[IxDA Discuss] A badly designed site about bad design

[Lynn Leitte]

I'm offering up a diversion in this thread from a conversation about
the form and function of this little site toward a conversation about
the content of the site.

Interestingly, the site compiler makes no distinction between things
that are poorly designed and things that are poorly placed, such as
the mop sink. This mop sink is probably not poorly designed relative
to what it was intended for. It's placement leads to mis-interpreation
of its function or perhaps disregard for its function, if it is
understood not to be a urinal.

Also dismissed are the lines between "badly designed" (the fridge door
and the file cabinet) and "I didn't read the directions and couldn't
make it work, so it therefore must be poorly designed" (the parking
pass)  and "I have never experienced this before; everything should
work like something I'm already familiar with" (toothpaste and master
butter knife, which is for serving butter not for cutting things).

So the question in my mind is, why are these distinctions *not*
important? I think they are. Context and intent *are* important.

The implication becomes, when these distinctions are moot, that
everything needs to be intuitive and familiar. Yet, what is intuitive
to me may not be intuitive to another.  What is familiar some else may
be foreign to me.

What happens to pushing the envelope of design and functionality if
the criteria of familiarity and intuitiveness rule judging the design?

Did the design(er) inherently fail if the implementer has placed
something out of context?


Lynn



On 10/11/07, Matthew Nish-Lapidus <mattnl at gmail.com> wrote:
> The actual design of this site isn't very good.. but the content is fantastic.
>
> http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html