40 Times Designers Messed Up In A Minor Way, But It Ruined User Experience In A Big Way

The power button on the Kindle being on the bottom where my support finger goes. It's hard not to take that one personally.

My wife's 2025 Kia is riddled with design flaws. I'll pick one that p****s me off a lot:

When listening to music, there's a section of the 12" LCD which shows you the album art along with the artist and song name. This is limited to roughly the rightmost 3" of the screen, and the font size is such that you get maybe the first eight characters of each.

So, listening to Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats do "And It's Still Alright", the display will show:

**Nathan...**
And It's ...

It's infuriating enough that they bothered with this design in the first place, as there is a TON of wasted space, but at least that screen has some other useful functions.

Then there's a thing you can tap to make the music information take up the full screen. This shifts everything leftward and enlarges. But still, the area dedicated to the text is still relatively small, and due to the larger font size, you get *even fewer characters than before*:

**Natha...**
And It...

p*****g me off the most? A full 60% of that screen is just black except for a button "Enter Channel," which you can tap and then enter a station number on a numpad. A feature which I will literally never use.

Oh, and this full-screen music mode? It slides up from the bottom of the screen like it's some kind of accessory, and everything behind it darkens. The clock, outside temperature, and a few other things that would be useful remain visible on the edge of the screen, but because they're darkened, they're extremely hard to see, especially in bright light.

IDK who designed that screen, but they are not good at user interface design. At all. They're truly bad at it.

(I'm a software engineer, so bad software especially p****s me off.)

🤬.

Websites with information in the footer that always disappears because the designers added infinite scrolling.

The last half inch of product in the deodorant bottle that won't push up because they made the screw too short.

Tiny tools like screwdrivers that have a tiny little handle you can barely hold onto. It’s ridiculous, you might need a small screwdriver for a tiny job, but your hand is still the same size!

I’ll be watching a movie (or live Olympics) on my old Samsung TV, and suddenly, at the climatic moment, a window will pop up in the middle of the screen saying “Smarthub has updated. Do you want to start Smarthub?” and I will have to fumble around for wherever I put my remote down to dismiss it. When the revolution comes, there is a Samsung programmer somewhere who had better hide well.

[Because all humor will somehow be misinterpreted by someone on the internet: /j for the previous sentence.].

Office printers not having a big enough tray for one packet of paper.

I have a hydraulic log splitter. As a safety feature it requires 2 hands to operate, one to push a button and one to hold a lever down. The problem is that to do this I have to bend down and put my face distressingly close to the hunk of wood that it is trying to explode into 2 chunks. I've never gotten hit, but having  my face that close to the violence fells like it should be avoided, like by not requiring to hands and just trusting people not to shove their hands in the way of an axe blade. .

Brooms, mops, swiffers, are all made for right-handed use. When you use them left-handed the head unscrew from the handle while you're using them. Infuriating.

Why the h**l do I have to reauthenticate every phone application after it’s been updated? And why is it so difficult?

I simply don’t understand why I am constantly reauthenticating. I use different passwords for each app so having to constantly go look up the password in my vault is incredibly annoying.

For the life of me I do not understand the packaging bacon comes in. What j**k made the decision for every company to put bacon into a non resealable plastic pouch and then shroud it in cardboard or paper or whatever. Any time I make bacon I just make the entire package and put the leftovers in the fridge for later.

I hate GM for making theirs cars' REVERSE LIGHTS come on after it's been PARKED and actually isn't REVERSING at all. This "feature" makes crowded parking lots very annoying.

This is so absurdly niche, but it annoys me no end.

A website I occasionally use, has a log in screen that dramatically shakes if you enter the wrong details.

Like a big "nuh uh uh". Then after a couple of seconds, has a pop-up window to tell you, that you used the wrong password.

Such a weird thing to design into a website.

Sleeping bag bags. While I appreciate the 1 inch of fabric saved by making it so the sleeping bag can only be easily put in if factory new and squeezed through a toothpaste tube, the weight restrictions on my backpacking gear do not facilitate me to bring the necessary equipment.

See also: sleeping pads


EDIT: Ya'll are amazing! I have thoroughly appreciated all the insight, advice, and gossip on the backpacking game.

Phones having their charging port at the bottom instead of the top so the cable bends and breaks faster while also not letting you orient your phone upside down to solve this issue.

I like to cook, nothing is made of solid metal anymore. Everything is cheap plastic or it has a plastic handle that breaks in two seconds. I’ve bought probably three different potato mashers and various price points over the past five years and they all keep breaking, melting, or are impossible to clean.

Microsoft outlook- when I search for a word give me the MOST RECENT TIME THAT WORD WAS USED FIRST.

The pour spout on my glass measuring cup. If I don’t take my time and pay attention half of the contents will land on the counter instead of where I want it.

Had to get the gas cap on my car replaced, and the new one doesn't have that little strap holding it to the car. It's also a fraction of an inch too big to put into the hook on the cover. So now I just have to stand there, holding a gas cap while I wait.

That reddit share or award button i keep hitting with my thumb as I’m scrolling.