This one’s for the inventors. Or, better yet, the innovators that might actually do something with their ideas for improving the crappy products we are about to rank.

‘Worst product’ surveys are everywhere on the internet. The problem with all of them is they’re very subjective, and too often compiled by an individual with a bee in his – occasionally ‘her’ – bonnet about one crappy product in particular.

We thought it was time to bring some structure to the discussion. What do we really mean by ‘worst’? And how might we objectively compare a bad apple with a worse orange?

It sounded like a job for PanSensic again. Meaningful measurement, we eventually decided, needed to think not just about the overall rubbishness of a product, but also how easy it ought to be to put it right. The idea being that if something was easy to put right, but no-one had, that somehow compounds the insult to the poor consumer.

It felt like time for a 2×2 matrix.

Up the vertical axis we formulated an integrated parameter to quantify product ‘terribleness’. Because our focus was on everyday products, we decided that terribleness needed to combine three different elements. Firstly the amount of negative emotion the product generates from customers. Scraping social media for such negative emotions, however, quickly revealed a problem. Our relationship with bad products is somewhat akin to the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle: When we first realise we need a product and go out and buy one only to then realise that it doesn’t do what we want it to do very well, we tend to blame ourselves and grind to a halt. Then, when we realise it’s not our fault we get frustrated. This is the stage when good organisations begin to recognize there is an innovation opportunity and do something to make the product better. Less proactive companies, or industries in our case, let the frustration devolve into Anger. They do this, I sometimes think, because they realise that if no-one does anything to fix the problems with the product, the Anger eventually devolves to Confusion and then Apathy. And later still, assuming the poor old consumer still has a need for the function of the product, they learn to Adapt their behaviour to compensate as best they can for the ineptness of the product, and then finally Accept that this is the way the world is. The reason for mentioning this rubbish-product-grief-cycle is that we can’t just use our usual Frustration measure as the prime indicator of terribleness. A really bad product has gone past Frustration for most of its customers and so when we’re looking for social media narrative we also need to be on the lookout for post-Frustration Anger, Apathy, Confusion, Apathy, Adaptation and Acceptance. The further along that sequence things are allow to get, the worse the product.

Or almost. The second factor that needs to be taken into consideration somehow is whether there is a level of taboo associated with the product. Certain things are unlikely to be discussed in a social media context because it’s just not socially acceptable to do so. Picking up how people feel about things they tend not to talk about is inevitably more difficult than something that’s at the front of everyone’s mind, but then again, one of the key start points for the whole PanSensic story was ‘reading between the lines’. So that’s what we’ve built into the calculation.

Thirdly then is the ubiquity of the product. A bad product design that never sells is, according to our algorithm, less terrible than one that everyone has Accepted is rubbish and goes out and purchases anyway.

So much for the vertical axis. Along the horizontal we’ve plotted ‘ease of solution’. The way we’ve calculated this is through a combination of two quantifiable aspects of current product designs. Firstly how much untapped Evolution Potential the product possesses. The more untapped potential it has, the easier it will be to make a trend jump to advance the capability of the solution. Second is how many contradictions would need to be solved in order to improve the design. A product with lots of current unsolved contradictions will need more work to improve than a product that is being held back by a smaller number of contradictions.

Here’s what the plot looks like for all of the candidate rubbish products we’ve been able to identify from our PanSensic analyses:

The way the plot is configured, the ‘real’ worst products are revealed as the ones closest to the top right hand corner of the 2×2 matrix.

They are (drum roll), in reverse rubbishness order…

#5 Leaf-Blower – the ultimate design solution for bored gardeners and street cleaners. Basically a noisy pollution machine designed to temporarily move half a dozen leaves in the opposite direction to the prevailing wind. Only to watch them all blow back to precisely where they started five minutes after the leafblower operative goes off to get more fuel.

#4 Hand-Dryer – when you see Dyson getting involved in a product, you can be pretty certain they’ve spotted a current product that is rubbish. Sometimes they create a solution that is better than the incumbent rubbishness. And then sometimes they find themselves going in the opposite direction. Like the Airblade. All the stupidity of a hot air hand-dryer, but now with added noise and a small lake on the floor. I think in some circles its called a ‘design statement’. A statement that in this case goes something like, ‘we have no fecking clue what we’re doing’.

#3 Sanitary Napkins – the clue is probably in the name, but things get seriously worse when we see the horrendous rate of urinary tract infections this product causes. Not to mention advertising campaigns based on ‘X% better protection’. Who in their right mind bases an advertising campaign on the USP of ‘slightly less rubbish than everyone else’s product’? Oh, wait, I know, the sort of person that launches a Minion napkin ‘innovation’. Did I miss that scene in the movie?

#2 Dental Floss – everyone knows they’re supposed to floss. 80% give up. Two-thirds of the people who persevere make things worse than if they hadn’t bothered in the first place. It’s like someone walking up to you in the street and whispering in your ear, ‘psst, if you buy this really expensive string, I promise you’ll get gum disease’ and you ask him how much to buy enough for the whole family?

And, finally, our winner…

#1 Toilet Brush – let’s see if I can get this right. The toilet is blocked, so I’m supposed to stick a high surface-area brush into the u-bend to try and unblock it. I then take the faecal matter covered  brush out again, and move it, all the time praying it doesn’t drip poison onto the toilet seat and bathroom floor, to an odour-releasing, fly-attracting, bacteria-magnet display-receptacle for all my guests to admire. So they can then repeat the process. Did I miss something?

Okay, enough already. Over to you, Kickstarter… even though you’re not even in the Top 20 yet.