bad UI in real life written by: Lee Richmond posted on: 22 July 2009
I kind of stole this idea from the guys at Less Everything, but I just wanted to share my thoughts as I have stumbled across what I believe to be a bad UI design in real life.
The culprit is the Sony Ericsson K810i mobile phone, on the whole this phone is very good, very stylish, a good sized screen,crystal clear sound when making voice calls, it does everything you would expect from a mobile phone.
However the problem I have with it is that the buttons are just too small and fiddly, the key pad is the perfect size but sadly it is spoiled by the tiny and fiddly silver buttons they have used in place of something more standard and much easier to use, unfortunately these buttons would be fine if you have thin fingers but for someone like me who has pork sausages for fingers I found I tend to spend more time deleting spelling mistakes in text messages or retyping numbers all because I've inadvertently hit two buttons instead of one.
I'm all for making things pretty for the user whether it be a website, or a piece of electrical hardware, but if its not usable by the majority then the design is pointless.
