74 Ridiculous Design Choices That Turned Perfectly Useful Products Into Frustrating Messes

Designing something people can use starts with figuring out how it should look, feel, and function. According to Miro, a collaborative platform for working with AI, whether someone is creating a virtual or physical product, they need to understand consumers and align the item’s design with the company’s objectives.

Before writing any code or even inventing anything, businesses must bring together User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) specialists to conduct research, perform business analysis, marketing, and eventually to define all the design elements. This last step matters because even the most innovative ideas can fall flat if users find the product absurd, weird, or hard to use.

The most important element of any product is its visual appeal because it shapes a consumer’s first impression, builds trust, and communicates the brand's identity. That’s why innovators should focus on layout, colors, and typography, as that can draw people in at first glance.

Another essential part of product design is its functionality, which demonstrates how well it works. Every invention should be intuitive, reliable, efficient, and smooth to use, or customers might not want to try it again. That’s why designers need to spend a lot of time researching, prototyping, and testing every bit of the item before rolling it out to the public.

Good product design is about creating things that are usable and delight consumers. People need to keep coming back to the invention, either because it's intriguing or because it's easy to use. That’s why UX and UI researchers spend a lot of time on trials and tests, or else they might end up with something atrocious.

According to Cambridge Design Technology, a good product should empathize with the user’s needs and solve their problems in an uncomplicated way. A good example is when Coca-Cola changed its smooth bottle to one with contours so people could grip it better, and it also looked aesthetically pleasing.

The world is full of amazing products that have been adapted and reinvented to keep fulfilling consumers' needs. According to Analogy, a hardware design studio, a classic example is the Heinz Ketchup bottle, which used to be heavy and resulted in messy, slow pours.

Eventually, many frustrated customers pushed the company to change the packaging to an upside-down squeeze bottle that let the ketchup come out faster and more smoothly. This simple change let gravity do the work, so users didn't have to do more to get what they wanted.

Sometimes the smallest changes lead to the best product design, and Dyson understood this, which is why they completely changed their vacuum bags. Their founder realized the machine’s suction weakened as the dust bag filled, so he set out to fix it.

Instead of changing the bags, Dyson created 5,127 prototypes and eventually decided to remove the receptacle completely. Instead, the company began using cyclone technology that separated dirt without blocking airflow, and that redesign completely changed the consumer experience.

When it comes to perfecting a product, it’s important to forget the old saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover.’ According to Tekglide, a consulting firm, people almost always choose a digital or physical item based on its appearance, which is why designers need to make sure consumers are drawn to their inventions. 

The best way to do this is to use clean, neat elements that help people feel calm and intrigued. Too much messiness or chaos can feel overwhelming, so even with fonts and colors, designers should opt for sleek, streamlined ideas. People also respond well to simple elements or drawings rather than products with walls of text.

As you may have noticed from this list, some designers expect consumers to roll with the punches and accept the weirdest ideas ever. Unfortunately, this attitude won’t work in the long run because people want smooth, efficient, quick-working inventions.

Anything that makes an individual’s day better without requiring many steps is exactly what they’ll choose over anything flashy. With digital products especially, designers need to make sure their invention works on any device without lag, or users will drop like flies.

A major part of good product design is accessibility, which means an item should be made with different types of people and their capabilities in mind. For digital products, inventors need to consider font size, contrasting colors so nothing fades into the background, and adjustable text.

Physical products should be easy to manage, hold, and use, not complicated or bulky. The best way for designers to assess an item's accessibility is to run multiple tests with a variety of people and keep making prototypes until something fits.

Being a designer isn’t easy, but it can be fulfilling if you make a product everybody likes. Unfortunately, some inventors are so chaotic they might be playing tricks on people with terrible products, as you can see in the photos in this list.

If you’ve ever come across something that’s been horribly designed, we’d love to see it. So please share your photos and experiences so we can all know what to avoid.