June 24, 2005

Top 10 Least Usable Everyday Items

From a recent User Vision survey, the top 10 "least usable items"were as follows:

1. Video Recorders
2. Child car seats
3. Digital TV systems
4. Digital cameras
5. Washing machines/dishwashers
6. Tin-openers
7. Packaging
8. Central heating systems
9. Handheld computers
10. Non-disposable nappies


User Vision is in the UK, and some of these names aren't what we call that item here. "Tin openers" would be called "can openers"...but I'm not sure what "non-disposable nappies" are...can someone fill me in?

I find it strange that they called "packaging" an "item", when it really is...well, packaging...that items come in. Note also that the survey used a list of 40 items and had 500 respondents identify their "top five" most difficult to use items. It would be interesting to see if the results were similar if they asked people to name items rather than selecting from a relatively small list.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Nappy = "Diaper".

Anonymous said...

This survey is too general to really be of much use. For example, my minolta dimagex digital camera was hard to use, at least for some things. I got a similarly priced Nikon and the attention to usability was impressive. Tons of stuff was really easy that had been inconvenient before.

I suppose the same observation would apply to nappies (diapers)