fuck yeah, interation design

Fuck yeah, waterfalls

The IKEA Vållö watering can looks good but does a pretty poor job in the one thing it is supposed to do - watering your plants. I didn’t know it is possible to actually screw up something as basic as a watering can but this one proves it.

This watering can lacks a pipe. It offers more of a waterfall functionality - the more you pour, the more comes out. So? What? Well, you don’t know how much water is left in the can, so you don’t know at what angle the water will start pouring out and more importantly, at what angle the water will start flowing over the edge. So if you can’t do blind pouring, can’t you just look at what you’re doing?

Nope. When I water my plants, I often can’t see shit. Either the plant is on top of bookcase, the leaves are hiding the ‘water landing zone’, etc. The strategy I (unconsciously) developed over the years is to hold the can at such an angle that water is guaranteed to come out at a certain maximum amount per second through the pipe. Do this for x seconds and you know with how much water you’re drowning your plant.

Not possible with the Vållö. It offers no stable output and has a high risk for watering everything but the plant.

Fuck yeah, fraud

This machine says, ‘Only insert your card if card entry is identical to the picture’. Is it?

No.

Should I not use the machine then?

Of course, I can.

It confuses me every time. I don’t want to get skimmed but have no way of determining if I will. For all I know, I just got skimmed, because the picture and the reality really don’t look that similar to me.

Or wait, I know what went wrong here. I am too tall.

‘your card if card entry is identical to the picture’ if indeed, you’re 1.40m or even 1.30m tall (in stead of my 1.95m) and look straight at the card slot. Good thing for that 1% of the Netherlands that doesn’t have to bend over to see the resemblance between picture and reality.

Update: I contacted ING on Twitter and the appropriate department has now been notified. We’ll see what happens.

Fuck yeah, hazardous materials

“children see things differently”. Very clear and creative way of conveying a simple message - with impact. This is a billboard campaign for (Dutch) http://www.nieuwe-etiketten.nl to make people aware of how children perceive the world and its inherent dangers.

Fuck yeah, vacuum

If you are old or female or just not so very strong (it happens :P), opening a new jar can be hard. The vacuum created inside keeps the lid tight.

HAK (Dutch vegetables) has innovated the lid it uses for their cans. It has a two stop system. The first is very easy to open and does not actually open the jar. Instead it allows you to turn the cap back and forth a few centimeters while the jar remains closed. That scape effectively gives you a runway for your turning motion. By the time your ‘twist’ gets to the second stop you have built up momentum that you would lack on a traditional lid - and *POP* it’s off.

Very nice indeed, no more need for these kind of things. 

Fuck yeah, DVD Menus

Which of the two locations will this movie play? You don’t know because it is not clear whether white or grey is the ‘selecting color’. 

I call it the DVD menu issue because that’s when I first encountered this issue. You try to set something that has two options (e.g. subtitle language), but have to resolve to guessing because it is unclear which color is the default color and which color your selection/cursor.

Fuck yeah, confusion

The new wikipedia fundraising campaign is a great example of creating confusion to highlight something.

Every time I visit a wikipedia I see random wiki-famous face above positioned exactly above the title of the page. It means more cash for Wikipedia but also deluding your users - if only for a couple of milliseconds. 

Source: supergreat

Nice concept by Samsung. Using the physical book medium to offer a non-digital walkthrough. Beautiful execution and brilliant for those users that are not as tech-savvy.

Fuck yeah, baby beds!

The infuriating baby bed. A covered lock is released by pressing it… The Right Way.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself struggling for a quarter trying to figure out how to release the lock before you start using brute-force.

Fuck yeah, orthogonality

Directions. Trying to project horizontal space on a vertical plane leads to ambiguous signs.