Bad Designs for Consumers, Great for EFL!

I've already spent a ridiculous amount of time on the site Bad Human Factor Designs. It is both a celebration of human ingenuity... and stupidity in all the best ways.

Each entry discusses a design, usually for a simple, everyday item, which should be very simple but becomes overcomplicated by Man in his infinite wisdom. The entries also provide explanatory pictures that will help students through the text. And while there are some unexpected words, the author's sarcastic, journalistic approach to each topic makes it a very easy read.
Many entries also deal with problems that foreign language learners are likely to encounter.

Several center on travel, such as how to open the sealed toothpaste bottles that airlines give you, confusing bathroom and kitchen utility designs, and how to navigate the controls on cluttered gas pumps. I wish there had been a Russian equivalent, when I was trying to figure out the flusher in St. Petersburg...

The format of each entry is also helpful for students. Each explains the problem with the design and then offers suggestions for fixing it. Below that are reader comments. This makes for an easy discussion in class or a short writing assignment. What is the problem with the design? How does the author suggest fixing it? Are there other solutions you can think of? How does the design of this particular thing differ in Russia? Have you ever had a similar problem? These could also be prediction questions for before the reading. I definitely think it would be a fun warm up activity.

As a follow up assignment to warm up the next day, students could also write about design problems they have experienced in their own life. Keyboards, for example. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet has more letters than the Latin alphabet that English-speakers use. That means more keys, right?

Wrong. It means that for some keys, instead of a bracket you get a hard sign. Of course, you can easily program a little code to, for example, press Ctrl + R + U to change your computer between Russian keys and English keys, but that's a lot of work for one bracket. And what about remembering the keys when they are marked with English letters? One solution that I've seen the most for this is stickers that go over English keys to mark where the Russian letters are. As Russo-Centric as the country used to be, I would have figured that they had specifically designed Russian keyboards. What happened to them?

Luckily for our purposes, these are good things! Students in my particular age range (teens and young adults) will be eager to complain about anything! So while I get them honing their writing and reading skills, I can also let them blow off some steam on the petty annoyances of everyday life.