“I Swear Nobody Tested That Product”: 30 Products That Were Made By Someone Who Never Uses Them
Legendary German industrial designer Dieter Rams, who has 'carved' many of Braun's consumer products over the years, developed the 10 principles of good design, sometimes also called the 10 commandments. These principles state that the end result has to be useful and understandable, innovative, aesthetic, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and involve as little design as possible.
However, as illustrated in one Reddit thread, many things that are being sold to us fall short in multiple of these categories. Started by platform user DongLaiCha, it asked everyone the question, "What products are clearly made by people or companies who never actually use them?" and people were quick to respond. From clothing items to food packages, here are some of the most popular answers from the discussion.
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Customer facing software. Developers should be required to hire grandmas under the explicit condition that if grandma can't look at a menu option and decide what to click without giving up and calling the help desk your functionality has failed.
Women's clothing in general. Sizing is always weird, and we never get enough pockets!
This is why, as a woman, I have always hated shopping for clothes as far back as I can remember. Not so much for tops but for jeans/pants. You have to try on every single pair even if it's the same brand.
I have the most problems finding tops. The clothing industry seems to think that petite women with huge boobs don't exist.
Load More Replies...when you complement a women on her dress and it has pockets its the best thing lol "hey sis i love that dress!" "thanks it has pockets!" *girlie pop panic* ... "where... where did you get it"
These days, the quality is extremely poor. Very hard to even find a shirt that isn't see-through because the material is so thin. Cotton things don't just shrink once, but keep shrinking.
Ughhh the thin shirts you need to wear another shirt under
Load More Replies...Also need shoe options that are much wider without being longer or hideous or unaffordable
And not always pointy. Theyre never anatomically pointy, just elf shoe pointy. Can we be done making too narrow toe boxes, please
Load More Replies...a mans jeans might fit my hips, but I will have 5 inches of extra waist, and I look like a Christmas package, baggy legs and cinched waist. Sorry, men's clothing does not look right on this woman's body
Load More Replies...Even when we go by measurements - it still does not flippin work. I recently bought clothes ( stores have closed all fitting rooms) I went by measurements ( as I had to return everything when I went by size) - Same issue - they are not actual - waist measurement was not even close - I can not keep driving an hr just to keep exchanging the few clothes i am trying to purchase. As much as i hate amazon, at least I am able to return for free ( for now) although they have taken away my closer return location.
Vanity sizing is the worst. Can we just have measurements please? And then have the measurements actually be right? Please?
I am not arguing this isnt an issue BUT 82.7% of designers are women. So what gives? Are they all just masochists that want all other women to suffer or what?
It's not just the designers. The ancillary functions like sales, marketing etc. are mostly women too. And these are the people who understand what sells and what doesn't. Yet every woman I know asks for more pockets. I genuinely don't understand the dynamic.
Load More Replies...OMG and the aising varies from.brand to brand, so if I'm a small in one I'm an extra small I'm another.
Jeez just consistent sizing. You can pick up 3 pants by the same maker, same style and they don't fit the same.
Load More Replies...Yes! I currently range from as low as a size 4 and as high as a size 14. Sizes for women are just irrelevant - you have to try on every single item.
My mom loved buying dresses in this one high end store because she could wear a much smaller size. They really like to stroke rich women's egos (we were far from rich, she bought it for mother of the bridezilla)
Load More Replies...I have decided that the way womens clothing has been traditionally designed is so that: Lack of pockets means you will carry a purse. Odd sizing to keep you emotional about your size. Poor quality to ensure you have to keep buying more, sooner. (planned obsolescence) I find things that fit and buy several pair/ sets whatever and wear them till they die.
I bought a suit for a speech and debate tournament, but when i tried to put my phone in my pocket, I found that it was sewed shut! It was still there, but the top had been sewed over. Why?? It’s literally there for me to use, why cant i use it?!
Looks only, using it will cause it to sag and not look as nice. But who cares? Nothing lasts forever
Load More Replies...Men's pants are sold by waist and inseam measurements, so while there is considerably variation between shirt sizes, pants usually aren't a problem. I assume the same isn't true for women?
Nope i went by waist measurement, it hung like a sack - now it is possible the measurement will be closer after the washing shrinkage - but then you can not return it.
Load More Replies...I have to go a size up on sandals/ flip-flops/sides and find a way to adjust them to fit cause of my long toes.
I used to have a really narrow waist, about 50 cm to hips 86 and bust 98 cm. Menopause took my waist away, and regaled me several extra kilos. The silver lining? Men's clothes now fit me fine. Reliable sizing, and WONDERFUL, multiple, spacious POCKETS!!
I suspect the "no pockets" thing largely because women carry purses with them (or are expected to at least)
bought two tops from the same store yesterday, in one I was an XS and in the other a medium, they cant even be consistent in the same company!
Pockets! It's not a big ask! I would kill for a pair of pants with decent size pockets...I went to clean out my bfs pockets for laundry n I literally put my whole arm almost to my elbow all the way in! Like, really?? I'm lucky if i can get a finger into one of my front pockets
I've posted a recent YouGov poll about this. Only 8% of women have refused to purchase an item because it didn't have pockets, despite 40%-50% saying they want them. IIRC. Sorry ladies, you won't get pockets until the revealed preferences are closer to the expressed preferences. On the other hand, I've never understood why sizing for women's clothes is expressed as a single number when women's bodies have so much more variance than mens. It's madness. I just measured myself for a big boy suit and there were like 10 different measurements.
Seriously, pockets. I have dog coats for my dogs to wear, and, wait for it... they have pockets. Actual pockets. With snap fasteners. For dogs. And yet 98% of my clothes, as a woman, so not have pockets. Infuriating.
Lol, we had a pack for our dog (never put it on him) big pockets to carry all his stuff
Load More Replies...Sizing has gotten much much better!! I am very curvaceous and most of my life it was always hard finding jeans that fit right. The rear end but too small and the waist too big, now I find bottoms in most brands that fit just right. That was never the case 10 years ago.
have you tried shopping for men's "normal" clothes? the probable is no exclusive to woman's clothes
Had a coworker, she was 6'3" she had to buy her pants in the men's section because they were unhemmed.
Load More Replies...Yeah, Levi’s please take note. Don’t just put waist and leg measurements on your jeans, put sizes on them so I know what to get. No, I am not buying a tape measure just for this purpose. Although the state of my finances, I have a snowball in hell’s chance of getting a pair.
Uhm.... waist and leg are kinda the most important thing on a pair of jeans, ain't it? Then again, I *know* I don't usually fit in Levi's so it doesn't matter the waist-size. On Levi's, it's the thigh-size that's the problem.
Load More Replies... Most online job applications. If you know, you know.
KAG25:
Upload resume, now fill out these 10 pages with the same stuff that was in the resume.
I swear that people who design some shampoo and conditioner bottles have never tried to use them while wet.
Bras with removable padding. I know exactly zero people who enjoy having to fish those pads out of the washer and or dryer and try to put them back in place. And someone even made a tool to re-insert them?? Just sew them in the first time, cowards!!
Also larger sizes with padding. Last thing I want is to make my boobs look even bigger!
So many baby products!
Baby gates - I don't want a baby gate that requires two hands to open, because one arm is busy *holding the baby*. Ideally there would be one with a foot operated lock/unlock mechanism, so I can hold the baby and (luxury!) up to one other thing as well. Baby wipes that stick together when you pull them out of the container, so you end up with a long damp string of wipes that you can't pull apart because the other hand is busy holding the squirming baby legs up off of the pile of diaper contents.
Strollers that require two hands to collapse, and assume that all parents possess the grip strength of a silverback gorilla. I want to be able to open and close that thing with one hand, people. One hand!
If you've found hacks to get around these issues that's great - my point is they shouldn't be issues in the first place. For the amount of money you pay for baby products, they should be designed in such a way that a parent *holding a baby* can actually use them.
How the heck does one keep a baby from unlocking a foot-operated baby gate?
Flour bags. Whose f*****g b******t idea was it to put the most powdery, messy substance in a PAPER BAG that I can never open without tearing a mile down the side? And *never* seals in a way that isn’t obnoxious and stupid.
Period products.
veggie_saurus_rex:
I've always thought this, glad there has been a call out! Blood and mucus are not easily absorbed like "mysterious blue liquid".
elfowlcat:
Stupid sticky wings that leave all the sticky on the outside of the underwear!
In education, the administration (especially the board of education) are too far from the work that actually goes on in the classroom. I've taught for a long time and have never seen a Board of Education member in a classroom. Principals think they know what's going on because they do observations, but the part they don't understand is how the layers of "c**p" they add to the workload affects the teachers...or how that eventually affects the students. Administrators add layers of c**p because they think that is their job. Instead, they should view their job as removing c**p so that teachers have the time and freedom to have the most purely academic and meaningful interaction with the students.
Ours has a couple MAGA members. Spend most of their time hunting for "woke" curriculum and using public whispers to crucify teachers, FOIAing personnel files, etc.. One interaction I had with one of them accused my co-worker of stealing a bag of soda cans (Michigan) from his place of business. When he first asked "who owns that truck?", he ASSumed it was a coworker who has lobe gauges. What a clown...
Child proof caps on arthritis medication. W.T.F.
If you take the child proof cap (that requires you to push down) off and smack the edge of it with a hammer you can separate the inner normal screw cap from its child proof outer layer. Then use as normal.
Economy airplane seats. I bet things would change if airline CEO’s had to spend 100 hours sitting in the economy seats they approved.
But they don't. And their aim would still be to make as much money per flight as possible.
Those toilet paper holder in public toilets that cut off at two sheets.
Not a product, but most laws meant to support low income households are designed by people who have no concept of poverty. The hoops you have to jump through are meant to be prohibitive, and the income thresholds for who gets help are arbitrary. Even in France and Germany, where I am and where there are lots of social benefits.
MY experience in the usa - many of the people who abuse the system - are members of the political party that accuses the other, for having welfare queens.
I can only assume cereal makers eat an entire box in one sitting, otherwise, they’d be on the phone to the ziplock people midway through their first bowl.
verydepressedwalnut:
While we’re at it, pet food bags. Why the fuck are those not resealable too? I promise my cats aren’t eating 16lbs in a day.
Our dog food bags have a zipper to close them. Okay they're 20kg bags so it's probably easier.
Paper straws.
I bought a package of reuseable straws in a kitchen-stuff store five years ago. Still using the first one - they're medical-looking rubber and they wash-and-dry very well.
Maybe a bit off topic, but in a meeting with a former colleague of mine, the person in charge of the metro for a nearby city admitted that he had never used the metro. Not that he didn’t use the metro, but that he had never used it in his life, even once. I suspect that this kind of thing isn’t uncommon for government services.
Bras.
Critical-Adeptness-1:
“Where is the most sensitive part of a woman’s breast?” “I’d say the nipple, sir.” “Great, thanks, I agree. So yeah let’s put the thickest, mostly bothersome stitch in the entire cup straight across where that nipple’s gonna be, ‘k? Cool, thanks team, get to work”
Strollers. I swear they only tested them empty or with a tiny doll inside a store while having nothing else to do.
Now, try to use it on a tilted pavement with a huge baby bag, 2 toys, an almost 2 years old, 2 big shopping bags, a car trunk to open with someone honking at you for your parking spot after having 2hours of sleep per night since months. And it's raining.
Condiment packets.
*Tear along this line*
The line is on the wrong spot!
The plastic line is too stretchy and didn't even tear!
The notch isn't even cut! My fingers are so greasy that I can't even grip it!
The jerk face who designed blister pack packaging.
Like why are the scissors in a package that requires tin snips to open and once opened will cut me like a knife?
I worked >10 years in printing of these evil things. You could tow a car with the blisters on some of these. We were supposed to collapse the blister and wrench it around to make sure that the package shredded before the blister came off, that was for the bulbs. You don't even want to know about the other stuff we made packaging for and what we had to put it through before we ran it. It's not your imagination.
New apartments designed to sell rather than be lived in.
I drove through an old (1980s) subdivision the other day and had a profound realization that we'll never have anything like that kind of living space again. Each house was different, the properties were big, high quality building materials. It just looked more like a neighborhood than a housing development. The new subdivisions like I live in might as well be cardboard sardines in a can. No personality, no space, just as expensive. All for the dollar of a small group of rich sociopaths. It's pathetic.
My over-ear headphones that for some unexplainable reason have touch, as in you have to swipe at the side of the earpiece to change volume, song etc. But it just doesn't work. 50% of the time when you want to turn up the volume you switch song. Especially when you are walking. Even worse, the headphones are unusable with a hood on because the touch reacts to the inside of my hood.
It's just horrible, and it serves no purpose! I swear nobody actually tested that product. STOP PUTTING TOUCH CONTROLS ON THINGS THAT DON'T NEED THEM!
Celebrity makeup and perfumes.
I doubt any of the celebrities have even tried them, let alone used them on a regular basis. Kylie makeup is the best example of this. Cheap makeup with an expensive price tag.
I have a hard time believing that celebrities use the boxed hair coloring you can get at any drug store. If I had the money, I would not be doing it myself and I would have a professional colorist. As a matter of fact, I don't believe it at all.
Plus sized clothing.
I don't understand how the boobage factor can be so small and the tent like dress part be sooooo tent-like.
Or that plus sized people don't get to have the same type of clothing pattern as a smaller piece of clothing.
I enjoy wearing really large T-shirts, but apparently the size is (most often) in width only, not length.
Paper towel dispensers (in public restrooms) that are operated by pulling on the paper towel itself. If you don't think to prep one before washing your hands, good luck pulling a whole sheet without it dissolving into tiny pieces of useless wet paper.
Tip - grab one before washing hands to turn off faucet, and use the 2nd one to open door.
The little foil seal (hiding under the plastic cap) that insists it's "for your protection" and requires needle nose pliers to remove. Bruh, I just want to add creamer to my coffee. And now my fingers hurt. 😫
Edit to include: and let's not forget the body jolting frustration that consumes you when you FIRST attempt to use/squeeze/pour said product only to discover your little foil friend has "safety first!" in mind.
Those pull tabs on the inside of the necks of olive oil bottles or sesame oil. So small, a finger barely fits in it, let alone grasp and pull it.
And the tab is too hard to grip and way too flimsy for the strength of the adhesive for the part that’s attached to the bottle. Plus, there’s usually plastic under the foil or cardboard, which itself doesn’t all pull off, so you’re left with a plastic seal that only has a tiny slit in it, after pulling everything else off—-and it isn’t easy to pull off either!
Those who make the "pull this flip to open" on plastic packaging of cold cuts.
jonnyoxl:
I don't even bother with bacon packs anymore.easier to just pierce the plastic with a knife.
Love that none of the english speaking people have noticed that is is horsemeat
Hospital beds. From the standpoint of the person who has to push it around and mess with rails that get caught in the mattress and plug it in with a long dirty cord that gets mixed up with another random cord that no one knows its purpose. No retractable cords so they constantly drag on the ground and try to trip you when pushing the bed. Brakes that are in the most awkward position that you have to invert your knee to reach with your foot. And worst, the screeching, ear-piercing alarm that they emit to “warn you” that the bed is not locked. Hospital beds are obnoxious.
Voice-driven phone prompt systems.
Note: this post originally had 65 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
The new milk bottle top that are slightly frosted in appearance, I know some who look for the bottle top when it is on, try and pour milk with it on or spend time looking for it on a work top. Not ideal for the visually impaired. They used to be either blue or green but now they say it if for recycling but the previous caps could be too or were they lying by showing the recycle logo on them.
Microsoft Equation. Whoever invented that went to only one mathematics class in their whole life - and dropped out. I'm very tempted to say the same about major components of Microsoft Excel.
Care to elaborate? I love Excel. Way better than Google sheets.
Load More Replies...I guess having an opinion gets you down votes
Load More Replies...Feel free to bail out any time. It's just time wasting for bored people on the Internet. Clue's in the name 😂
Load More Replies...The new milk bottle top that are slightly frosted in appearance, I know some who look for the bottle top when it is on, try and pour milk with it on or spend time looking for it on a work top. Not ideal for the visually impaired. They used to be either blue or green but now they say it if for recycling but the previous caps could be too or were they lying by showing the recycle logo on them.
Microsoft Equation. Whoever invented that went to only one mathematics class in their whole life - and dropped out. I'm very tempted to say the same about major components of Microsoft Excel.
Care to elaborate? I love Excel. Way better than Google sheets.
Load More Replies...I guess having an opinion gets you down votes
Load More Replies...Feel free to bail out any time. It's just time wasting for bored people on the Internet. Clue's in the name 😂
Load More Replies...