Bad design frustrates users

(via Tingilinde)

I’ve link to Joel on design before because he has good things to say about bad design. I’ve got some hands on experience with a TVisto playback device that seems to have a bad user interface that I’ll write about later (I want to work more with it before I declare definitively that the interface is bad). Yesterday, news.com ran an article about the problems many people have using modern gadgets with poor design problems.

Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a researcher said on Monday.

. . .

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working before giving up, the study found.

[tags]Product design, gadgets[/tags]