UMO - Boycott Bad Designs Contest'05

How many times a day you've felt some things could just be "slightly" better than they are now?

It may be your wash-basin tap, that tries hard to impersonate gym equipment by being hard and clumsy when you are all sleepy in morning, or it could be your phone bill that poses more intellectual challenge than toughest of the cryptic-crosswords.

We live in a world that is a consequence of conscious or unconscious design decisions made by the manufacturers or designers of the various systems. Most of times these decisions are resultant of hasty time-lines, compromise on quality or just plain ignorance about 'you'- the one who is going to use them.

The UMO-Boycott Bad-Design Contest'05 was organized with the view of calling attention to the bad design in everyday things with the theme : Annoyances with day-to-day things.

Boycott Bad-Design Contest'05 Winners

The following ten entries were chosen as the best submissions for the "Bad design contest"

Details about the above and also the other entries chosen for the exibition for World Usability Day at Hyderabad are displayed below.You can see the details of each entry, vote for it and add your comments to it.

Team-UMO duly acknowledges it's gratitude towards all the participants.

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Boycott Bad-Design Contest'05 Entries Preview

Eureka Forbes Water Purifier

This product is designed in such a way that one has to hold the bottle/ glass in his or her hands always while filling water.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | No comments

“Insert Card” Message

Mobile phones are not available offline i.e. without inserting the SIM card one cannot access even the independent features which could be used offline, e.g. Games.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | No comments

Canon 300X SLR, 350 DSLR "Lens Cap"

Canon is one of the best known camera makers. This particular camera, no wonder is good but has a lens cap with out any string that holds it to the camera.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | No comments

Flair Angular Pen

This is a ball point pen with "strangely" shaped front tip, called Angular Tip by the manufacturer. This angular point adds nothing to the utility on the contrary only adds to the inconvenience while writing.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | Six comments

Nail Cutter

Cutting nails with a nail cutter is an easy job, but collecting the pieces of nails scattered all over the place is definitely not as easy.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | Four comments

Power Switch

This is the MCB Main Power Switch in any house. People generally get confused with its On/Off functionality.

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2005 - 11.02.

Category: Bad Designs | One comment

WUD Home

World Usability Day was observed across the globe spanning 70 locations in 30 nations where organizations and practitioners engaged in a campaign to create awareness of usability of products and services that we consume on a day-to-day basis. The theme for this event was "Making it Easy".

Usability Matters Organization[UMO] organized this event at hyderabad, on 3rd November,2005 at ISB auditorium. This was among the significant WUD gathering in India. UMO organized a Boycott Bad Design Contest, an International Cortoon contest, and a full day event culminating in World Usability Day.

UMO members who are practitioners of usability from the domain of manufacturing, services, architecture, fashion design and software attended the event and eminent speakers from academicia as well as industry spoke on this occassion.. The hyderabad event centered around the theme ‘Good Design for Better Living’.

See the full event report for details.