June 28, 2005
Worst user interface ever
When you hack programs for a living, you naturally develop a resistance against badly designed applications, household appliances and the like. Some people like to call this resistance "user karma", but I think it's just the effect of having seen so much shit that you can see behind the stench.
Therefore it came as quite a surprise when today I was defeated by the user interface of a bag of cheese. This bag features a most miraculous opening mechanism, and in fact I have yet to figure out how to open it using the method envisioned by its creators.
I present Exhibit A:
An innocent bag of cheese, right? But wait until you try to open it!
There is a noticeable bar of thicker plastic covering the width of the top part of the bag, so it looks like it could be one of those resealable clips. Closer inspection however reveals that the clip is only attached to one side of the bag's interior. Clearly, the mechanism must be more sophisticated than your average resealable clip!
Surely having foreseen my bafflement, the bag's designers provided additional help. Here is a close-up of the priceless opening instructions in the top-right corner:
Ignoring for a second the messages written in a language I don't speak, it strikes that no part of the bag looks even remotely like that picture. Neither does any object on this planet I have ever seen. What is the bag trying to tell me? Press a clothes hanger against the cheese and wiggle?
Searching the bag for additional clues on how to open it I found a flap that looked like it wanted to be torn off very badly:
Feeling confident that I was doing the exact right thing for the first time, I tore off the flap and found... nothing! Behind the flap there is just more colorless plastic! What the fuck!
Of course I ended up opening the bag with a pair of scissors, but let me tell you that getting owned by a bag of cheese is in no way beneficial to your self-esteem.
Update: I figured it out!! After you remove the flap you must drill your finger between the two outer layers of plastic. After two centimeters of drilling you can reach the plastic clip, which you can open by pushing the upper part of the front side into the cheese and pulling out the bottom part. You now have a perfectly resealable hole in the middle of your cheese bag! Man wins over machine!!
Comments
haha, hilarious.
I'm in a human computer interface class right now, and at the start of every class we talk about bad interfaces we've seen or read about. I think I'll mention this page.
Posted by Scott (#)
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