[userbinator]

My decades-old washing machine has a clearly labeled "cycle end signal loudness" knob. It ranges from off to so loud I can hear it from the other end of the house on a different floor.

The other reply with the instructions on how to adjust the volume of the signal shows just how far UI has regressed. Instead of twisting a knob, you need to know some obscure key sequence.

[hedora]

Now that we have kids, I like the security through obscurity of the poorly designed menu.

Of course, I’ll eventually be unable to read all the necessary tiny print, and will then need to get the kids to fix the settings…

[MereInterest]

The problem with poorly designed menus is that they can also be activated accidentally. Then you need to discover not only how to disable a feature, but also what the feature even is in the first place.

For example, once my headphones stopped playing sound whenever I would clear my throat or talk to the cats. It seemed like a weird intermittent failure, because I wasn’t expecting the microphone to have any effect when listening. And because it was an entirely new behavior. Turns out, if you triple-touch the right speaker and hold for three seconds, it will enter “speak to mute” mode. This can happen when taking the headphones off, so you don’t even hear any announcement about the mode.

Long ramble, but non-discoverable interfaces are a bit of a pet peeve.