“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.
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.
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.
That generally put you in an endless loop because the ONE option you need is never offered—-and neither is a path to speaking to a human being!
Continually mashing 0 or # will most of the time dump you out of that hell and put you through to someone.
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Tip - For some, just keep repeating "agent" and it will usually get you a human.
Or, "sales" (even if that's not what you want) that is often a winner as they don't want to lose those...
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I just make a ahh sound, after it can not understand me I will be put through to an operator. I had tried the person please request - just to keep going through the menu. but when I make various "sounds" it puts me through.
“Representative” is still the magic word in most of these systems, but an increasing number are removing that option. Interestingly, heavy swearing will get you a live person in many cases.
My favourite is the phone number I used once for assistance that directed me to the website to use the virtual assistance bot, which in turn directed me to ring the same phone number that told me to use the chat bot.
When I can’t find a quick solution to my problem I just pick an option and the call handler will be nice enough to put me through to the right person. Saves me listening to all the waffle of each option and finding out it’s not in any
This is my most hated usage of "technology". You know what? Hire humans to answer phones!
And god forbid you happen to be somewhere noisy (ie my job is in the middle of an industrial road so we get loud, heavy trucks coming down all the time).
I strongly suspect this is by design because these companies or agencies want to either delay the speed at which you actually reach a live person or prevent you from reaching one at all. The work I do often has me on the phone trying to reach my country's immigration agencies. Every few years, this agency updates its phone system in ways that make it harder to reach a live human. The tricks I use to work around the voice-prompt system have to get more and more sophisticated to keep up.
Customer service...Customer service ...Customer service .... Representative...Representative... Representative. Human being... Human... being. Human.... Human... Person... Hello? Hello? Hello?
I don't want to hear even the first peep of a complaint about this unless you're Scottish. You have no idea. Hilarious case in point: https://youtu.be/NMS2VnDveP8?si=B9te5B88vhZ3qvNV
Sometimes if you scream obscenities' at the top of your lungs , a human will pick up on the line.
Some companies (like my phone company) will actually drop a call if their system senses you screaming obscenities, so no, that’s not a good idea!
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It used to be "Operator," but now most of them respond to "Customer Service."
When they're well-designed they're awesome though, tbh. Federal Express (shipper) and American Express (bank and charge/credit card issuer) come immediately to mind - best of the best in their industries in my experience. You can even text message them and get almost anything resolved without fuss or speaking to anyone.
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
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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...