The pilot thought he had keyed in 7600 to warn air traffic control his radios had packed up. But he actually punched in 7500, the code for “I’ve been hijacked”.

The pilot’s problem is comic, but not unique. Why, asks Michaela Bushell, are so many products still designed to suit the way companies would ideally like us to behave?

User Centred Design- because we don’t work how we like to think we do