The Art of the Kludge

  Train entrance 
  Originally uploaded by seadipper.

Reader Paul Reynolds sent in this hilarious essay by Bartosz Milewski about profoundly bad user-interface design. The door handle on the train car has to be seen-- or rather, not seen-- to be believed.

The British School of User Interface

Bartosz is a software guy, but principles of user interface design are universal. Whenever I accidentally print a QuarkXPress document instead of saving it as a PostScript file (or vice versa) because I didn't switch modes in the "Printer..." dialog box as opposed to the "Print..." dialog box, it's like reaching through that train car window.

(Incidentally, this kind of train was called the slam-door train, since you had to slam the doors shut. They have all been retired and replaced with trains whose doors slide open automatically, since too many people fell out of the slam-door trains while in motion. Click on the photo to learn a bit more... My favorite thing about blogging is discovering crazy stuff like this. I bet if I asked resident Brit Future Boy about them he would expound upon all the ways slam-door trains are better than uncouth American trains.)

Comments

[Steve R]

The slam door trains may have been retired, but on many of the "express" trains used on longer distance routes over here in Blighty, you still need open the window, lean out and then yank the handle down to make the door open. It's easy enough for me as I have arms that would put a gorilla to shame, but I've seen some of my smaller friends contort themselves into some pretty interesting positions in futile bids to leave the train!

[Steve R]

The slam door trains may have been retired, but on many of the "express" trains used on longer distance routes over here in Blighty, you still need open the window, lean out and then yank the handle down to make the door open. It's easy enough for me as I have arms that would put a gorilla to shame, but I've seen some of my smaller friends contort themselves into some pretty interesting positions in futile bids to leave the train!