Epic Design Fails

Lily Pashapour
Sep 5, 2018 · 6 min read

They’re everywhere. And as a society, we’ve become so numb to them, that if we struggle with a product or an interface after using it a time or two, it’s considered to be our own fault for not being “smart” enough to know how to interact with it. I’m here to say that it’s not you, it’s the thing. Whatever it may be, whether it’s a physical object in the real world, or a glob of pixels on your computer screen, it needs to be designed right. There are rules out there, some stated by leaders in the design field and some slowly established over years of trial and error by the collective efforts of designers, that help us define what exactly “right” is. Interacting with an interface should be seamless, make you feel like a superstar for grasping how to use it so quickly, and not make you physiologically stressed. Showcased here will be two interfaces that I personally believe exemplify such epic design fails.

Let us first consider my television remote. It stresses me out, which is a good warning sign of a bad interface. Behold:

There are lots of things wrong here. First thing I’m going to use this remote to do is to turn on the TV, and I hit my first bump in the road: where is the power button?? Top right, yes, but that’s not the first place I’d look, nor is it the biggest button on top of the remote. The rule this misplacement fails is that of predictability, one of the five essential core principles of interactive design. In my experience, the “beginning” of things is almost always at the top left, like text, in most languages. And if this button is not at the top left, at least make it eye-catching and distinguishable from the other nearby points of interaction. In this case, the power button is a circle that is half the size of the “activity” button, whatever that means, and is almost identical to the buttons directly beneath it, which perform completely different actions. We’re not off to a good start, Mitsubishi.

The next part of this remote that exemplifies a failed design is everything going on with the navigation. There are so many options for going “up” in some way, and it’s hard to tell which is for navigating channels or menus. It misses the mark on perceivability, learnability, and preventing user errors, the last of which comes from the 8 Golden Rules of Interface Design.

The icons do make it clear which buttons are used for increasing, decreasing, and muting the volume, and it’s nice that it doesn’t require a little “vol” label. Where this navigation goes wrong is the abundance of options for doing what appears to be the same thing, which in turn decreases the learnability of this interface, and allows ample room for user error. I am a case in point. I still don’t know the difference between the top middle arrows and the arrow right above the enter button, and sometimes I’ll try using the buttons for going up and down channels. To this day, I have no idea which up/down buttons are for which situation. I just kind of click until something happens, until I get some sort of feedback, and the fact that I do that certainly signals a bad user interface. A good interface should make you feel confident, not deprive you of your self-confidence.

Moving on to a digital example, I have chosen to roast the one and only UConn Student Admin system. Usually at least once a week, I need to traverse this frightening interface to do actually really important things, like look at classes or check out my financial aid or make sure I have enough credits to GRADUATE. The absolute last thing any student should deal with is second guessing their actions while using the interface, being so nervous that they’ll accidentally delete a scholarship or something.

I know having a “minimalist design” is a good design technique, but I don’t think having a majority of blank space on the screen is what they meant.

Right off the bat, I feel like I’m missing something, or information is hidden. There has to be more, right? The menus to navigate this site are also incredibly redundant. You have that small menu section on the page with your single option of “self-service,” but then there’s another option at the top that says menu, which gives you the same exact option as what’s on the page already. Once again, you think that they must have something more behind them, some other action that’s possible, but no. It feels like a trick question.

So once we actually get into the student center, once again, you don’t know what your options are. There is little hierarchy in how the sections are organized, leaving a user’s eyes unsure of where to look. Everything is just small. And don’t even get me started on the microscopic font on the mobile site.

Rather than giving the user a responsive nav bar that will display their options clearly, you have to scroll down to see the rest of the sections, and then you are then finally greeted by even more blank space.

Everything about this page discourages exploration of the interface, which takes away users’ control and freedom, one of the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design as well as one of the 8 Golden Rules of Interface Design. You are left in the dark about where to find what you want, and there is fear that once you go into a section, it’s going to be difficult to find your way back or you’re going to make a catastrophic error given the gravity of the content itself. There are surprises at every turn and “hidden menus” with so many options:

What makes the options that were already visible before you saw that tiny arrow that opened this secondary menu more important? What’s the difference between “Class Schedule” and “weekly schedule,” which was already visible? Why do you need to then click ANOTHER arrow next to the menu after already selecting your option to actually be able to access it?

On top of everything else, as I briefly stated earlier, everything is so small with little to no hierarchy. It leaves you lost in the woods of student admin, stripping all of your control away. It doesn’t feel like you’re in control of student admin; it feels like it’s leaving it completely up to you to discover all of its secret menus and buttons, and THEN you can make sure you’re graduating on time.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to live in a world where we can navigate up and down on a menu without fear of changing channels or be able to access our grades without feeling lost in a sea of blank space, but alas, today is not that day.

Lily Pashapour

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