scarfman | This week in blogging for class

First of all, today when I sat down at the public PCs in the university library to do this blogging, I couldn't seem to load LJ, from more than one of them. I suspect it's locked out. It wasn't last Thursday. Heads may roll. Later It must have been a temporary comm failure.

As per the Website we discussed in class, showing a host of bad physical designs (doors, cell phones, etc.), walk around your home environment, work environment, etc. Find something that has a design flaw of some kind. Just like in the Website, take a picture of it and write about the flaw. If you can find a better-designed object of the same kind, put a picture of that in as well.

Unfortunately I can't produce a picture, because I could probably find one on the web if I could remember the make and model which I don't, but the instance from real life of this that sticks in my mind was the car I borrowed from a friend in order to drive from Chicago to my brother's college graduation in Iowa. The side view mirror controls were so far away from the driver's seat that you couldn't operate the controls from where you'd be sitting when you were using the mirror. (I also found it terribly easy with the manual transmission on that car to accidentally shift into first when I meant to shift to third, but my friend didn't agree with me about that.) My jeep, despite what other abuse of it I may commit, at least is better off in the area of controls design.