One of my favorite examples of good design becoming embedded and now a bad design is the touchtone phone keypad. The layout is different than the normal calculator (adding machine) keypad by design. That was because folk used to using adding machines (that's all they did back then) made too many mistakes when transitioning to keyed phones from dial phones. By reversing the layout users were forced to slow down, change orientation, think when punching.
Letters on the dialing system were there only to aid in the transition from named exchanges "dial VALley or PLAza or SOUthland or RIChmond xxxx".
Now so many interfaces from Remote Controls to Cell Phones try to use the Phone Layout as a keyboard; and it sucks.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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