I realized I’d added the word by mistake, either by typing it or by explicitly adding to the T9 dictionary.  This makes sense because “M” is the first letter on button 6 and “D” is the first letter on button 3, and adding to the dictionary is only a couple button presses.

Of course, now I want to delete the word.  But I can’t.  The manual explains how to add a word, and not how to delete it. I called Samsung tech support who said there is no feature for deleting a word from the T9 dictionary—on any Samsung phone.  They didn’t have to check which phone I was using.

Google, it seems, often provides the best tech support.  It turns out the T9 system adapts its predictions to the words you use.  If your problem is that a word is popping up in place of the one you want, simply create a text message wherein you repeatedly select the word(s) you desire, and it will begin to push back the unwanted words in that message and future messages.  You do not need to save the message for this to be true; it adjusts on fly as it is used, as opposed to basing its predictions on stored data.

While it is ridiculous that words can’t be deleted, at least this needs not be a lasting nuisance in most cases. However, tragically, it seems that most people dealing with this problem today are unable to find the above solution.

I found it rather ambiguous.

• I’ll click “No” if it means “No, I’d like you to do it for me.”
• I’ll click “Yes” if it means, “Yes, I still want to proceed even though I’ll have to to go to some extra effort.”

After much thought, I guessed that the dialog simply forgot to tell me that some automated action failed to complete, so I clicked “Yes”.  A manual configuration page appeared.

I think they could have taken a couple other approaches that would have been less confusing:

• Label each choice in a way that indicates what will happen: “Settings could not be detected automatically.  You may configure the device manually.”  [Cancel] [Continue]
• Take me directly to the configuration window, and have a header at the top of it with the same explanation.  Then I could configure as needed or simply close the window.  If you’re going to pop up a window anyway, is there any reason to suppress a second window until the first one confirms that I really want the second?

Modern water faucets can be considered functions of these two inputs, which get mapped to the two lower-level controls: the apertures of the hot and cold pipes. Old-fashioned faucets gave users direct control of these two apertures, and in doing so had simpler mechanical implementations but were functionally inferior interfaces; for example, it would be difficult for a user to keep temperature constant while varying flow rate.

However, good interface design does not stop there. Many modern faucets fail to address the following:

• It should be easy to control mixture and aperture independently. Users may want to be able to leave temperature fixed and simply turn the faucet on and off; likewise, users may want to adjust temperature while the faucet is kept fully on. However, I have seen faucets that make it difficult or impossible to adjust one factor without adjusting the other. The faucet below forces you to center the handle (discarding your desired mixture setting) when turning the faucet off:
  
• Mixture (hot/cold) generally requires a knob or lever having a very wide angle of motion, whereas aperture (on/off) generally needs not have very wide motion. Temperature in most places is slow to respond to input, whereas flow responds immediately. If you’ve taken any classes on control systems you learn that a feedback controller (in this case, the human) will have poor control of a system when its output signal is delayed. Designs like the one below are effective because they offer a wide range of motion to maximize control of temperature.
  
• Aperture is the primary control; temperature is secondary. Not adhering to this, your design will be unintuitive. We all subconsiously understand that in order to move water where we want it, we must exert effort upward against the force of gravity. Since the beginning of recorded history of mechanisms that move water around, vertical motion has always been the driver. Secondary to this is choosing our temperature; we may carry a pail of hot water in our left hand and a pail of cold water in our right hand. Now, by resisting nature, the design below suffers from an unintuitive interface in spite of the degree of control it may offer in the end:
  

See the links that say Most Viewed and Today? Me neither. But keep looking. No, below those girls. No, above those…

Ah, there they are. You know, they should turn those down arrow icons into little men in red, slap a cover on this and title it Slutty Celebrity Where’s Waldo. It’d be a hit with the kids.

Now, those menus contain what used to be the main navigation menu at the upper left of the page, because, as the man in the video points out, they offer the best ways for ordinary people with good messages to get seen. Now, between all the cleavage shots, who’s going to notice this? If it were some obscure feature I could understand the oversight, but this is the main video navigation menu. This is insanity.