What can be designed better?

I'm getting like raggie33 today with posting new topics. This time I thought we could post something that we think is designed poorly and could easily be improved.

I'll start with this one: The elbows at the bottom of downspouts.

They are metal and abruptly have an almost 90 degree bend before the rain water exits. This causes the dripping water to make a drumming sound, and if the downspout is anywhere near a bedroom window it can be a real nuisance.

My solution: Either remove the bend or use a thick layer of metal that won't vibrate.

Nobody else have an improvement idea?

Raggie's posts are always cool, and that toilet seat thread is A1.

I'd like to see alarm clocks with downloadable alarm options, kinda like cellphone ringtones. Radio/music won't wake me up, and GRNNG-GRNGG-GRNGG-GRNGG, while effective, is annoying.



Cheers. :buddies:

Just about everything can be designed better. Part of the design is to make it possible to manufacture. Sometimes the design simply makes the production easier or cheaper.

Sometimes it's the implentation. Take that noisy downspout. How about installing it so that it runs at a slight angle so the water runs down the side instead of falling?

I'd like a flashlight with a ring around the barrel to activate it instead of one button in one spot. That would be much handier.

Then there's Rapid Transit. I ride it 70 miles a day. It's really a full sized electric train, made up of 4 to 10 cars. It runs every 15 to 20 minutes.

But it would be much more effective if the cars were easily linked, and only as many were used as were needed to move people. Only have 100 people waiting? Link together 2 cars and don't wait the extra 10 minutes. Have 400 people? Go for a full train.

City bus service look rather inefficient too. Everyone has a cell phone, so why have scheduled runs? Just call the number on the way to the bus stop and it will meet you there. If no-one else is waiting it can bring you right to the door of your destination. You can still have express routes for the high traffic runs such as between transit centers or shopping malls.

There are lots of improvements to be made.

Daniel

I've always thought that programable recorders (VHS, DVD, whatever) should have one more field for each entry like:

Date -- On Time -- Off Time -- Channel -- Speed -- Enable

That way pathological archivers could just make one entry for the series that they are collecting and whenever it is pre-empted for one episode or when you know it's going to be a rerun that you already have you could just uncheck the 'enable' box for that entry and leave the whole rest of the entry intact. Then you could just check it again for the next week instead of having to reprogram the whole event from scratch.

I think that in just fifteen or twenty years we are going to look back and say that most of our user interfaces of today were really lame. Lots of room for improvement across the board in UIs.

And while we're at it I'd like a shakelight with an array of underdriven Nichia CS U bins, a UCL and a vacuum pulled in the tube.

better sound circuits and amps in portable mp3 players .vacum cleaners that are 3 times more sucking power .