Snapchat

Snapchat, the brand new social networking tool to hit the shelves, made for both Android and Apple devices and the cross-platform compatibility that it offers has elevated it to the one of the most used social networking tool used by people of all ages but specifically by school and college going folks. However, there are several problems with it from what I have been able to see.

This is one of the images that I was able to retrieve from another review of the app and as you can see from the picture on the right, some of the parts are intuitive and some clearly are not. For example, one can observe that the camera on the top right stands for using the back or front camera of your phone. The flash sign is for turning flash on or off. The box on the bottom left stands for the snapchats that you have received and the big button in the middle could be pressed to take a picture. All of this can be recognized but Snapchat is also supposed to allow the user to send video. This feature was introduced a couple of months ago and even today I meet people who do not know how to accomplish this. Apparently to do this one must hold down the capture button and the app will start recording the video and will stop once the button is released. However, no clue as to how to capture a video is provided to the user beforehand. 

Secondly, although a person is allowed to send a snap for a certain amount of time between 1 and 10 seconds, the person who receives it can take a screenshot of the picture. The app tells you who has taken the screenshot but it doesn't tell you of what picture since the app does not store any pictures internally. This raises concerns over the users privacy. Furthermore, as the app does not store any images, a person cannot go back and see what was on the snaps that they sent. 

Lastly, in order to use the app, one has to create an account and sign in using your email, which the app then uses to find friends for you who already use Snapchat which again raises questions about informed consent and protecting users privacy. Although this is a useful app to have, it has several problems with it and a non existent support setup that the developers need to work on.

Gull Wing Doors

Gull Wing doors were introduced by Mercedes in their 1952 SL300 race car and then integrated into the road legal version of the same car in 1954. Gull Wing doors are basically hinged to the roof of the car instead of the sides. Since then they have featured in many cars, most notably the Delorean DMC-12 of the Back to the Future series.

Even though they give the car character, they are extremely impractical. First of all, if one is sitting inside a car and tries to close the doors, and if by chance they happen to be less than eight feet tall, they wont be able to reach the door handle. Secondly, when a person does arrive at their destination, they will look like a massive pillock getting out of the car and thirdly, if the car rolls over. the people inside will be unable to get out of the car. Today, the Gull Wing doors can be found in the Mercedes SLS. Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear BBC did a review of the car and said that the doors "heavy, unnecessary, embarrassing, bombs!". Therefore, Gull Wing doors, definitely a startling example of bad design! The full video can be seen here!