Here is something I’ve never seen before. This is a control for pedestrian crossing light and is designed for blind people. Usually the use of braille or/and sound are involved for devices which are designed for blind people. But here there is nothing to touch or hear. The surface of the control is flat (so no button to push) and when the light goes green you don’t hear continuous tick sound to indicate it is safe to pass. So why is there a drawing of a blind guy on the device?

There is a red iron arrow under the device. I don’t know if that is for guiding blind people in the right direction or if it is just a screw used for opening and servicing the device. Even if that is to help blind people find their direction, if there is no sound involved to indicate whether the light is red or green, it is not only going to help blind people but is going to put them in the risk of having a car accident. 

Have you ever tried calling abroad via Skype on your smart phone? I did today and to my surprise it was not that straightforward. Usually when you are calling abroad you dial two zeroes before the country code, right? It’s not possible to do so on Skype on smart phone though. If you enter the code of the country, Skype recognizes the country but is not able to dial your number.

What you have to do is to enter a plus sign instead of a double zero. My question is, why? Why can’t I just do what I’m used to do? Why do I have to push and hold the zero button to enter a plus sign when I can easily just dial a zero?

A clock that can project the time if you clap, cool! But if you try to delete an alarm, then you come to conclusion that this clock was made in hell. It was a couple of days ago when we finally found out how to remove an alarm without taking the batteries out. :) As you can see, there are five buttons on the back of the clock. If you want to set an alarm you should go to the alarm mode by pushing MODE button which makes sense. But if you want to remove the alarm, you have to exit the alarm mode and push UP button to disable/remove the alarm. I personally like to know how the designer came up with this design solution.

Tea spoon

Look at this weird-shaped tea spoon.  I don’t know about you but whenever I’m offering my guests tea, the tea spoon keeps falling off the saucer. The shape of this tea spoon solves that problem but creates another problem. Let me ask you what do you do with your spoon after adding sugar/honey/… and stirring your tea? Do you put the spoon in your saucer or will you leave it in your cup? Well, I sometimes do one and sometimes the other. But if I leave the normal tea spoon in my cup and then drink my tea, nothing serious will happen. My tea spoon keeps rolling from one side to another till I get it out of the cup. But with this modernly designed one you should be careful. I stirred my tea; stuck the spoon in the wall of the glass while still being amazed by its shape, then kept talking with my friends. After a minute or so I picked up my glass and wanted to drink my tea. And there it happened; the spoon went right in one of my eyes. I’m OK, I’m OK! But it’s nice to see by making one little change in the shape of a tea spoon you can resolve one issue while adding another one. It is maybe not that big of a problem but still it requires you to change your habits (which is not that easy) and if you are not careful you may get hurt. 

I got on the bus and put my ticket in this ticket punching machine. Nothing happened! I took the ticket out and put it back in again. No, nothing! Is it broken? I let the guy behind me punch his ticket. Ah, that’s how it works? Weird! You have to put your ticket in then pull the black part towards yourself to punch the ticket. Since the affordability of the black part is not shown, the interaction with the machine gets really confusing. Putting a little arrow beside the black part could solve the problem or maybe the designers could design it like a slot machine with a handle beside it which shows its affordability.

“Oh, where should people put out their cigarettes? Do we have to change all our trash bins now?” As you can see they didn’t. They just enhanced the trash bins all over the city by adding “ash trays” to them. It’s a cheap solution, it doesn’t look good, but it’s simple, useful and it’s keeping the streets clean!

Our new fancy coffee machine is not that user friendly. There is a little screen on it where you can see the progress of the machine and whether your coffee is ready. In the bottom of the screen it says Sugar. “But how can I add sugar?” one asked. “Ah, push the metal buttons under the screen” one answered. “OK, I want coffee with milk and sugar” and she pushed Coffee with milk button. The machine started to make a constant noise meaning that the coffee is getting ready. “Wait a minute! It didn’t ask me how much sugar I want, can I add it now? Damn it! It says No Sugar” she kept pushing the plus button under the screen but no result. On the screen it said “The coffee is ready”. “OK, fine! But the lid over the cup is closed. Should I open the lid or will it open automatically? Hmm, it’s not moving I think I should do it. I hope I don’t break anything.” Yes, that was my first experience with our new coffee machine and no, I didn’t break anything. But you know what? Apparently someone else had the same problem with sugar because there was a whole mess around the cup holder in the machine.

This is a nicely-designed bathroom accessory. The soap container and the tissue box are integrated in the mirror which saves space for other things in the bathroom. The only downside is that if no tissue is hanging under the mirror, you can’t say (only by looking) whether there is still any tissue there. So you have to either bend over the washing basin to check the tissue box or insert your hand in the boxes hoping that you find a tissue there. This can easily be solved by a transparent cover for the tissue (paper) box.

Which one do you think is selected? All or Missed? It’s really confusing because the Edit and All buttons look the same but All is the one which has been tapped on not Edit. The selected one should be the one which looks different to give users feedback on their action. In the picture on the right you can see that they designed it right and made the List button (which is tapped) look different from the other two buttons. 

Have you seen these toilet paper holders? You can see if there is toilet paper in them through the little hole that is in front of them. They can also hold 2 or maybe 3 (I’m not sure) toilet paper rolls. But what’s not so cool about them is that if the paper is almost finished and you drag the paper out, the paper roll and the plastic holder (which is a part of the toilet paper dispenser) are spit out by the holder. Almost nobody picks those up the floor so it makes a mess on the floor. You can see if there is another paper roll in the dispenser but what you can’t see is whether the one which is already being used is almost finished or not. Maybe if you could, you would be able to avoid making the mess.