This was a fun twitter research question I asked last week. Of course, since people self-select and many folks who follow me work in tech or are designers the answers aren’t quite representative of what most people would say.

The way I asked the question could have been better – I mean I think that things like the Nazi regime are probably in the top 10 (and with our problems today, use of those ideas is still alive), as well as the design of our entire consumer goods industry which is the major contributor to greenhouse gases that will likely be the end of us all. But it’s natural for people to think of “designed things” as devices and gadgets, things we interact with directly at a human scale.

That said, here’s the list:

• Virgin train bathrooms that talk to you while you do your business
• Microwave ovens
• Blister pack packaging
• The English measurement system (pounds, feet)
• Capitalism (Referring to the American flavor, as there are many)
• Outdoor heaters (like at restaurants)
• Harley Davidson motorcycles (noise pollution)
• Leaf blowers (came up several times)
• High fructose corn syrup (it is a key link in our obesity problems)
• Public transportation hanging straps that people under 5’6″ can’t reach
• Semi-automatic and automatic machine guns
• Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders
• The automobile
• Suburbs and the making cars the center of city planning
• Fire alarms (specifically 3am low battery alarms)
• Passwords as a security measure
• Microwave food containers
• Sprinklers for lawns
• IQ Tests
• The QWERTY keyboard
• Disposable plastic items
• Placement of light switches in homes (confusing)
• Terms of Agreement that are 40 pages long
• Fracking
• Gas stations that have TVs that blare at you
• Facebook
• Parking pay machines
• Motion sensor based anything (bathroom soap, towel, etc.)
• Cable news
• Intercontinental ballistic missiles
• Single portion condiment packets
• Opaque Congress/Lobbyist interactions
• The chair and the toilet (both encourage bad posture)
• Phones without headphone jacks

What’s missing? Leave a comment. Thanks.