Author Archives: Nick Morrisson

Ambigous Spin Cycle Selector Switch

This is the spin cycle selector knob on a Frigidaire Gallery washing machine. I’m not sure what this means: does “fast” spin the clothes faster and remove more water, or does it spin them at the same speed for less time, making it finish faster?
These two possible interpretations are opposites in terms of the effect [...]

Ambiguous Letterforms Yield N-word

This is a poster for a show for Vanilla Fudge. The bubbly, melty type seems appropriate for a 1960s psychedelic rock band… until I try to actually read the words.
“Fudge” is clear enough, but to my eyes, the “V” in “Vanilla” looks a lot like a “Y”, and the “L”s look like “G”s. Given the [...]

iPhone Camera & Keyboard

I just got an iPhone. This thing is pure user experience: it doesn’t let you do anything you couldn’t already do with other mobile phones before (except being able to interact with voicemail messages individually, which is great), but it makes using those features easy, intuitive, and fun, which in my opinion is why people [...]

Bad Information Design: Recipe For Disaster

Alton Brown, host of the Food Network’s cooking show Good Eats, came up with the best chocolate chip cookies ever. However, to achieve chewy nirvana, you have to slog through a recipe whose failure to even make an attempt at user empathy or to follow common sense is almost impressive.

The first problem is common to [...]