design that doesn't actually work  

I nominate...
Every designer item that can't be afforded by people in a depression. Item's that can't be afforded, by definition, don't work.
Let me re-phrase this.
Every item that is marketed with a designer label and designer price in order to make more money off the sizzle of the designer's name is currently a product that doesn't work very well.
Other product nominees from companies that want us to think of the company as a designer include:
Swatch Watches--they have plastic buckles that break when they catch on anything, and then its impossible to find a replacement band.
Smart4Two Cars--these things are pitiful pieces of shit that don't get significantly better mileage than a vastly superior, and only slightly more expensive Honda Fit. Why do EU based car makers insist on sending us great cars with lousy electronics, or piece of shit cars like Insipid4Two? Why can't they send us some of those really sexy little Alfas they keep saying they will send, but never do?
Bialetti's Espresso Maker--fully half the reviews by individuals indicate the things spew hot capucino everywhere.
C'mon, Europe, America has solved the problem of making crappy products. We just don't make anything any more! And we don't give our people health care. Or jobs! Let'em eat bytes.
All Designer Clothing--In the good old days, designer clothing was high quality stuff, even when it was not their custom made stuff. Now 90 percent of this stuff is just shit designed to look obsolete within a year, and it snags, or tears, or frays, in 90 days. Yes, Armani, I'm talking about your crap and all the others like you. It is fetching eye candy when new, but designer worthless in no time at all. This is really too bad, too, because to market designer clothing the clothing companies appear to have decided to make non designer clothing even uglier than necessary to try to make designer clothing more desirable. Hence, one's choice is hideous durability, or light speed obsolescence in looks that can't be mixed and matched, because each designer label works with proprietary colors and patterns intended to make mixing and matching impossible. It is to the point that if you want good looking, good quality garments, you have to have everything custom made. Something is terribly wrong. Tasteful, good quality clothing is not hard to mass produce.

Hey guys, and Olive and Riki ...
Hey guys, and Olive and Riki and ... I'm remembering - speaking of the horror of designer clothing - a pair of jeans called Tough Skins, which my mom ordered for me from the Sears catalog. The antithesis of Jordache, they were bad!
This was back in the early 70s when you still mostly went with what you had, and wouldn't dream of changing your nose.
Do they still make those?

It should
be obvious that the Smart 4Two isn't intended to compete with other subcompacts; its unique attribute is its extreme short length, which enables it to park where where no other car can. Like it or not, this is the direction that the urban car is headed, one way or another. It is possible (I haven't researched this) that poor mileage -- based on an expected miracle number ? -- is the result of drivers using the car as a highway vehicle, where its poor aerodynamics (tall and short, not low and slippery) would work against efficiency. Also, it's loaded with options and not as light as would be desirable -- again perhaps a result of its size and shape, which might dictate a certain amount of heft in the interest of stability ?
I have no interest in owning one -- just hashing over the issues raised.

There is something...
of a contradiction in design that does not work. When using the word design and designer it is generally to qualify the product as being better than the run of the mill industrial product. It goes without saying that all products are in some way or another "designed" but when the product comes on the market without a designer?s name it usually means that either the designer feels that he was manipulated to much by either engineering or marketing or both and does not want to take responsibility for the end result or...it is indeed the result of a collaboration of so many people that the box would not be able to hold their names...a product is not a movie.
In my mind a well designed product is a product that works well, offers the service that it is supposed to render for a long time and is pleasing to look at, if possible so pleasing that it both encourages to handle it with care and to maintain it as long as it's technical life will last. I do not consider Philippe Starck's way of squeezing a lemon or orange as good design. It certainly was an important cultural statement and it certainly attracted attention to the fact that products have different levels of significance, and function is only one of them. In exaggerating the "sculptural quality" of the product to the extend that it became in fact a small piece of art for the kitchen, Starck made the point quite eloquently and certainly convincingly. Is it design, no, design is that specific art of combining sometimes contradictory goals into the kind of harmony that reflects the state of the culture at the time it was created. Designed products are seldom the ultimate solution, but they certainly show how far a given culture has come in reaching the ultimate solution. So "designed" to me always works well...but so few products are really "designed".
Is the Smart car a good example of bad design?I do not know. Mercedes has certainly lost much of the engineering power that used to be the corner stone of their reputation. It is difficult to say what would have been the result of the same sub-sub compact idea in the hands of their more talented colleagues of Audi, but I agree with SDR it is the first of a new archetype and most of the time it takes a few generations of cars to get the thing really in tune with it?s own ambitions. I had the opportunity to drive them a few times and it is a pleasant experience once you are adjusted to the fact that some European truck drivers come so close that they can certainly see your feet.

cont....
As far as weight is concerned, I am all for reducing weight in cars, but as long as there are heavy SUV and other monsters on the highway it might not be a bad idea to have a rather stiff frame around you. In very much the same way as the slow increase in weight of the cars has escalated the need for heavier and heavier vehicles, we could spiral it down again without loss of safety. Remember the only reason why you need a heavy car is that the one that will impact you could be heavy to. It is sad that 100% of the improvements in engine efficiency over the last 30 years has been absorbed by making heavier and more powerful cars. Has that power made us faster? By no means it is just enough to move that heavier body.
...at this speed I am never going to catch up with all the threads I missed...I will have to limit myself to the "designed" ones...
By the way, the company that would hire me on the week-ends while I was a design student used to have DS Citroëns as company cars so, being "staff" I had acces to them on a regular basis. I loved that car and more than once I prefered the folding back seat (it became a confortable queen size bed) over my own bed and spend the night in the car...I am too old to remember if it was because of the comfort or the fact that my own bed was just a single...

All the best designed cars ha...
All the best designed cars have a folding back seat. Speaking of folding back seats and designs that don't work, I remember a great Design Addict thread a couple years ago regarding the screw.
Other topics for exploration, too, that come to mind, in addition to the automobile and clothing, etc., would be audio (folks in the audio-know always have a lot to say about Bose and Bang & Olufsen and ...) and golf clubs.
That said, I sense at least a small fraction of the success of any given design lurks in the ability of the user.
I've yet to find, for example, a putter that works.

Designs that does not work you can nominee for OOPS DESIGN AWARD 2009
I agree with you about designs that doesn t work.Why we need a chair that can be used only as sculpture ? It is something like car that can not move.But now you can nominate some of these bad designed products on OOPS DESIGN AWARD 2009,first not honourable award in the world for bad product design.
We have special category for such products:Most useless product design concept of the year.You can join us,vote for award nominees and work for award development.
Any who want join us can send mail to :oopsaward@gmail.com
Welcome !
http://oopsaward.jimdo.com/

Unfunctioning Designs
First up: anything 'designed' with a right-handed bias
Seriously people.. there are lefties in the world. And we need to use things. Like signature machines at supermarket checkouts. And table-saws. And scissors.
Secondly: Any credit card machine that is not capable of reading the mag stripe in any direction. Why do people need to spend 45 extra seconds deciphering which way the card is supposed to swipe?
And lastly: Stephen's initial posting. As we have discussed before Stephen, the Barcelona chair is not MEANT for lounging. It was not MEANT for comfort. It was designed to convey status. And as an physical extention of a rational aesthetic created by the architect it is successful. It is hardly fair to blame the chair for being improperly used (any more than you would blame a PULL door that doesn't open when pushed)
And, for much more failure I send you to FailBlog.org a website that frequently has me laughing so hard milk comes out of my nose.
http://www.failblog.org

Bialetti
dcwilson said:
"Bialetti's Espresso Maker--fully half the reviews by individuals indicate the things spew hot capucino everywhere."
I don't know specifically which model/style of Bialetti you are referring to, but I've used a classic aluminum Bialetti stovetop Moka pot to make espresso for years. It is very simple, works fantastically well, and has never ever spewed hot coffee on me. The design is so simple that it hasn't changed since the 30s.
Either I'm just extra smart, these reviewers are extra dumb, or you're talking about a different product altogether.

Welcome back Koen !
It's like you never left -- apparently, to judge by this thread, anyway. And, to start at the end, I like the concept of forgetting, in the distant mists of time, one's youthful indiscretions AND pleasures (one and the same, perhaps -- and best left to the young ?) How did we survive with our body and soul more or less intact ?
When I got to "design is that specific art of combining sometimes contradictory goals into the kind of harmony that reflects the state of the culture at the time it was created" I realized that there is more than just pleasure and function to be respected in a new design. It's not (I hear you saying, between the lines) enough to make a good object, but it must "reflect the state of the culture at the time." What else can this mean but that the market research and sales departments must be heard from ? "It has to remind the customer of X" (a current best-seller) ? I hold no grudge against a good sales forecast -- I've been here long enough to have learned (from you) that certain realities -- R&D costs, tooling, cost of. . .maintaining a market research and a sales department, even a little money to the designer -- impinge on the tra-la-la Idealistic Art of Design. It would be nice if perfect form and function, in a nice color and texture, were enough. . .wouldn't it ? Or is it part of the satisfaction of the designer to know that all the buttons have been pushed, including some he may have little knowledge of or control over ?

From the
OopsAwards, above:
PRODUCT DESIGN IS NOT POP-CULTURE!
NOT POP-ART TOY !
NOT SILLY KITCH GAME OR SHINING ENTERTAINMENT !
Well, I think about 15% of the nominees are actually kind of cool -- from what can be seen in a photo or two. Isn't WIT on the list of valid furniture functions ?Are the organizers of this contest confusing Product Design with Art, and assuming that anything made must be a serious solution to a serious problem ?
The Ear chair, in fact, may be more than just a whimsical entrée. It made more sense to me after reading just a few words of explanation from the designer: The chair is intended to create a semi-private environment within a larger space. Imagine pulling a pair of these asymmetrical wing-chairs-on-steroids up to each other, and having a discreet tete-a-tete with a friend or business associate ? One might even avoid the devious lip-reader lurking across the room !

This little gem of Koen's required SDR's response to make me think about it...
"...design is that specific art of combining sometimes contradictory goals into the kind of harmony that reflects the state of the culture at the time it was created."--Koen as quoted by SDR
If the above were true, and I suspect that it is true, I would submit (and perhaps master the obvious after the fact) that a lot of technically adequate, but otherwise uninspired design, springs from designers unattuned to the state of their culture at the time a product was created.
In turn, I must ask the following questions:
1.) why are so many designers unattuned to the states of their cultures?
2.) what can they and we do to get them more attuned?
These two questions are deceptively simple. They point toward answers of ennormous complexity. Exploring and answering them in ways that help designers get more in touch with their cultures would, I suspect, yield a hell of a lot of good design.
I will think on these two question awhile before answering and hope that others do the same. I suspect the thought and answers will illuminate a good deal of what is wrong and right with contemporary design and what direction it ought to take.
For what it is worth, I believe Pablo Picasso was onto something in this regard. I read a book of quotes attributed to him by his friends and colleagues. Many quotes indicated stunningly direct brilliance, but one really grabbed me.
"I do not seek, I find."

continued
Seeking implies fumbling around in a dimly lit room for something. Finding implies grasping whatever is actually there.
In myriad ways, Picasso's distinction between seeking and finding is the difference between mundane design and good design.
There is a fundamental difference between a tentative solution that nibbles around the edge of a vaguely defined problem, and a clear answer to a definite question.
There is a difference between moving toward something and getting there.
Before I am immediately misunderstood, Picasso was not suggesting that anything is ever finished, or that work is final and cannot be improved up on. He said exactly the opposite. Nothing is ever finished, if I may paraphrase him.
I conclude he was referring to the difference between thinking about something and doing something. It is okay, perhaps even very useful, to think and reflect about activities here. But it is the doing of writing these reflections and ideas that is the finding, rather than the searching.
And in design, it is finally the doing of design, rather than the searching for a design, that is the finding. Design grows out of doing design, rather than out of searching for design.
And Picasso, at least to me, means that searching and finding are separate activities and that artists and designers are not doing their jobs when they are searching. They are rather exercising their human predilection for philosophical thought instead of their craft as an artist, or designer. To be artists, or designers, they have to find and finding implies an insight, or a choice, or a willed decision, that this creation, at this particular moment is what can be found.
I like this notion.

continued
And I think it ties into the idea that designers need to be in touch with their cultures to work well in the following way.
In a world that has recently undergone a great deal of globalization (both Globalization Version 1.0 in the late 1800s and Version 2.0 in the late 1900s), many cultures--both those technologically advanced and those not--have been broadly and deeply destabilized. The trauma has produced a kind of cultural confusion from disordering and reordering that has triggered tectonic shifts in many societies. Not surprisingly, these shifts range from cynicism, passivity, nihilism, resignation and in particular doubt about the human capacity for organized problem solving, to, at another pole, rage, anger, alienation, fundamentalism, preoccupation with meat ax ideologies, and advocacy of ridiculously simplistic solutions a preferred means of responding to emergent complexity associated with globalization from changed institutions and changed societal and individual activities determined by these institutions.
This bi-polar response to the intense wave of globalization is hardly unprecedented. Whenever empires have collided, or emerged rapidly, or collapsed rapidly, civilization has evidenced these tendencies. But what is perhaps unique about the current circumstance, or at least more acute than in the previous upheavals that can be recalled, is: a) the accelerated rate at which this destabilizing episode of restructuring by empire has unfolded; and b) the extent to which it has destabilized not only societies being drawn into the restructuring, but the emperor's society engineering the restructuring. At this point, America, the emperor, or if you prefer to talk in terms of state hegemonies, the Anglo-American emperor constellation, or if you prefer to talk in terms of central banking hegemonies, the Fed/British Crown/EU central bank emperor constellation, are presently immersed in as much of the bi-polar response to the restructuring, as are their allies and their opponents.