue holding pieces together and the perforated section never seems to extend past that.
Even when not glued, the ziploc is apparently held together by the weak nuclear force and will NOT come apart. There’s never enough plastic to pull on, and when there is it’s approximately as strong as wet tissue paper. So it just rips.
IMHO the worst offenders are deli meats, but it’s been tortillas and more that have flummoxed me. Far too often I just take scissors to the package and then ‘seal’ it later with a clothes pin.
Image source: jonrpatrick, maplegirlie
#21
If you’re short and left handed, pretty much everything. Scissors. Grocery aisles. Kitchen cabinets. Pants. knives and forks. Over-the-stove microwave ovens. There is no end …
Image source: Ramscales, nishantcm
#22
Kids bubbles where the container is a test tube with a rounded bottom so it can never be set down unless the cap is on
Image source: r_avocado, Tim Pierce
#23
The trunk wont open on some Chevrolet cars if the battery is dead. There is no key hole, or physical release cable.
The battery is in the trunk.
You can jump it from contacts under the hood, sure, but that’s such an odd design choice to me.
#24
Literally just printers in general. I’d be amazed if anyone here said they’ve had a printer thats always just cooperated and printed with no hassle. It’s always “no” ink, or can’t connect to printer, a jam, a power issue, simply not doing anything, etc.
Image source: Rising-Ark, rjp
#25
The newly-built ladies toilets in our office building which had no space for the sanitary products bins. The bins ended up awkwardly shoved into the too-small gap with the net result of making the actual toilets too narrow to sit on. Fully expect those dimensions were drawn and approved by someone who had no use for the bins or didn’t even know they were present in every toilet.
Image source: CherenkovLady, dirtyboxface
#26
Dyson vacuum cleaners. They may be great if you live in a pristine, lovely house – but when it’s an old house and you add 4 cats, a dog and 2 children it’s a useless piece of c**p where the cleaning head needs to be de-clogged every 10 minutes. And you almost need to be an engineer to disassemble, clean and reassemble it. I hate that f*****g piece of trash and am very, very sorry that I sold my reliable old Hoover. I am positive that Dyson and whoever else was involved in creating this masterpiece has never actually had to clean a house. Sucking up pieces of styrofoam at the testing clinics is not a real world example.
Image source: Moos_Mumsy, Michael Aulia
#27
Some road intersections make me wonder if the engineers have actually ever driven a vehicle.
Image source: imdstuf
#28
The Apple Mac chargeable cordless mouse. Cos you can’t use it while it’s charging. Dumbasses
Image source: Solid-Actuator161
#29
Made it and don’t use it? The metaverse
Image source: theunclescrooge, Benoît Prieur
#30
I just bought a waterproof cargo bag for the roof of my car that was fairly expensive
The Velcro that keeps the zipper protected was just GLUED ON, not stitched
The very first time I opened the bag all the Velcro came off because the attraction to itself was stronger than the adhesive bond to the vinyl bag
It’s like there was absolutely zero product testing, but I’m sure it was 5 cents cheaper to make it glued rather than stitched. How could something like this have ever been allowed to leave the factory?
Image source: Dustmopper
#31
My new £1000 washing machine. Does a great job washing clothes and is all singing and all dancing. But all this additional stuff adds complexity and is an absolute bastard to clean. The detergent draw has all this fancy stuff my old didn’t and I just get so much mold growing. Have to take it all apart and clean it so often. It’s so annoying.
Edit: everyone telling me to ‘leave the drawer and door open’….yeah I get that. But that’s why I answered the original question. Stupid design that I have to leave the doors open when not in use. It’s dangerous (with kids and cats!) and it gets in the way. Stupid design
Image source: Dannysan5677
#32
Plant pots with non drainage although they look like they did.
Image source: Global_Fail_1943, Lindsey Turner
#33
My new iron. Has a restart if you tip it over after it’s timed out. So if you accidentally leave it plugged it and it gets knocked over by accident (pet or child bumps the board, wind knocks something over knocking the iron over) it starts up while face down.
Image source: tangcameo, noricum
#34
Bacon packages. Can I get a ziplock for it? I don’t want to eat 30 pieces of bacon in one sitting.
Image source: edie751
#35
My kitchen trash can. It is one sold by Glad specifically for their bigger, extra strong 20 gallon trash bags. It is not particularly cheap.
It looks good, but the design of it is what you might expect if you told aliens what a trash can is and they designed one without ever seeing it. How it holds the bag basically causes you to lose 4 gallons of capacity and have to risk tearing the bag or spilling its contents every time you go to remove it. It also has a trash bag holder that is so narrow, you have to feed it trash bags one at a time, completely defeating the point. And if you try to compact the trash a bit, you’re almost guaranteed to tear the “tear resistant” bag.
Such a poor design.
Edit: For everyone who keeps commenting about how I should recycle and compost… I do. That has nothing to do with my trashcan…
Image source: samanime
#36
Most of todays can openers.
Image source: OldMork, Didriks
#37
Most web sites, but for some reason especially those designed for use by elderly people such as medical sites and insurance.
Image source: zerbey
#38
The shift on a Nissan Pathfinder. Trying to get it into neutral is like a carnival game. Almost destroyed it trying to enter a car wash.
Image source: darth-skeletor, Stevan Sheets
#39
My refrigerator has a water filter that cannot be changed without turning off the supply… Which is behind the refrigerator. So you have to pull the multi hundred pound fridge (with all the food and such) out to turn the water off before you can change the water filter.. The old Maytag it replaced had no such requirement.
Image source: brina_cd
#40
Cardboard tampon applicator
Image source: Sandwichlover7504, tampax
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