Poor UI Design, Painful UI Design

There are poor user interfaces (UI), then there are painful user interfaces.

Due to the accident, we've got a rental. A new Dodge Grand Caravan. I hadn't driven it much myself, but this week we went somewhere together as a family and I ended up driving. This thing is kinda weird in that everything blinks whenever you cut the car off. I mean, it's like the hazard lights are on for maybe 30 seconds just so everyone knows you have come to a complete stop and are disembarking. Then they cut off automatically.

I thought, "Hey, maybe this thing is just trying to remind me to use the parking (emergency) brake". So I'll try it. I do try to remember to use it all the time anyway since that seems like The Right Thing to do to reduce strain on the transmission. Well, I was wrong. The lights still blinked. Oh, and they blink even when the key is out. In fact, the radio will continue to play with the ignition switch in the off position and the key completely removed.

Now perhaps this is poor user interface design, perhaps it's just because I have a rental and maybe there's someway to set these options that I'm not privy to. But that's not my problem. Not my complaint here at all.

The real problem was went I went to release the parking brake. It's the kind where there's a pedal in the floor on the left that you step on to set it. Then there's this little latch in the lower left side of the dash that you pull to release it. So I reached my large (but not unusually large) left hand down, put my fingers behind the release lever and pulled.

WHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccKKKKK!!!!

The parking brake pedal came flying up (those things are under a lot of tension) and up and up until it smashed into the knuckles of my fingers, still on the release lever.

That hurts. That bruises.

That's painful UI design. Posted 8/26/2005 11:22:00 AM :: Permalink
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