Design pet peeves
 

What's your pet peeve when it comes to design when you travel--in the airport, onboard the aircraft, renting a car or in a hotel? What products are designed in a way that makes you crazy? What are the hassles that industrial designers in the travel sector don't seem to be addressing? (For example, mine is that airplane seats don't have cupholders.) I'm an editor doing research for an article that will query travel industry industrial designers about some pet peeves and whether these pain points will be addressed by design in the future.

Not a pet peeve exactly, but a give-away: if a hotel bathroom has a full wall mirror right behind the toilet, I know it was designed by a woman. :)

(I mentioned this once on a comment card to a Minneapolis hotel - as an observation, not a problem. I got a personal reply from the manager. It read in part "Yes, our bathrooms were designed by a woman - but I don't think I'll tell her how you figured that out!"

NancyB, welcome to FlyerTalk! While on the subject of hotel bathrooms, my design peeve is faucets either arrayed counter-intuitively (hot and cold taps reversed from traditional positions) or unlabelled or unfathomable as to how to even activate the taps. A related one is placing fixtures in baths which don't really fit the allowable space.

I hate hotels that don't have outlets within laptop cord reach of the bed.

I hate cafeteria lines that aren't arranged in a logical fashion. I want to get my drink, then lid and straw. I shouldn't go past the fountain to get a cup, fill the cup, then over the river and through the woods to get a lid and straw.
Arrangement: Cups->Fountain->lids->Straws
Also it should be Tray->plate->food->the later: napkin/plastic ware (after I know what utensils I know)

Anytime I have to back track for anything it wastes time and causes traffic problems...Maybe that's why I only eat at sit down restaurants in airports...no drink problems.

Crew who fill up the first overhead bins since we know the bulkhead people must put anything in them. That means the bulkhead people now have to either hope the people downstream are nice or wait for everyone to deplane to claim their stuff way behind them.

Oh God yes, this is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. I can't count the number of times I've had to pull the bed out so I could plug in my laptop!

Additionally, why must hotels only provide a three foot ethernet cable? I've taken to packing my own 25' cable for those times when they don't have wi-fi access so I'm not chained to the desk while I work.

My other hotel pet peeve: chains that put up signs declaring you're not allowed to put your own drinks in the mini-bar fridge. I had this happen at the Novotel in Ottawa - I was paying $270/night and I wasn't allowed to use the fridge to store a bottle of juice? Talk about nickel and diming!

Actually, a lot of them do. A more accurate peeve would be that U.S. airline seats don't have cupholders. A lot of foreign ones - perhaps most - do.

My SIN-MEL-SIN flights on Singapore Airlines (SQ) over the past few weeks did, for example. And yes, I was in back. IIRC, it was on the back of the tray table on one flight, next to it on the back of the seat in front of me on the other. In both cases it flipped down for use.

I've also seen hooks on the back of the seat in front where I could hang a jacket or some such. Again, never on a U.S. airline. Can't imagine that either the weight or the cost of these is significant. Maybe nobody has clued them in.

Seat recline is also a perennial issue. SQ, again, does it better than U.S. airlines (in economy; I've read great things about their front cabins but haven't experienced them personally). The base of the seat slides forward when you recline. The result is more recline while impinging less on the passenger behind you.

I also agree with this though not necessarily for my laptop but my cell phone. I often use it as an alarm and a clock thoughout the night and I hate being away from my phone incase "something happens." I'm not convinced when across the room it will still wake me. :mad:

The first few that come to my head include:
-Bathrooms where the door swings so close to the toilet, I have to straddle the toilet before closing the door.
-Poor signage in airports. For instance, at PHL, there are several places where, upon leaving security, you cannot see a sign for the baggage claim easily unless you turn around and look back into security.
-The little drink "dimple" in the tray tables.
-I also have never understood why a boarding pass has to be so big.

That's all for now...I'm sure I'll have plenty more when I get up in the morning! :rolleyes:

Are you sure you want to get us started? Here are a few for now. I will be sure to come up with more as soon as I think about it.

Airports - why do they always have 15 million lanes you have to cross to get to the terminal? Can't they figure out a more logical way to keep all those vehicles organized?

Not everyone arrives to teh airport by taxi. Airports need places for people to wait with their friends and family. Not just drop them off and leave.

For that matter, how about a view of the planes/runway? Lots of people actually like to look at those.

And not everyone who needs a drink or snack is flying - put food service outside the secured area, too.

I personally hate those paper boarding passes. Yeah, I know they are cheap, but they are so flimsy they get all crumpled up and tear too quickly. I would rather have nice small little cards like they use on the trains in Europe.

Whose bright idea is it to have to have everyone take off their shoes, unpack their laptops, etc., and not give these people a place to do it on? Even more so - few airports have adequate enough space for passengers to put their shoes back on and stuff back in their carry-ons.

Wouldn't it make far more sense to have one central desk for every 4 or 5 gates that is continually staffed, than to have one agent tryig to both check boarding passes AND run the desk for no more than 15 minutes before the flight?

Airlines are getting better with overhead bins, but I would love to see them give up one half a row and put in a suitcase closet for people with large rollaboards so they don't have to struggle putting in large cases overhead.

Cabin lighting desperately needs to be improved

As soon as the seat goes any wider, they make the arm rests immovable. Why? Take advantage of that space!

Instead of having to choose betwen a full table and no table, use smaller fold-outs, big enough to hold your drink and package of peanuts or cookies.

Windows are often times terribly placed. Usually too low, and often too far ahead of or behind the seat.

Why are the armrests for the window passenger fixed? It's not like this is going to get in the way. And it's so thin it isn't really useful.

Talking about armrests, why do they place the controls on the inner side of the arm rest? You're sitting there, it's hard to control from there.

Then again it's better than Jet Blue, which you always inadvertently change the channel because you lay your hand across the controls.

Why do hotel rooms insist on so many huge mirrors in bathrooms. Watching yourself sit on the toilet is not a particularly entertaining pastime, I hope.

And please, I know Duvets are nice, but provide a blanket for those of us who don't need that much cover.

Ceiling fans are really nice, too.

Whoever designed safes needs to go back and take another measurement of your typical laptop with a wireless card in it.

I hate hotel bathrooms that never give you enough counter space to put your toiletries. And no place dry to put your clothes when you take a shower and water gets sprayed all over the place. And who thought to put the towel rack inside the shower?

Alarm Clocks need to be clear how to operate. When you are just waking up is not the time to try and figure out how to turn the thing off.

More hotel rooms need comfortable chairs.

Oh, and back to airline seats - the space right in front of your knees is not a great place for storage ie the literature pocket. I think that room could be better used for knees.

I also think it is about time someone investigated better ways of catering, ie the carts and galley.

1) agree on the electrical outlets (for laptops, cell phones, iPod recharge, etc. etc. etc). Another outlet pet peeve, though, is a lack of outlet in a place where you can easily set up the ironing board. Whenever there's a run of 5 feet clear along a wall--to conveniently place the ironing board--you can guarantee there's no outlet nearby. Instead, you end up having to set it up adjacent to the desk or something. It also makes it difficult to leave the ironing board up for more than 1 day--housekeeping will take it down, so you can go through that awkward set-up again the next morning!

2) setting the TV where you can't see it from the desk. I usually have the TV on, as background noise if nothing else, while I'm working at the desk. But sometimes I want to watch the TV *and* work on my laptop. In many places, it can't be done.

3) bathrooms where the towel holding area is farther than an arm's reach
from the shower--it makes you get out and drip water all over the place just to get the towels to dry off.

4) so-called "comfortable" chairs with no table anywhere nearby on which to place a drink, book, etc. The floating chair in the corner of the room doesn't do me a lot of good when I need to drag it next to the nightstand so I don't have to hold my drink in my hand while I'm reading or using my laptop.

My design pet-peeve of all times is not specific to traveling but is relevant: Door handles should make it clear whether it is a "PUSH" door or a "PULL" door. The push door has a bar across the front. The pull door has a handle.

Regarding outlets in hotel rooms, this is a major issue. Rather than having to completely re-do the wall outlets, I would suggest that every light fixture in the room be replaced with one that has an outlet at its base.

Power outlets in hotel rooms already mentioned.

A special pet peeve of mine: Big sinks with small faucets or just small faucets so you can't just wash your hands, you basically have to scoop the water to the front. Just make them a notch higher and longer.

And bath rooms with tubes but without curtain. Okay, do you WANT me to flood that room?
W

Sometimes I'm in an airport between flights, and I just want a little drink of water. Not a liter bottle of designer water, not a paper cup of soda, not a caffeinated beverage, not an ice cream beverage, not fruit juice, not vegetable juice, not an alcoholic beverage, just plain water.

Good luck finding a drinking fountain!

Oh, and on a plane? First and foremost, the seating arrangements: no leg room and having to fight for the arm rest.

Mine are mostly in hotels:

Outlets in easy reach, for laptops, phone rechargers, and irons - has already been mentioned.

Also, a huge pet peeve that has already been mentioned - set up the desk so that you can watch the TV while you work. If I'll be staying a couple days, the first thing I always do it rearrange the hotel room furniture. So many of them have the desk off to the side of the TV, or you sit at the desk with your back to the TV.

Alarm clocks that you can't figure out - like others in the thread, I've taken to using my Treo for my alarm, so that I don't have to figure out the hotel room clock, but I always check it because I've been awoken in the middle of the night too many times by alarms that I didn't set.

Make sure the TV remote allows for "sleep" programming, so that you can fall asleep with a little background noise, but have it shut off itself.

Make sure how you switch from tub to shower water stream is obvious. a couple places I've stayed have a funny little ring around the opening of the tub faucet that you have to push up or pull down to switch the stream up to the shower head.

Stacks of towels on a towel rack in the shower with you. Seems like they all can get damp really easily, and I wonder if the bottom ones get changed or just sit there and mildew.

That's all my tired brain can come up with for now.

I'll highlight the positive instead of the negatives. As a frequent international traveller, I really like hotels that build multiple plugs (US, UK, European) into their desks. Saves me having to carry loads of adapters.