this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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Asshole Design and Crappy Design

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This community covers both asshole designs and crappy designs.

Discuss manifestations of asshole designs whereby the design is deliberately anti-consumer. Manifestations of crappy designs are also welcome in this forum, which reflect poor designs that are not borne out of deliberate contempt for the consumer.

Use of these prefixes is encouraged:

[a/d] ← you are confident that the design is an Asshole Design

[c/d] ← you are confident that the design is a Crappy Design

[ObD] ← Obsolescence by Design (a specific variety of a/d).

Unprefixed titles are useful if you’re uncertain whether the design is deliberate.

Rules:

  1. Please avoid posting web-related designs. Instead, post those in:

Related communities

Existence Rationale:

There are other communities for Asshole Designs and Crappy Designs, but all of the communities at the time of our founding exist only on centralized instances. We are currently the sole decentralized community of this kind. (update: another crappy design forum was recently found in the free-world-- see related communities above)

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activistPnk@slrpnk.net
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wisdom of button batteries -- anyone think they are a good idea? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 3 months ago by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/asshole_crappy_design@slrpnk.net
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My kitchen scale is powered by a cr2032 lithium button battery. Yes, it was sloppy of me to buy the scale without seeing how it was powered. I only use the scale once or twice per month, yet these shitty button batteries only last a few months. It seems like I only get about ~6—12 measurements before the battery is dead.

WTF? This seems to defy physics. The scale automatically powers off. Of course it must always have some power because there is no ON switch. The scale detects capacitive touch taps or weight before turning on the display.

Digital calipers use a button battery which also only gives a dozen or so measurements before the battery is dead. It seems the calipers power on when the case is snapped shut. Maybe the rattling causes it to power on since it’s very touchy. Turns on with the slightest movement.

My bicycle helmet takes a cr2032, which only lasts a few months. Perhaps because it’s hard to remember to turn off the light. But still, it’s a shitty design because it has no timer or motion sensor. Or would a motion sensor itself use more power than the LEDs?

Questions:

  • are button batteries a significant e-waste burden?
  • are the batteries themselves really short lived, or are the appliances that use them all just poorly designed?
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[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Rechargeable button batteries exist, I use them in my Digimon.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Interesting.. I had no idea. Must be hard to find because I’ve never seen rechargeable button batteries or devices to recharge them, at least not locally (and I only shop local).

(edit) my kitchen scale battery compartment is screwed down (thus extra hassle). Perhaps it makes more sense for me to drill a hole and mount a barrel connector, then wire up a universal 3v ac/dc adapter.

[–] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

It's poor design, 2032's can last a long time. Modern electronics suffer greatly from accountants. Someone may have made a good design , then someone came in and asked "will it still work if we remove this and this?" The answer is yes but it will not have the longevity or reliability. You see it frequently on PC boards where there are missing capacitors for example.

This is why engineers and people who fix things drink.