Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
then open in external browser
and click "Open in External Browser" 
39submissions
Finished
People Point Out 39 Popular Products With Design Flaws Everyone Has Just Learned To Accept
Article created by: Ilona Baliūnaitė
In his bestselling book The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman makes a sharp observation: there’s no such thing as “human error,” only flawed design.
So if you’ve ever hesitated at a door labeled “pull,” wrestled with the impossible plastic packaging on a slice of cheese, or spent your first day at a new job trying to decode the office coffee machine like it’s a riddle, you’re not alone—and you’re not to blame.
The truth is, design shapes how we move through the world, and when it fails, it’s worth talking about. That’s exactly what Redditors have been doing: calling out popular products that, despite being everywhere, still manage to frustrate.
Scroll down to see which ones hit a nerve for you too.
- Read More: People Point Out 50 Popular Products With Design Flaws Everyone Has Just Learned To Accept
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Plastic clamshell packaging the amount of times I've got cut.
RELATED:
#2
Scissors that are in packaging that can't really be opened with anything other than scissors.
#4
Every modern car with a touchscreen instead of buttons. It's just dangerous and needs banning.
#5
The bag in the box of cereals should be ziploc.
Josh Gallant 4 months ago
Buy it without the box, nearly every bag has a zip close on it now. Plus less packaging as a whole. Win-win.
#6
Food packages that are resealable but the glue they use is to adhere the seal zip to the bag is weaker than the seal. So when you go to re-open the seal, the seal zip pulls away from the bag and there goes the resealable feature.
#7
Anything I had to adjust as a left handed person to use because the standard is right handed only.
#8
Successfully getting plastic wrap pulled to the length needed, cut and actually placed on the item in a nice rectangle or square.
#9
The ‘push here’ perforated part of a cardboard box (like a box of kosher salt or corn starch) that NEVER works and instead just dents the box and makes it even harder to open.
#10
Why don’t toilets have a pedal you can step on to raise and lower the seat?
If you stand to pee, put one foot on the pedal and it will lift the seat. Walk away and it will go down automatically.
#12
Expiration dates on food packaging. It seems like it’s always a scavenger hunt to find them. It should be standard that they are always on the “front” main label.
#13
Shampoo and conditioner labels that look identical if you aren't wearing glasses. I have an idea for a brand called Shampoo (or conditioner) for People with Glasses, and the first letter of Shampoo is enormous.
#15
Hand soap pump bottles with the tube that’s not long enough to get out all the soap.
Madmorganna 4 months ago
I started saving longer tubes and if they fit the new bottle, clip it and replace it to fit all the way to the bottom of the new bottle.
#16
Trying to "type" anything on a search with the TV remote is excruciating. It's 2025, is this the best we can do?
#17
Any kind of squeeze bottle that can't be stood on its head. Ketchup, mustard, shampoo, conditioner, etc. When it's almost empty, let me stand it upside down so the last bit can flow to the opening!
#18
Shampoo bottles that flip open so easily in luggage but NEVER when you’re in the shower with slippery hands.
#19
The doors in bathroom stalls. Why is the gap so big? And why do they insist on making them swing inward on such a small space? I practically have to climb the toilet to get around the door to get out.
#20
The clear plastic film on things like potato salad with a tiniest little tab you are supposed to grab to pull it off. And the indestructible battery packaging.
#21
Playgrounds.
Somehow 90% of playgrounds were designed by people who haven't interacted with a child since they were one and have amnesia of their entire childhoods.
Let's make sure the slide is a dark color and angled in a way that it is baked directly in the sun for the majority of the day, that shouldn't be a problem, right? The bottom will be shaped so that all the gross rain water and dirt pools at the end for days after it's rained, so that will take care of that!
There are a lot of other toys and baby products that were clearly not designed by parents, but playgrounds are one of the worst.
#23
Whoever set the arbitrary length of the average bathtub needs dangling out of a window by their ankles, IMHO.
#24
Women's public restrooms. Older people and disabled need a bar to pull on to get up in all stalls. Seats need to be a trusted design not something to squat over or line with toilet paper. There need to bee multiple hooks so nothing has to touch the floor, for coat, purse, shopping bags. And wider stalls so you don't bump into your things. And toilet paper that you don't have to scratch for the edge. Maybe just bidets. Other countries have solved these problems (and many others) but we are stuck in our dysfunctions.
#25
It used to be that the next tissue would effortlessly pop up out of the Kleenex box, ready for use. Now you have to reach into the box, fish around for a tissue edge, peel one off the clump, and hope you don't rip it getting it through that awful plastic portal.
#26
Trying to place your cursor on iPhone texts. Like if I mess up a spelling two sentences ago, it is almost impossible to get the cursor to go the right place to make the correction. It highlights the entire word, or goes one or two letters over or entire words over from when I’m trying to correct. You can “drag and drop” the cursor too but that always seems to work worse for me.
Vaughn Henry 4 months ago (edited)
Click and Hold the space bar.. then you can use it to glide over to the correct place.
#27
Tabs on food packaging.
I think someone out there thinks they did a great job inventing something that enables people to give a slight pull and hey presto - bacon!
Sadly no. That person is living a lie.
#28
Steel paint cans! They're incredibly messy simply to pour paint out of into a pan or cutting cup, then you have to messily try to wipe the paint out of the groove so that you can close it without spattering paint everywhere, trying to seal it so that it's not dried up when you want to touch up the room. But then when you do, odds are great that it's rusted inside and as soon as you pry off the lid it drops a whole bunch of rust particles into that paint that you needed.
Of course professional painters don't care about this, they are long gone when you need to open that can again.
My mind was blown recently by Home Depot's new paint system of plastic cans with pouring lids. Goodbye Benjamin Moore, hello Behr!
#29
Where are my goddam files?
Windows, Apple, everything tries to hide the location where they're storing their files. No I don't want to default to storing on onedrive, I just want to be able to find my goddam files.
#30
The toilet brush. It should be fully hydrophobic or something so that it doesn’t retain toilet water after use.
#31
“Skip Intro” should be a setting, not something i need to select every 21 mins.
#32
I understand that battery compartments needed to be made more difficult for small children to open (specifically the type of small children who put everything into their mouths). But was a screw the best idea? A microscopic screw, threaded into plastic, and made of the softest metal available?
#33
The seal on bottles that has that itty bitty piece of plastic you’re supposed to pull to get it off. Absolutely never works. They should save the plastic and just have us do what we’re going to do anyway.
#34
Volume on streaming channels. Can we all agree on what 6is in volume and just let everyone scale from that. Watching Netflix volumes is ok. Switch to Hulu and IT BLOWS ME OUT OF MY SEat until I can find the remote.
#35
When trying to highlight something to copy and paste it elsewhere, why has the highlighting become less and less precise and harder to use? Sometimes it picks up a space after the words highlighted (even if no space exists). On some webpages it simply will never select the portion of text you want. Microsoft products, Salesforce, and online are all big offenders. It also seems worse in some browsers than others (one of the few things I don't like about Firefox).
Do people know what I'm talking about? This is on multiple PCs in multiple environments so no it isn't just that my setup is jacked. The UI just seems to get worse and worse.
Oh and if Microsoft can keep their hands off Notepad that'd be nice. I want a place where I can paste stuff to strip off any invisible markup tags/language.
#36
Absolutely any product that has an electrical cord... it should have cord management built in. The worst offender is my coffee maker. It makes the whole counter look funny because the stiff cord will not stay hidden.
#38
Bath bombs being shrink wrapped. Someone really needs to come up with a better way to package them. Getting them open often involves shredding part of the bomb.
#39
The reseal sticker on ground coffee. They never stick. Not once. You always have to use your own tape.
Madmorganna 4 months ago
Once I open a bag of coffee, I never leave it in the bag. I put it in an airtight container.
Explore more of these tags
You May Like "Opposite Of Bad Design": 50 Brilliant Design Ideas That Went Viral And Totally Deserved It (New Pics) 25 Times People Had Very Creative And Cozy Ideas For Window Seats People Are Sharing Their Decked-Out Bedrooms, And Here Are 30 Of The Most Amazing Ones
Justinas Keturka
Aivaras Kaziukonis
Žydrūnė Trukanavičiūtė
Related on Bored Panda
