HACKER Q&A
📣 liorben-david

What are some examples of purposely bad UX


Specifically within the context of a company trying to discourage certain behavior. For example, it seems to be purposefully difficult on most tech platforms to edit your data privacy settings


  👤 version_five Accepted Answer ✓
Just because its fresh in my mind: Uber Eats - no way of clearing your "cart", it keeps popping up on the bottom of the screen even if you've navigated away from the restaurant and you can't get rid of it until you add something from another restaurant.

Much worse is their help, it's designed to be as unhelpful as possible and make it impossible to actually contact someone.

Uber overall is about as user hostile as you can get. Everything is set to force you on one path and give you no options or recourse. And from the drivers perspective, it's all dumped on them. There is no way to complain or get any help from uber for their awful app, all you can do is complain about the driver.

Also, everything about reddit, and any websites with modal popups.

Edit - honestly, most of the internet fits what you describe, outside HN, some blog sites, and some documentation sites. It might be better to ask about good ux

Edit 2 - I'd add that what is particularly vile, with respect to uber vs others, is that with uber, the user is ostensibly the customer. Websites can be forgiven in a sense because they are not for you, they are for advertisers, so it's not surprising they dont put your interests first. But uber, and some others, have taken this user hostile philosophy and ported it to apps where the user is actually the paying customer.


👤 diskzero
Ah yes, "Dark Patterns". I recently came across this twitter feed from @darkpatterns where some of these atrocities are being reported.

https://www.darkpatterns.org/hall-of-shame


👤 brezelgoring
I'm from Uruguay and here we've got an app called PedidosYa which is basically UberEats but localized, and its engaging in some really dodgy shit when it comes to getting refunds, cancelling orders, or getting help on anything. If you click on 'get help' it opens a few pre-built response trees that always lead to a version of "sorry we can't do anything to help, also no, you can't talk to a human"; except for one and that's the "My order never arrived and I want a refund" option. It opens a chat that has the following features: It is a web-app inside of the app you were already on, so its laggy as hell, and text isn't rendered in any way you'd call acceptable; It has some weird cache thing where if you press the back button on your phone, the whole interaction is discarded and you have to go through the whole process all over again, new support rep, write your issue description and explain everything again (can't copy nor paste messages!), etc. Same result if your phone locks due to waiting for 16 minutes to get help; Also you can't get your money back! You get a coupon for next time, and those are only for pre-determined denominations, you only get one, and it is rounded down, complete BS.

This is, I think, engineered to be as deficient as possible, not an accident at all.


👤 kazinator
At least three categories meet the definition of a bad user experience designed to discourage a certain behavior:

- restraint devices (everything from infant play pens, to straitjackets, to "keep out" signs, to barbed wire fences).

- punishment (all forms: punishment is a deliberately bad user experience in order to discourage a behavior).(Punishment sometimes involves restraint devices).

- security mechanisms of all sorts (security mechanisms are predicated on presenting a discouragingly shitty experience toward those who are unauthorized; sometimes there is a spillover shittiness to the authorized users as well).

Security device: A good bike lock is a shitty user experience for the hoodlum who wants the bike; having to lug that lock around and use it all the time isn't a great experience for the owner, either.

Restraint device: A speed bump is a kind of restraint device. It restrains the use of vehicular speed. The user experience is shitty; you have to slow down, and still get an annoying bump.


👤 enduku
Reddit website -- just to promote it's mobile app.

👤 yesenadam
I don't want Firefox to update. (Last time it did that, it got much worse, and it took a couple of hours to get it back to looking OK.) There are two choices only in the preferences:

1. Automatically install updates (recommended)

2. Check for updates but let you choose to install them

OK, I clicked 2. Then a few times a day for a month am subjected to a popup notification saying "Update Firefox - 1. Now 2. Dismiss". 2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2...I relented eventually. It seems I don't actually have much of a choice, as I loathe popups.


👤 andrei_says_
https://old.Reddit.com/r/assholedesign for sure contains some excellent intentionally bad UX examples, dark patterns etc.


👤 majortennis
Trying to get live chat on amazon, have to google live chat amazon i can never navigate too it. Reddit lately been forcing new reddit more and more

👤 luke2m
Rejecting cookies, No I Don't want 20% off instead of an X on email modals, etc. etc

👤 rahimnathwani
Cancelling subscriptions like gym memberships, NYT, LinkedIn Premium, ...