You don't have to open too many Sunday supplements before you find an article extolling the beauty and joy that is the iPod. Or perhaps if you read the Daily Mail, the Dyson vacuum cleaner.
These are products which manage the rare trick of combining form and function in equal measure - as aesthetically pleasing as they are life enhancing.
Lauded as design classics, products like these have changed not just public perceptions but also whole markets and consumer dynamics.
With such shining examples setting the benchmark, why do so many product designers get it so, so wrong?
The list of miscreants could be long and varied. Yet my personal object of hatred is the grass strimmer.
Since moving into my new house four years ago, I have gone through three of these misdesigned, pathetically misfunctioning nightmares.
The first was a cheapo own-brand thing from B&Q. Its problem was simple - it didn't strim grass very well. After an extended checkout altercation with the manager, I eventually paid extra to upgrade it to a Flymo strimmer.
This was great the first two times I cut the grass. Then the whirling spool thing decided it no longer wanted to merely feed out its strimmer line, but wanted to spit it out in great long gouts just long enough to take the skin off your ankles when strimming in shorts. I eventually lost my temper with it and decided to see if battering it repeatedly on the dry stone wall at the bottom of the garden would rectify the problem. Sadly, it did not..
In my third (and final) attempt to find strimmer nirvana, I pulled out all the stops and went for a top of the range job with a twisty handle and twin line feed. It looked fantastic, like a 21st century jousting stick, all clean lines in shiny plastic and steel.
Unfortunately, it performed like a pair of blunt toenail clippers, refusing to strim anything thicker than the most delicate baby blades of grass. It didn't even touch the old, thick stubborn sprouts which border most of my lawns
I gave up on it half way through one especially trying strimming session and left it outside overnight in a right of pique thinking it would teach it a lesson. It did. It rained. I put it in the wheelie bin the following morning.
So this is a clarion call to all those young, hopeful product designers out there. Please design the ultimate strimmer. Think big. Think beautiful. Think about the glamour and adulation of appearing in the Observer's gardening supplement being heralded as the James Dyson of grass management. But above all, make the bloody thing work.
Until then, I've found an altogether easier solution. I'm buying a goat.