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Worst UI You've Ever Used

I'm trying to collect the worst user experience design mistakes (e.g. bad navigation, load time, links not working, ...) in order to make a kind of checklist for new projects by giving eacht point a priority.

I'm looking for your own experiences with websites or - if someone already made a survey with users - the results of a survey.

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Sounds fun but I think you can go crazy making a list of all the things that can go wrong with your UX (there is a lot). Why not start a checklist of what you DO want to do? It would be much more productive. – jonshariat Jul 6 '11 at 15:59
This should give you 25 more answers :) – Vitaly Mijiritsky Jul 6 '11 at 17:01
The worst ux I ever was forced to experience was Windows. – rightfold Jul 16 '11 at 0:04

marked as duplicate by Vitaly Mijiritsky Jul 6 '11 at 17:01

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Two good starting points are:

Interface Hall of Shame: http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/shame.htm

Web Pages That Suck: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

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+1 for hall of shame - it's a hilarious collection. – Roger Attrill Jul 6 '11 at 15:52
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Is there any modern version of a site which shows programs with bad UI:s? – Samuli Lehtonen Jul 6 '11 at 17:04
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Honestly, this is such a broad question - I don't know where to start. You could take every single ux best practice, negate it and say don't do that.

I'll give my number 1 pet peeve though and that is noise or clutter that stops the real message getting through. I'm a KISS advocate. Loads of stuff all shouting for attention means nothing gets attention. I think designing for mobile first is a great idea.

But - by looking at every mistake and avoiding them does not then make everything that is left automatically the correct path. [Just because all ravens are black does not mean that all non-ravens are white].

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@jonshariat and @Roger Attrill: I know this is a rather broad subject. I would like to come to a point that we have a list of most common mistakes which frustrates the user the most. Afterwards I want to put it into a survey to find the 20 most terrible ones. @Vitaly Mijiritsky: Thank you for pointing that out. I will let you all know when I have to list! – Paul Olyslager Jul 6 '11 at 17:26
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Here are some thing, that annoys me:

  • When a website tells you to change browser. It does not happend as often as it used to, but it still happens.
  • When you dont know where a link will lead you. You can of course see the url, but before you click you should know what you would expect to see.
  • Popups and to many advertisements
  • When a link to another site opens in the same tab, so you will leave the website.
  • When a button is just a box, and it doesnt look like a button.

This one is normally not on websites, but I really hate it; I often see menus, where the menu does only have 2 choices. The problem is, if not designet correctly, its imposible to see which one is selected. I actually see this a lot. But its in software and games, where you use the arrow keys instead of the mouse. It can however also happen on websites with to choices, and you dont know which one is selected.

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I generally agree, but I disagree about opening pages in new tabs & hate it when web sites do that to me. Let the user decide; if he has browser tabs he also has "open in new tab" as a click option. – Monica Cellio Jul 6 '11 at 16:40

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