This is a great post, thanks for sharing! Thereâs something unsettling when every single website is the same, polished and carbon-copied edition of all that came before it. I know that my site is hardly different, and I think that there is a sweet spot between total chaos and Wordpress-punk, but Iâm not sure what that looks like, although I might recognize it when I see it.
The one thing Iâd caution about praising bad UX is that people should make an effort to make their sites accessible to people who may not have perfect eyesight or navigation abilities, so that as much people as possible can equally enjoy a site. But that definitely does not mean that you have to go all sterile, bland, corporate-looking. Itâs very possible to have a site that may have âbad UXâ by corporate standards yet is still accessible (making it equally bad for all people, rather than making it merely âbadâ for people with good eyesight and navigation, and then causing it to be totally unusable for everyone else).
Interesting article! I like this concluding sentence especially:
Bad UX presumes that good UX is the default. But is it really good UX when all it does is generate shareholder value?
Itâs like the toxic âhustle cultureâ and âmonetize everything,â but applied to websites.
The modern UX trend is to make it purposefully bad to nudge the user into the direction of generating revenue for the service, whether thatâs through time spent on the app, time watching ads, or directly spending money. So if âbadâ UX is the opposite of those things, then yeah Iâm a big fan of bad UX. The example screenshots in the article arenât even bad UX to me. They read left-to-right, top-to-bottom, have reasonable color contrast, and donât throw a bunch of annoying popups or shifting UI elements.
I subscribed. I related to this so much. Websites are so soulless these days.
I hate bad UX! I think good intentions have fallen prey to the pithiness of the title here. Those corporate websites are the ones who have bad UX - thatâs why users hate experiencing them. Good UX is clear, it gives you what youâre looking for, it gives you joy, it makes you want to look around. It can be colourful and creative, it can even be playful and unexpected, but it shouldnât confound and irritate. Appleâs website irritates, Rayâs website doesnât - the first is bad UX, the second isnât. And I know which one looks more personal, colourful and creative!
The cure for the corporate design nightmare isnât to make the user experience worse (âbad UXâ). I look at new personal websites every day and I see a fair amount of bad UX, meaning theyâre difficult to navigate, hard to see, unlabeled - or in short: inaccessible. I donât think thatâs great, though I know a lot of people are learning, and I also see a lot of these websites become more usable and beautiful over time.
I think thereâs room for experimental spaces that may not be accessible to everyone, but for the vast majority of outward-facing stuff I think we need to find ways, ever new ways, to make solid, accessible design. And to make it unexpected, beautiful, whimsical, funny, et cetera. Accessible does not mean boring, it just means everyone can share in the experience, whatever it may be. Make it weird, but donât forget to add alt text.