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Design Blog Bill's Blog » Bad Design / Good Design – Bill Moggridge

Bad Design / Good Design – Bill Moggridge

    Thursday June 24, 2010
  • | 4 Comment(s)

It’s hard to find examples of bad design that you can publish on a blog. I don’t suppose that’s surprising, as we all want to tell stories about our successes, but we’re happier when the failures fade into the gloom of obscurity.

When you ask someone to name an example of bad design, the over-complex remote controllers for consumer electronics are often mentioned, leading to rants about useless buttons, arguments about who’s in control, and an attempt to remember how many unused remotes there are tucked away at the back of a drawer somewhere.

How many remotes do you have? How many do you use?

Here’s an example of an attempt to rescue a person who’s confronted with an unfamiliar set of remotes. The owner of the gear was away for the weekend and decided to help the friend who was coming to stay. She wrapped the remotes in paper to hide the redundant buttons and labeled the useful ones in plain language. What a thoughtful host! How sad that the design was bad enough to need the bandages!


Understanding how to use a TV remote is made easier by a friend

What a contrast between the bad design of those traditional remotes and the good design of the iPhone! Both are designed to be held in the hand and operated with fingers or thumbs. Both are dealing with a potentially confusing level of complexity, but the iPhone handles it elegantly with a flick and a tap, presenting the controls that are wanted for individual applications only when they are relevant.


The new iPhone 4 from Apple

The iPhone 4 has just been launched with a crisper screen, faster chip-set and some great new features, for example FaceTime, which adds video to phone calls with picture-in-picture that can be set up with a single tap. It’s nice to see the Guggenheim Museum featured as the first example on the Apple website. The classic spiral design by Frank Lloyd Wright feels close, as it’s only two short blocks down fifth avenue from where I sit writing this in the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

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Comments

  1. Many remote controls are the classic example of feature creep. Less is More!!!

    Hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to use my iPhone as my remote.

    William | Jun 24, 01:11 PM

  2. I think the reason it’s hard to find “bad design” is that people adapt to bad design all the time. That’s one of our great qualities as a species—we adapt. But it is also one of our greatest flaws because it produces statements like: “It is what it is.” or “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Then you have the other extreme of Henry Ford: “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’.” Dieter Rams had it right: Good design helps a product to be understood.

    Chokdee R Rutirasiri | Jun 27, 08:34 AM

  3. We did the exact same thing for grandma at home. And I’d say, out of the 3 things in the article, the remote control, the iPhone and the modified remote control, the best design is the last one.

    What’s “useless” for one person can be useful for another person. An inexperienced video gamer would argue that a gaming controller has too many buttons, but an experienced person would say the otherwise. The biggest problem of a TV remote control is not the design, but the marketing and sales expects everyone to use every single feature of the TV, as equally and as frequently.

    Meanwhile, the iPhone is not any simpler. How is a flick and a tap simple if not because you had been taught to do so, either through a video, another person, or an Apple Genius? A person who had never touched a screen before would not expect to touch the screen. The iPhone is successful only because the marketing of the product generated enough faith in its users to try to tackle the interface.

    Either design is actually not really good or bad, but ironically, as a designer, I’d say that marketing plays a huge part in whether a design will succeed or not. There, I said it. :)

    For example, if somebody comes out with a flying car, and the popular trend is that every user should know every single nuisances while flying, then a dashboard with a million meters and controls will be a good design. The same applies in reverse. The word ‘good’ is a heavily subjective term based on culture.

    Apple gets the hype and praise these days and easily everything they did becomes great, despite all the antenna flaws, lack of intuitiveness on certain screens, multitasking, etc. Users become willing to learn and accept the flaws despite all these problems… just like how users are willing to accept a poorly designed remote control because the TV delivers great entertainment and funny pictures.

    Back on my very first point. The best design is the remote control covered with paper because the act of covering it with just paper is both clever, and sensitive to the user’s needs. It makes every button easily understandable with clear and concise language. It is flexible as you can remove the cover easily to reveal advanced settings. It is also personal with the handwriting, which shows the amount of care a child would give back to their parents. No mass-produced designs can top a personalized design, period!

    Pak-Kei Mak | Jul 7, 03:03 PM

  4. remote control

    I believe that I recall having this exact experience when house sitting for friends!

    patricia Dreher | Jul 24, 06:42 PM

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