I came across this site completely by accident. It is a rather functional and no-nonsense site selling home appliances and whitegoods.

What caught my attention endeared me to it was the thumbnail image used for the “Small Appliances” category on the homepage. They sure look like small appliances to me!

Love it. An unexpected touch of whimsy. A reminder that humans run this shop.

Television programs here in Singapore are censored for (amongst other things) rude words. Swear words are fairly consistently muted out, even in late night shows.

This can make for very strange viewing – the rap tune on a ad became a surreal experience in stuttering for example. I also have since discovered my brain’s previously untapped ability to immediately insert the most extreme swear word when ever I …

Spotted a book by Dean Koontz recently, entitled In Odd We Trust.

What a brilliant catchphrase for innovators every there!

An odd way of looking at and thinking about the world is one way to generate unusual ideas. See my post on Pork Mall – especially the comments – for a real life illustration of several different ways of looking at the same situation: engage with the odd, or impose …

With my post Tap user interface failure still fresh in my mind, I was most amused to come across this post on Farmer Ted’s porch about the bad user interface of a clock.

This alarm clock is so badly designed it needed its own online technical support page!

So where’s the support page for that bloody tap in my bathroom?!!!

This is one of many shopping centres (malls) in central Singapore. So what is its name?

In a country where different cultures and languages mix freely and sometimes oddly, the idea of a shopping centre named “Pork Mall” is actually not that far fetched…

This is a very funny example of what can happen when designers work without sufficient awareness of the complete context of its use.

Surely someone must have supplied some sort of measurements during the briefing stage? Surely the designers would have visited the site?

This must be particularly embarrassing given the nature of the business. Assuming of course that people do notice these things. I have …

I spotted a rather nice looking simple desk clock in a local homeware store over the weekend. It was a rectangular white box with a square cross section. The face was made up of numerals formed by a matrix of bright white LED bulbs. All rather understated and nice looking.

The problem was on the back. There was a sticker which said: “Do not turn on …

This is a fun little demonstration on how we see, or don’t see, some things that are immediately in front of our eyes.

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Thanks to Gavin and Ingrid for this.

A display-window-sized poster scaring shoppers in front of a shop in Singapore.

I love these ads. Really clever (not not too clever). And very much appealing to the cerebral and not the visual (unlike most ads).

Well done to the Financial Review.