The irony of this instructional diagram is it would be needed today for anyone who had never seen one before.  The rotary UI reached is primacy in the late 1970s, before push button phones took over. For anyone born today, and never saw it used in a movie, would have a hard time figuring it out.

The problem of course is the diagram fails to explain the most important thing: how to actually dial a number.

The design itself had the curious side effect of making 0′s the most expensive number to dial, as it took the most work and the most time.

(Source: unknown)

Can you guess what pushing this lonely button in a hallway does?

Update: the answer is here.

Anybody know?

In Walla Walla, WA, drivers are not entrusted with determining how much space they need for parallel parking their cars.  The city does it for them, by marking off spaces of pre-determined length.  I’m suspicious this wastes space (as not all cars are the same size) when the spots are back-to-back – and I’m definitely sure it does when the spots have additional space left between them (see photo below).

This submission from Jason Crawford begs the question: Why?

Three buttons for two commands is silly. My best guess is for safety reasons, they want two buttons involved to reduce accidents.

But as Jason points out, why hide the choices in coded letters?

On a recent Virgin America flight from Seattle to San Francisco, I found a surprise. As I settled in and put my seat belt on, I was surprised to see what looked like two male parts, as each had a similar looking tab.  I immediately stood up and looked at my neighbors belt, assuming I’d taken one end from the wrong seat.

My neighbor was equally confused, and we spent a few seconds standing in our own aisle convinced we must have tangled something up somehow. But on careful inspection, I discovered the right hand belt was the receiver, and if I angled them both correctly, I could close the loop, and fly in safety.

I spent the next five minutes trying to figure out why that extra piece of metal had been attached to the right hand side of the belt, but I couldn’t come up with one.

Any sort of color coding, or symbols on each end of the belt (L and R for left and right), would have made the difference, as it would have ensured me I had a correct pair, and needed simply to figure out how to fit them together.

How would you improve this design, assuming the tab on the right part of the belt had to stay?