Can You Beat The World's Worst User Interface? (userinyerface.com) 168
Design firm Baggar writes:
A user assumes certain actions to be in a certain place or color because interface designers worldwide have been collaboratively educating users and feeding them these design-patterns. But what happens if we poke all good practice with a stick and stir it up? What if we don't respect our self-created rules and expectations, and do everything the other way around?
That's exactly why we created User Inyerface: An interface that expects you to do the hard work instead of doing it for you. We created a simple interface, that isn't your friend. An interface that doesn't want to please you. An interface that has no clue and no rules.
The task is simple: complete the forms as fast as you can. It might suck the life out of you, but it is possible if you simply look and forget everything you have grown accustomed to.
Ars Technica collected some screenshots of their favorite screens, calling it "a hilariously and deliberately difficult-to-use website created to show just how much we rely on past habits and design conventions to interact with the Web... a gauntlet of nearly impossible-to-parse interactions that are as funny as they are infuriating."
At one point, the site gave me a warning that my chosen password "was not unsafe."
That's exactly why we created User Inyerface: An interface that expects you to do the hard work instead of doing it for you. We created a simple interface, that isn't your friend. An interface that doesn't want to please you. An interface that has no clue and no rules.
The task is simple: complete the forms as fast as you can. It might suck the life out of you, but it is possible if you simply look and forget everything you have grown accustomed to.
Ars Technica collected some screenshots of their favorite screens, calling it "a hilariously and deliberately difficult-to-use website created to show just how much we rely on past habits and design conventions to interact with the Web... a gauntlet of nearly impossible-to-parse interactions that are as funny as they are infuriating."
At one point, the site gave me a warning that my chosen password "was not unsafe."
This is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Very little about the poor interface design has to do with "past habits" or "convention". Much of it just basically doesn't work, lies to the user, or shows the user its own incorrect state.
This isn't a case of poor UI design, there's already a shitton of that out there. This is a bunch of lazy people who don't actually have a clue on *how* to make poor UI design.
Re: This is stupid (Score:1)
I fail to see the humor.
This is smart (Score:2, Insightful)
This story has made the rounds on several tech sites, hire these guys for marketing not gui design
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Just wrongly naming buttons does not make it a bad interface, just deliberately messed up like those download sites that try to get you to install malware.
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Very little about the poor interface design has to do with "past habits" or "convention". Much of it just basically doesn't work, lies to the user, or shows the user its own incorrect state.
This isn't a case of poor UI design, there's already a shitton of that out there. This is a bunch of lazy people who don't actually have a clue on *how* to make poor UI design.
Sounds like someone couldn't figure out how to get past the first step.
Looking at the second page, there are tons of *conventions* that it violates:
- Cookie popup has button and text: convention says the button is to continue and text is to reject (UI does it backwards)
- 1-2-3-4 progress meter: convention says highlighted step is the current one (UI animates and cycles through them)
- Timer popup lock/unlock button: convention says green is to make things good/normal and red is to make things bad/unusual (UI
That was his point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Writing a UI with a bunch of intentionally broken stuff is neither creative nor funny, it's just stupid.
Well, I laughed out loud when I figured out what twisted, evil thing they did so I thought it humorous. YMMV.
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Agreed.. This was very funny!
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I laughed at the country selector. The "Mystery Meat" buttons are a hallmark of crappy UI - hover to learn what it's about. That parodied the convention quite well.
Re:This is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
No I got passed it all, and to be clear there is bad UI design in there, but the things that actually slow the user down are not bad or unconventional UI design, they are completely irrelevant things that don't function or are downright well thought out with malicious intent.
You say writing Close complete with copyright symbol is bad UI design. I say it's well thought out UI design from a malicious actor?
You complain about the delay popping up the copyright question, did you ever notice that it isn't a question and doesn't do anything?
You said the progress indicator is unconventional, but neglect to realise that it isn't a progress indicator.
Large portions of this puzzle app can be deleted without any change in functionality. That isn't bad UI design, that is malicious missidrection.
You should learn the difference and maybe practice some of that "critical thinking" yourself. But hey you're not here to discuss anything, you're just a scared AC who's more interested in attacking posters than discourse. Speaking of beating dead horses, and english course may help you too. Or if you thought that other post I linked to was anything related to UI design, programming or anything other than a joke then I can recommend a colorectal surgeon to remove that stick from your arse.
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They were trying to make fun of and show how stupid the shitton of stuff out there is.
They were not really trying to make a poor UI, they were demonstrate what some idiots think is a good UI but is actually shit.
My personal favorite bad UI are the many games where you have to click to complete a task, then they make you click to go to a 'claim prize' page, then click on the prize to claim it. This is actively trying to annoy me. At the very least, have a "complete and claim" button next to the 'complete
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Very little about the poor interface design has to do with "past habits" or "convention". Much of it just basically doesn't work, lies to the user, or shows the user its own incorrect state.
I assert that conventions are shorthand which implicitly tell the user what to expect. For example, this interface put the image checkmarks above the image you were selecting. The vast majority of GUIs put the checkmarks below. One could figure it out but it intentionally mislead me, essentially lying about which checkmarks went with which image.
This is a bunch of lazy people who don't actually have a clue on *how* to make poor UI design.
Oh, I really beg to differ. I think it took a lot of imaginative work to come up with a GUI which broke so many conventions and functioned so inconsistently. For ex
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Agreed, not what I was expecting at all. My first thought was that someone in journalism had seen vi for the first time...
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Would you like a real one? I just filed this bug on Thunderbird:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
When the user mouses over the To/CC/BCC selector, it changes into a "Remove Recipient" button! Even better, that action has no UNDO history.
Here is a demonstration of the issue in screenshots:
https://imgur.com/a/zQzZ0Rc [imgur.com]
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Agreed 100%. When I read the description I expected to see a completely foreign but consistent and thought out interface that challenged long held paradigms. I didn't see that. I saw an openly hostile interface that actively worked against the user. Its no different than a video game at that point and completely fails at its stated purpose.
I think it is worthwhile to explore new interface ideas that are divorced from standard designs. While they may not be replacements for existing interfaces, they may give
SAP anyone? (Score:2)
Re: SAP anyone? (Score:2)
Microsoft from Windows 8 and later also do their best.
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You beat me to it. SAP is indeed masterful in this regard. Concur, owned by SAP, manages to take non-intuitiveness, self-inconsistency and lack of responsive feedback to levels would be very hard for small companies to achieve without deliberate intent to thwart their users. SAP has an advantage in this regard; they are of a scale where they can outsource each fragment of their application to a different off-shore team, each of which has no contextual knowledge of the system, understanding of history, or ma
No need to reinvent the wheel (Score:5, Informative)
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Clearly you've never had the pleasure of using a Kai Krause interface.
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True, followed very closely by skype for business and the office suit.
However I find Pages and Notes and Numbers on Macs close as difficult to use and only use pen Office.
I knew this was happening to me (Score:2)
I thought this had been created (Score:1, Flamebait)
How is this different than Windows?
Old news!!! (Score:1)
Microsoft and Apple have done this few times already.
Exercise in futility (Score:5, Insightful)
/. has already discussed modern (web) design and this company's web site is not good [slashdot.org]. Really not good.
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On this point I think you may have whiffed. At mobile widths the video does not load.
I'm not in love with their site but it's not terrible. It's your typical overly-stylish marketing site. But I don't find it hard to use. Slashdot users seem to be fixated on the earliest web conventions like underlined
Worst UI? (Score:3, Insightful)
... a simple interface, that isn't your friend.
For a moment there I thought it's the description of the latest GNOME.
Windows 10 UI (Score:3)
After Windows 10 UI, this is business as usual. Took 7 minutes for me to complete, but most delays were because of age and captcha checks.
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Dead link. Did you even bother to check it before posting?
Try here: http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/shame.htm [gp.co.at]
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Windows 8, Unity edition. Now with registry-systemd!
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Amateurs (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
My employer was forced to take on an "upgrade" from Oracle. The revised user interface - allegedly for professions to do serious work with financial and legal implications - is easily twenty times as bad as this website if not more.
And this website was explicitly a parody - no-one is trying to do serious work with this, and the counter-intuitive features are obvious. The user knows right away that it's all a game.
One example of the subtle design flaws that Oracle inflicted on us: a data entry step that requires a second undocumented save operation. There was an "Apply" button, which saved data on every other screen where it appeared, but on this one it just returned to the main screen without taking any action. It took over a week before anyone realized the most important data (bank account numbers in this case) were not being saved.
A world without UX designers would be fine because everyone has seen the good ideas for decades; it's the world with terrible UX designers who feel the need to show off every feature they ever learned no matter who inappropriate or counter-productive that is causing so much suffering.
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I won't say what popular technology company I work for but the employee portal is so vast, inconsistent and bad that the employees share useful locations like video game tips.
Ok so what you do is you open IE and firefox, install this version of flash in firefox. Login with both of them. Connect to the corporate VPN and use IE to log in to benefits.mega-corporation.com.megacorporationbenefits.com and get a session cookie. Now turn off the VPN. Go to my progress, click dashboard. Now the dashboard won't
That's nothing. (Score:2)
Pff... come back when you match the insanity of editing multiple documents with older versions of GIMP. Go ahead, try to find the correct File menu on the first try. ;)
All modern UX is stupid (Score:3)
The operating systems and websites are getting just worst. In the university (around 2k), I had a year of HCI teaching, what really opened my eyes. But then, later, material/modern UX just gone against most of the rules we learned:
And the list goes on. And I can say the same for Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and Gnome devs (they even created a "manifesto" to ask distros to not apply themes over their "babies"). I'm just not sure if they just didn't learn ANY HCI rules or are just making like this post: getting every rule and kidding with us
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Nope. Best UI design principles were figured out in the 70's and 80's based on human psychology, physiology and testing. For example, take a look at a standard PC keyboard layout (the kind of keyboard that came with desktops on the 90's or earlier). The Esc key was specifically designed so that you can effortlessly hit it with your left hand that, for most people, has weaker coordination than the right. Nothing in modern UI design comes close to that level of sophistication.
Everything in UI desing really ha
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Menus are no more placed in the same position: in interation X, the button to add something will be at the top; in Y at the bottom; in Z, floating over top right
While not the worse example of UI design, a government website that is used constantly in my job makes you jump through hoops confirming you're agreeing to terms of use, etc. Okay, privacy and legal stuff matter, I get that. But to use the service, you click a link at the top of one page, then a link at the bottom of the second page, then a button at the top of the third page.
Flickr (Score:2)
Haven't checked it out yet... (Score:2)
..but I have the feeling it can't be worse than online application for an ESTA. (US visa replacement)
Is this about Windows 8 and later? (Score:2)
All we had learned and "knew" about Windows became useless when Microsoft changed everything in Windows 8 and later. The same goes for the Ribbon interface in MS Office: Nothing was where we had come to expect it.
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These kinds of changes are actually worse than the parody web page because they are, at least relatively, subtle.
The Ribbon is basically just a inefficient and clumsy menu, yet I have never seen any application menu at any level of complexity where finding even basic operations was a difficult as it is with the Ribbon.
So its GIMP then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: So its GIMP then? (Score:1)
GIMP isn't powerful. The only powerful feature it has would be scripting, but most graphic artists don't want to fuss with scripts. But a horrible UI and lack of basic features like adjustment and style layers arent the worst things about GIMP.
It's slow as a snail covered with glue. There's no GPU acceleration, so when you move elements on a large image you actually have to wait for it to redraw. Then come the filters. Pick a filter. Any of them. They all take at least twice as long to render as Phot
Re: So its GIMP then? (Score:1)
The telephone (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want my opinion on the worst interface of all time, look no further than the telephone. Think about it. If you want to call someone, you have to enter a bunch of digits. And what do these digits mean? Well, every country seems to do things differently, but in the US, the first three digits are the area code (which supposedly tells you roughly where they are), the next three are a prefix (which once told you what switch you were going through), and the last four are the line number. But today we have number portability and mobile devices, so none of these numbers really mean anything anymore. Furthermore, one person may have multiple numbers (home phone, mobile phone, work phone), and a single number may reach multiple people (some work places use a single number for an entire office, relying on extensions to reach individuals). People's phone numbers can and do change regularly (job changes, new home phone number, etc). And of course caller ID doesn't always give you the true number of the caller. Many companies will use their toll-free number for the caller ID, and scammers pretty much always put in a fake number. And on top of all that, there is a rather limited quantity of phone number available. The whole system of phone numbers is so badly broken and deficient, it's amazing we even bother to use it anymore.
And yet people don't seem to mind it at all. Sure, I hear complaints about scammers spoofing phone numbers, but if that could be fixed, it seems like people would be perfectly happy with the current phone number situation. Personally, I wish we could move from PSTN to SIP with its addresses that resemble email addresses, because it's a lot easier to identify john.smith@example.com than 1-738-398-2835. SIP would also mean I'm no longer dependent on a phone company for my phone service, as long as I have the technical know-how to setup my own.
Re:The telephone (Score:5, Insightful)
The assumption is you are connecting with a device, not a specific person. So an arbitrary number is a reasonable user interface, and even if not the most intuitive, it is simple and universal.
It might not be the best possible user interface, especially now when alphanumeric, rather than just numeric, input is viable, but there is certainly no unnecessary complexity to it.
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"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."
-Bjarne Stroustrup
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Your idea is why UIX designers get away with what they do. Sure, on the face of it it sounds reasonable, but it's only when you start digging into the specifics that it becomes painful ( and managers almost never dig into the specifics ).
So everyone is identified by their sip/email address...is that easier or harder to type in on your average smart phone. You just went from one handed operation to two, so already it's a huge UIX fail. Second; what are you really trying to contact, the user or the device?
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The telephone isn't bad, especially the touch-tone telephone where there are digits that you can physically press, and they respond with a confirmation tone. Before that, rotary was harder to use, and before THAT, you could actually use the hang-up switch to dial the numbers, or you had to talk with an operator.
Now, all of that said, it's FAR from the worst interface of all time. The number convention might not make sense anymore, but all of the parts do what you expect. You learn that a device has a number
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You make good points, but there is an historical context to this. Until the 1990's, the telephone interface was as simple as could be with simple rules that everyone knew. In the US, dial (rotary) or touchtone (keypad-dtmf) entry of 7 digits reliably connected you to one house or other known entity. Calling outside you own area, add the three digit area code. Calling other countries where the numbering system is different - no problem, because "over there" has the same general logic and ease, and since
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Cellphones. I really thought you were going to say the problem was getting to the screen to input numbers or pick favorites (or not pick hotkeys because we don't have buttons anymore) for dialing someone. On phones with buttons, I press one of my 10 or 20 or 30 favorites and it does the rest. On my iphone/android, I go through several menus before I can dial. Pisses me off still.
Funnier: 19 counterintuitive volume controls (Score:5, Funny)
https://techcrunch.com/gallery... [techcrunch.com]
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Argh. 19 times to click for each image! Too bad http://deslide.clusterfake.net... [clusterfake.net] is dead (no recent updates since 1/21/2019). :( I wonder if there are more of these types (active) out there.
TempleOS (Score:2)
I just did (Score:2)
This morning. Reset the service indicator on my Audi. Two buttons on the instrument cluster. Both pretty much behind the steering wheel, so I've got to put my hands though the wheel to reach them.
1. Hold down right button while turning on ignition. Ignition is on right, so I've got to use my left hand for that button.
2. While holding right button down, depress the left button until service mileage resets. So I've got to do that with my right hand. Crossed over my left (still holding down the right button)
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You may get a kick out of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
How to reset GE smartbulbs. Your Audi mileage reset procedure was a walk in the park.
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I am thinking of making a "home automation" system along the lines you describe. It would use a ESP32 module which is a microcontroller similar to an Arduino but more powerful, and with built-in wifi. You can have it set as an AP, and run a simple web server on it. It would not be connected to the internet at all. Instead to control its GPIO pins you connect to its AP (with a strong password of course, you don't want strangers near your house to turn your lights on and off) and use buttons on its page in a
This isn't about user convention (Score:2)
BadUI is one thing...this was just made to not work.
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I believe it helpfully says "your password is not unsafe".
It is possible to get through. Took me 5m35s which is around what any registration page takes for me. :)
Even though I love it (Score:2)
I propose Calibre as the worst UI example. I love it to death but the UI sucks.
Oracle Applications (Score:2)
Oracle Applications wins without needing any further misfeatures at all. Oracle has a genius for user torture. AmIright.
I opened TFA to have a laugh... (Score:2)
Now for something really nerdy (Score:2)
Someone write a web browser plugin, or a web proxy that converts that page's bad UI into a conventional UI that fits general expectations.
Hehe
Stop obscuring content! (Score:2)
The UI presented on the Ars Technica was an intentional joke. However, a good example of bad UI design is how their slideshow captions overlap the slides. I really despise this design choice, especially on videos where the controls obscure the video when you mouse-over and take a few seconds to fade away.
Ads obscuring content makes sense, because ads are supposed to be obnoxious by nature. When content obscures other content... WTF?
An obvious "improvement" (Score:2)
This sounds like my previous job... (Score:2)
At my previous job, software was constantly being deployed to make things 'better.' But the question many of us in the trenches learned to ask was, 'better for whom?'
A simple case in point, a system was deployed to keep track of our time spent working on projects to avoid the finance team from having to collect and manage the various accounts and hours associated. Problem was, we ended up spending many hours trying to figure out what accounts our work was supposed to be applied to of the many different p
Slack (Score:3)
Re: Step four, no way to check the bottom row off (Score:2)
Yes, itâ(TM)s absolutely possible to select all rows.
Hint: check the scroll bar.