Recently I've been wondering why, in this technological day and age, we still get things that have been so badly designed in some of the most basic ways. Here's two examples, one computer related and one not.

Firstly, the USB connector. What on earth possesed the designers of this to create such an unergonomic connector? You know the one I mean, the rectangular connector that has all of four wires in it (five if you assume that the metallic outer layer is a ground). It drives me mad when I'm trying to connect things, especially at the back of a machine that there is no way to easily identify which way round the damn thing goes. You could argue that there's the little logo thing on one side of the connector, and that matches up (sometimes) to the same logo on the socket, but it's so small and you need to be able to see it that it's as good as useless (especially if your vision impared). It seems like the most trivial thing to have made the shape of the connector asymetric (like firewire, serial, parallel or VGA connectors for example). Why didn't someone spot this? It's really not like it's rocket science, it's just common sense.

Secondly there's my washing machine. Having had some plumbing problems to deal with has meant I've had to pull the machine out from under the counter and put it back a number of times recently. Since the machine spins several kilos of washing at very high speed it requires significant damping which typically takes the form of concrete blocks strapped to the drum. This obviously makes the machine heavy. As a designer of such a device you would think the logic would go something like this: This machine is heavy. This machine needs to fit in a space under a counter in a kitchen. This machine needs to be moved in and out from this space occasionally. Why don't we put wheels at the back so that when you lift the front a little it's easy to roll out? Obviously the designers of my machine didn't think like this, in fact I don't think they thought about this at all as there are no wheels, just high friction rubber that makes moving the thing (especially back into place) far, far more difficult than it needs to be. Again, the application of basic common sense could make the thing much more user-friendly.

The other major design flaw of this machine is the signal used to tell the user that a cycle has finished. The machine beeps, giving a clear audible signal. Great, that's what I want. I don't even mind if it beeps more than once. This machine, however, beeps fifteen times in the space of five minutes. It's a washing machine, for goodness sake, not a nuclear reactor about to melt down! Of course, this is the kind of thing you don't find out about until you've bought the thing, got it home and installed and it's too late to change it.

Maybe design courses at University should include a module on the application of common sense to design. I guess that would be too sensible.