Do people who design products actually try using them, or do they just put things where it's physically feasible, aesthetically pleasing, traditionally located and/or downright inconvenient just to piss us off? The computer industry is renowned for this, but it is definitely not the only culprit.
First off, a toaster, which is actually what actually started this rant because I burnt my toast, again.
Pretty standard right? Let's assume you live in a multi-person household with varying tastes - some like their toast near burnt, other like it only lightly toasted. There will be times when the toast setting on the toaster is not the one you want, and here in lies the problem. The designer who thought it would be a good idea to put the indicator (or knob on older toasters) at the near the bottom of the toaster must be really short or lonely. It is not in your line of sight at all - the first place you look is the top of the toaster to put the bread in. And to actually see it properly, you have to bend over or tilt the toaster - and I'm just below average height!
The right place would be the top of the toaster, next to the bread slots because you have to look there to put the bread in.
Next up is the oven controls. Chances are, your oven controls look similar to this:
Why does the indicator light tell me when the element is on? I don't care when the element is on! The only indicators I need on the oven are one that tells me the oven's on, and another that tells me it's reached the target temperature. That way I know when I've forgotten to turn off the oven, and when I can put my baking tray in respectively. Knowing when the element is on is useless information unless we process it with knowledge of how the oven works. Otherwise, the logic of the light turning off when the oven is ready makes absolutely no sense.
A better solution would be to have the indicator light to be on when the oven's on and ready, and blinking when the oven is heating up. That way if the light's on in any way, you know the oven's on, and a blinking light is fairly synonymous with something doing something, in this case, the oven heating up.
Going out of the kitchen and into the entertainment room, here's a typical remote control nowadays.
Remotes were cool, and very useable when they were first introduced, you know the ones with only 5 buttons, two for channel up/down, two for volume up/down, and one more for power. But the concept has grown in unimaginable ways since its introduction, and remotes are now near unuseable. Excluding the fact that nearly every home entertainment device seems to have a remote (I have 7 remotes in my entertainment room alone; the foot massager even has one!), each remote itself is ridiculously complicated, with so many confusing (and wobbly rubber - why?!?) buttons that the manufacturers thought they'd help us by hiding some under a panel! (There's more buttons under that 'Sony DVD' panel in the remote above.)
On top of that, the remotes are now so large it's impossible to reach every button with your thumb without shifting the remote up and down in your hand!
The original concept was good while it lasted, but it has past its use-by date a long time ago. We need a new solution that caters with our increasingly complex and featureful devices, and before anyone mentions it, no, the equally ridiculous programmable Harmony remotes aren't the solution, although they do reduce all your remotes into one. A dynamically-changing remote, or something that only has abstract buttons that correspond to the user interface on screen would be a better idea, like the Apple Remote but maybe not so extreme.
I can keep going on, like how car alarm remotes should tell you when the car's locked so you don't have to check when you're unsure, but I think you get the idea. So you're probably thinking that these are all small things, but they all add up, and when consumers see the detail and consideration shown, they'll show their appreciation by choosing your product over others, even if the others have more features.
To be fair, it's not always the designer's fault. The engineer may say that locating x in position y will cost z amount of money more, which is reasonable in our predominantly cost-driven world. However, further consideration in the user's frame of mind may cause you to realise that feature a will be very rarely used and so should be removed, or feature b can be simplified without affecting the performance of the product. What may seem necessary for an engineer, may be over the top for your target audience - engineers have a knack for wanting to be able to control every single thing when they use the product.
Or maybe the manager will come around, and be freaked out at your design because it breaks all past traditions and is so different from the existing products or the competitor's product, that he fears consumers will be scared and won't buy it. Ok, maybe it will confuse consumers at first, but if the changes made the device more intuitive, I doubt they'd mind. And so what if some defect, those that stay are likely to be your loyal customers, ones that like your product and brand, and are more likely to be biased towards you when making purchasing decisions later. You also get the added advantage of making your product different enough to your competitors, potentially opening the door to the ability to charge more later.
Ideally, designs should start from a clean state instead of using a previous design, and every single design decision on the product should be justified in the user's perspective, otherwise it should be scrapped.
Manufacturers in the past have been able to get away with delivering ill-conceived, cost-driven and engineer-focused products. However, the world has changed. The economy is booming now and the few companies that have realised the power of intuitive designs are growing much faster than their competition. This is in effect a double blow for competing manufacturers - not only are they losing business to a competitor, but once consumers experience better designs, they will start to demand them and you will be behind. Well-designed products are no longer the realm of the mega rich (e.g. Bang and Olufsen), and consumers know it.
Just look at the Apple revolution.
UPDATE (21/7/2007): 37signals just blogged about another annoyance - blinking lights on bluetooth headsets.