I managed to run across some really fantastically bad design today. I've found my new winner for the Least Usable Faucet Award. In the shopping concourse underneath a major Toronto office tower (BCE place, I think), I found a very difficult washroom. The problem with the whole thing was (is, considering that the faucets are most likely the same as they were this afternoon) that the sensors on the water saving, germ eliminating, effort reducing faucets were in the wrong place. If someone gives me a sink, I'm inclined to wash my hands at least partially in it. What the clever designers behind this particular washroom gave me did not really present that option. The idea seemed to be to position the sensor such that the hands of the user would be as close to the faucet as possible. If the hands of the user are positioned within the confines of the sink, the faucet doesn't go. To get the faucet to go, the user is forced to place her hands directly under the faucet. This results in hands pointing towards the edge of the sink. At the edge of the sink, there is, of course, a counter. This means that, due to the positioning of the sensor, water runs off the hands of the user and onto the counter. Result: wet counter. Not good faucet design, by any stretch of the imagination.
Spectacularly bad faucet design
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