userbinator 2 hours ago

IC: With AI getting bigger and more controversial and so on, have you used AI to create any of these designs?

That is an interesting point to bring up, because this type of "almost but not quite right" is exactly what AI seems to naturally create.

  • Gigachad an hour ago

    I think the difference is AI images tend to create mush or impossible geometry. The ideas here where a minimal change to the design renders the item entirely unusable takes a fair bit of creativity.

ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago

I’ve always enjoyed the “useless teapot” that Don Norman has on the cover of DOET: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61KtiLw7BtL...

  • drfloyd51 2 hours ago

    I believe it is actually called: The masochist’s teapot.

    I recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in design. Even today it is fantastic.

    • ChrisMarshallNY 20 minutes ago

      Reading it was a watershed in my life.

      I never look at doors, without evaluating their usability, anymore.

      • al_borland 7 minutes ago

        I bought a new door for my house recently. When the salesman asked what type handle/knob I wanted, I had a bit of an internal crisis. The one he said post people got seemed like it would create a Norman door, which I desperately wanted to avoid. I ended up getting a standard knob to avoid being the absolute lunatic who spent 6 hours debating the merits of various door handles, but had I been alone, I would have absolutely done that. I still feel like I made a mistake every time I look at my door.

        The book was a gift and a curse.

Gigachad 3 hours ago

I love that these are all fairly beautiful, stuff you'd really love to have if it wasn't fundamentally unusable.

whiteboardr 16 minutes ago

It's missing the Magic Mouse.

anonymous344 an hour ago

as a designer and innovator, i appriciete this. this gives me ideas really out of box, just to see these. amazing!

i also do this for ui and app logic: go to some Microslop service, they are all like these...sad but true

eszed 2 hours ago

What's wrong about the glasses? I've been staring at them and trying to figure out why they're unworkable, as opposed to just a quirky pair of specs.

  • jaden 2 hours ago

    The sharp angle of the bridge would dig into your nose.

  • parallel 2 hours ago

    Pointy bit on the bridge of the nose.

  • starmole 2 hours ago

    the sharp point on the bridge is going to hurt your snout.

  • anonymous344 an hour ago

    you don't have glasses ever, i guess?

jrmg 3 hours ago

Now I’m wondering how you could create ‘uncomfortable’ versions of simple command line tools (ls, cat, more etc.) or perhaps shells.

Emacs and/or vi, depending on your inclination, have text editors covered already, of course ;-)

  • II2II an hour ago

    Well, bash offers vi and Emacs as editing modes. We're already covered on that front. Many of the parameters for ls are cryptic, making it awkward to use for anything other than routine tasks without referencing the man page. more is so limited that many people choose to use a program used to concatenation files (cat) as a file viewer. Those who don't want to reach for their mouse to use their terminal's scrollbar buffer will use less, since it does more than more. Don't bother parsing that last sentence with bison, unless you have a yacc to shave.

  • anonymous344 an hour ago

    jus used new ubuntu instead of ifconfig (weird name) it had ip couldnt figure from the help how to get actually show the ip

    so linux is already there

keithnz 4 hours ago

given the title, so may software developers must be living in bliss! /s