
When bad UX is good - _4bcr
https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-05-02-when-bad-ux-is-good
======
eyelidlessness
There is a wide range of intentionally "bad" design in vogue, where "bad" may
be one or more of:

\- Opaque, confusing, vague or misleading

\- Garish, over the top or ugly

\- Ironically reminiscent of older design trends that were embraced in earnest
at the time

In video games, "retro"/pixel art styles are wildly popular, sometimes because
story and gameplay are more important to the creators, sometimes because it
was seen as a nearly lost art.

In web design, there have been several recent waves of "retro" trends
embracing the styles once found on Geocities/Angelfire or even the original
Myspace. There have also been several variants of "brutalist" design with
oversized and unusually placed design elements, clashing or exceedingly drab
colors. Such brutalist design has been embraced even by mainstream sites like
Bloomberg, and in a lot of ways the novelty has worn off and it's just part of
a resurgence of design diversity across the web after a long period of
uniformity.

In other GUI software, intensely oversaturated colors (like those found in iOS
since its "flat" redesign) were mocked mercilessly when introduced but seem to
have almost become commonplace.

Like anti-humor, anti-aesthetic is sort of an oxymoron (as TFA points out). It
turns out a lot of things that seem like they would be unappealing are
actually quite appealing to at least a subset of the population. I am quite
fond of a lot of "brutalist" design and find intensely oversaturated colors
(in balance) pleasing to look at.

~~~
agumonkey
to me pixel art revival ticks a few boxes:

\- it's toyish, games got an adult tag since ps2/ps3 but to me games are
games.

\- it's abstract, the run for photorealism can jump over the shark too. I like
to play with representations and not absolute recreation of a thing. When
playing honestly, I don't even have the time to enjoy the specular reflections
or whatever BDR shader you cooked. It's mostly impressive on still images.

\- it makes people seek other ways to surprise you instead of relying on the
usual ultra capable 3d engines that often do the same thing but different
skins.

~~~
pier25
It's also convenient for low budget indie game devs. Pixel art is cheap to
produce and 2d games are much easier to develop.

~~~
rezoner
Quality pixelart is more expensive than 3D assets. You get all angles and bone
based animation from a model while you have to draw every animation frame in
every angle manually with 2D approach. On top of that a 3D world brings easier
customisation and reusability of assets.

~~~
thebean11
Is quality pixel art more expensive than _quality_ 3D assets? I really don't
think so.

~~~
chii
Poor quality 3D assets still work OK. Poor quality pixel art is very ugly. So
if you can only afford poor quality, 3D is much better.

------
folkhack
This is a weird read. I think what the author means is that sometimes your
design needs to "step out of the way" of someone else's design. This happened
all the time for me in my early-20s doing band websites where there was
usually album art, merch, logos, etc etc that were highly stylized... was it a
bit of a challenge to deal with those assets? Sure... but when I realized that
I just needed to "get out of the way" as the UX strategy things got easy.

Frankly, looking at the site that is being discussed I would call it "good UX"
for being simple and "getting out of the way" of the original artist's work
(which is the point of the site anyway). I do criticize making me download
2-3Mb pictures when they should be thumbnails though - but really outside of
that gaff it's a fine site.

TLDR: Going on a "bad UX" rant feels disingenuous/silly when most designers
would absolutely consider this good UX for getting out of the way of the
original artist's work.

~~~
claes-magnus
Your estimate is correct: I try to keep out of the way best I can. The covers
are amazing if you ask me. It would be stupid to 'compete', and I am not even
a designer. Besides, they did not want the 'professional' feel - they wanted
the 'shop' described in the about page. As they add more content, the site
will look like this shop and will be hard to use. This is why I use the
oxymoron.

But I guess I tried to make a more general point. Sometimes my feeling is that
blogs, small businesses such as this one, well... pages, in general, are
overly complicated. Both in terms of technology and interface. Overly
complicated is unfortunately often spelled professional. And professional
often means the quite opposite of personal. Headache Comix just want to post
stuff. Actually, one comment was that they don't care if things, in the end,
would be hard to find given way more content. And that the people reading the
magazine expects this. No, even wants it. Like walking in a museum as they
should be (in my view), paintings all of the place - not perfectly aligned,
not perfect degrees and lots of whitespaces and so on. :) I don't know if this
explanation helped to clarify my take here, but... yeah.

I guess this is your point also, kind'a. And thank you btw! But I disagree
with you about the 'silly' part. I actually think this is an important
question. If it is true that some sites are overly complicated without good
reasons, what then? :) Also, I make the case that the Web should house these
sites as well as more 'professional' ones. That's the beauty of the Web if you
ask me.

~~~
folkhack
Before I respond to your points - I conflate UX and design in my mind as I see
UX being a subset of design by definition.

> Sometimes my feeling is that blogs, small businesses such as this one,
> well... pages, in general, are overly complicated.

You're not alone in this, and good design is achieved when you can't take
anything else _away_ from something because the only components that are left
are necessary to function.

> Overly complicated is unfortunately often spelled professional.

Ain't that the darn truth =|

> But I disagree with you about the 'silly' part. I actually think this is an
> important question. If it is true that some sites are overly complicated
> without good reasons, what then?

As a design-capable engineer I think you're painting with too wide of a brush
in this blog post... and even against your own interests/ego. Sorry to get
preachy but I love engaging people on these topics for learning.

You state: "and I am not even a designer" \- but you clearly are capable of
solving a visual problem in a functional way. At some level, you are now a
designer. And, frankly, it feels like you're dealing with some impostor
syndrome here.

Your post felt like it was weird with "bad UX is good" then positing a very
good example of UX that problem solves in an appropriate way for both your
client and your audience. You did an outstanding job of creating functional
design, which is aesthetically pleasing, given the constraints of the web/the
original art/etc. The simplicity of it all means that it is functional to both
your client and your audience - _I can 't stress this enough._

If I were to write a post on your post it'd be entitled, "designer hits mark
100% for client/audience but isn't sure it's good design because we over-
complicate UIX in 2020". Or, "Let's all stop being so pretentious because
people are conflating simple functional design with bad design..." Sorry if I
sound aggressive. It's just a damn good site and I refuse to even remotely
label it as "bad" outside of your image optimization issue.

> Also, I make the case that the Web should house these sites as well as more
> 'professional' ones

You're talking to someone who browses neocities daily because it's interesting
so 100% agree!

\---

All-in-all sorry if I was too harsh but I think you're being too harsh on
yourself by writing this. As a 15 year design professional - You nailed it,
and I'll be happy to crucify anyone who thinks otherwise. This is the
definition of "good design". Period.

Just - whatever you do. Keep doing what you're doing - we need more people
with your same design ethos out here building great tech experiences that are
respectful and tasteful like your Headache Comix site. <3

PS: Fix those darn images. <3

~~~
claes-magnus
Thanks! Will fix the images. Promise.

Imposter syndrome. I feel it all the time as a programmer. But I don't if it's
a necessarily bad state. Doesn't it matter how we relate to it? This is my
view. Only if we give in, and don't try because we feel imposters it's a bad
state. I am not saying it's a good state, but still - it's a state that can
very productive! Well, another discussion... but it's a very interesting one.

~~~
folkhack
Confidence will get you everywhere - be confident in your skills! People buy
into people - not tech/resumes.

I struggle with the same thing myself... SOME impostor syndrome is healthy and
it sounds like you are handling it in good way =)

~~~
claes-magnus
I agree. On the other hand, the world would be more... Nice... if confidence
did not rule everything. But yeah, you're right

------
hirsin
A favorite from a local pizza shop that opened recently
[https://dinostomatopie.com/](https://dinostomatopie.com/) \- very much
intentional.

The design credit tucked in the bottom links to a nice writeup on making this
site, but currently has an cert error -
[https://www.madebyneversink.com/](https://www.madebyneversink.com/)

~~~
bradknowles
Their pizza may be good, but if their website exhibits all the worst features
of GeoCities from way back when, they are certainly never getting any business
from me.

You wouldn’t buy a vehicle made yesterday that had all the worst features of
the original Ford Model T, would you?

~~~
mercer
Your analogy would perhaps make sense if there's a documented causal link
between a pizzeria's shitty website and the quality of their pizza. Did I miss
some ground-breaking research on the matter?

------
tyingq
Berkshire Hathaway's site is interesting.
[https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/)

~~~
ReactiveJelly
I'm not in on the joke... Why is there a Geico ad? With no affiliate
parameters, even?

~~~
dave5104
> GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that provides
> coverage for more than 24 million motor vehicles owned by more than 15
> million policy holders as of 2017.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEICO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEICO)

------
Legogris
Nothing the author brings up is really “bad UX”.

“Bad visual design” or “ugly”, perhaps (though I don’t think so), but User
Experience is only very loosely correlated with “looking good”.

If the end result is good for the user, it’s not bad UX.

(Similarly, you can be a great graphics/web/UI designer but horrible at UX)

~~~
masswerk
I do consent. It's actually about having an experience – as a user, which is
why we may understand it as a user experience, intentionally a rather strong,
opinionated one.

------
vulcan01
I’d argue that the ‘bad UX’ he talks about here _is_ good. It’s good in the
sense that it fits with the theme. Just as <insert tech company here> has a
modern, ‘good UX’ website, to convey that their products are cutting-edge, the
‘bad UX’ described here fits perfectly with the magazine’s theme.

~~~
claes-magnus
Thanks. That was my intention, for good and bad perhaps. :)

------
bsanr
>The only difference between the Web of old and the modern Web is that the
wild Web sometimes is harder do find due to the instrumentality of the Google
search engine, for good and bad.

For a brief period of time, every human with an internet connection had access
to a significant portion of the sum total of previously-preserved human
knowledge. Web 2.5 has pushed us backwards. After several years now of being
unable to easily find relevant results using Google, DDG, etc., I had the
crushing realization that, near 30 and for the first time in my life, _less_
truly useful information was available to me, to the average person, than had
been before.

This should scare people. Powers that are obfuscating both their rationale and
the mechanics of their means are making a play for our collective knowledge
base.

~~~
resu_nimda
Can you provide some examples of this? What types of information are you
looking for? Personally I have not found this to be the case, for example I
have effortlessly gained tons of information from instructional videos on
YouTube that would have been much harder to obtain otherwise.

Are you saying that informational resources are being forcefully taken down?
Or that their rankings are artificially lowered in search engines?

~~~
fock
search for some exotic aircrafts on google (e.g. "Polikarpov I-3", "Polikarpov
Il-400") - all you will find is wikipedia, scale-model ads and the odd
pinterest (which isn't usable without an account and often doesn't show what
was advertised on the page). I saved some pics when I was building the scale
model some years ago and I'm unable to find half of them in a google image
search today after scrolling so far that google is putting in non-I-3
polikarpovs for like all pictures... Also I think there was at least one
"book" on the type but I'm unable to find any in the first 10 google search
pages (who does that today...). For the latter I've had "bookmarked" an
altervista-blog full of pictures - it's still ranked high in pictures, but
basically invisible in search.

Duckduckgo is worse, it only has wikipedia-fakes...

And after this small experiment I'm reall frightened and staring at my
bookshelf for resolve, in parallel searching for the HN article where people
recommend "civilization rebuilding" material...

------
jdnordy
This is a good post and it came at a perfect time. I am currently developing
my own personal website. The aesthetic of this one is in the ballpark of what
I am shooting for. I am also planning on including a section for writing.

I am curious thought, how do people suggest I create new articles and upload
them to the webpage? Do I just write the article in html? Or should I create a
form that I can submit posts through? Also, how should I store them? Should I
store them as an html file or txt file in s3? I'm not too familiar with
storage for blog posts. If anyone has some good site recommendations or
references, I would appreciate it!

~~~
activatedgeek
A highly relevant thing for your search is something known as the Jamstack
[1].

People typically use "Static Site Generators" to create blogs which relies
more on content than on fancy login flows or database connection flows. Those
flows are still possible but Jamstack allows for a low bar high ceiling
scenario when you are starting to build your own blog.

To compare the endless list of static site generators, what they are and how
you write posts, go to StaticGen [2]. My recommendation: \- Pick "Hugo" for a
great out-of-the-box experience with fair flexibility. \- Pick "Gatsby" for
virtually unlimited flexibility with React-based generator.

[1]: [https://jamstack.org](https://jamstack.org) [2]:
[https://www.staticgen.com](https://www.staticgen.com)

~~~
ficklepickle
I second Hugo. It builds my personal site in 71ms. Coming from JS-land, it was
so fast I thought it was broken.

------
jdeisenberg
On this page:
[http://headachecomix.com/about](http://headachecomix.com/about), the image
headache1big.jpg is 1584 x 2153 and has a size of 3,594,579 bytes. This takes
a long time to download on a slow connection. This is definitely bad UX, but I
seriously doubt it was intentional.

There’s deliberately bad aesthetic, which I don’t mind, but this is bad design
because it wastes bandwidth. The image could be resized to the display size
without losing its visual impact, and it would save users a lot of time.

~~~
claes-magnus
A valid point. Will fix!

The archive is intended to be like so by request. The idea would be caching.
They count on people to clicking on all the covers. If it's this is the case
or not, I don't know. But their target groups is very narrow on the other
hand.

This 'argumentation' is not valid though in the case with the picture at
'about'. And that's my fault. I will fix this.

So yes, you're right. One could argue the same is true for the images at the
'about' page. But yeah...

------
deltron3030
>What I mean with an anti-aesthetics, is that they wanted the design to look
good but not too good. They wanted a specific sentiment for the site and this
sentiment excluded 'professionality'.

The right word for it is appropriateness I think. Texture created by
randomness is appropriate in this case, of the kind you find in actual comic
stores that get packed with stuff organically over time. Or think of your room
when you were young, it's an anti systemic human touch.

~~~
claes-magnus
Yeah, and I can't disagree with anyone who enjoy deltron3030. ;) Deltron 3030
is an epic album!

------
_josh_
> They wanted a specific sentiment for the site and this sentiment excluded
> 'professionality'.

I think sometimes people can be less trusting of the "professionals", and
instead prefer something a bit more independent.

In a previous role we'd built some flashy new landing page + initial flow
designs, highly polished, to replace some pretty ugly ones. Our customers were
perhaps people who'd had bad experiences with some of the big brands.

As everything at the company was very data-driven, we put the new designs live
in an A/B test with the existing ones. It didn't take long to get the
statistical significance to prove that the old scrappy designs converted way
better.

That was an eye-opening for me; Always done A/B testing where I can since
then.

------
simonw
My favourite example of bad UX that worked is MySpace profile customization.

Customizing your MySpace profile was done by pasting chunks of CSS into one of
the fields on the "edit profile" page. It was an accidental "feature" because
they didn't understand XSS - but they added filtering and kept it.

This is a TERRIBLE way of offering customization. But it worked, because it
encouraged people to share tips. Having a custom profile became a status
symbol, and friends would help each other figure out how to do it.

It occupied this weird space where a difficult flow with a desirable reslt
encouraged social participation and gave people a huge sense of achievement if
they could figure it out.

------
aasasd
[https://lingscars.com](https://lingscars.com) is one of the epitomes of this
sentiment. (The mobile site is very different, best to see the desktop one for
the full experience.)

------
battery_cowboy
Anyone anyone says 'aesthetic', I instantly feel like they don't care about
usability or UX. I use reader mode most of the time on the web, for almost
every page, and I've never thought that I wanted to see some flashy colors,
fancy fonts, or moving/animated elements.

When I read an article, I want to get the content immediately, in a dark
theme, with a readable font and size/spacing. Instead, i get 3 popups, 2
banners i can't close, a bright white background, some crap webfont, several
MB of ads and social media garbage, etc.

The web has _devolved_ from what it was without the 'flash'.

~~~
identity0
Good for you. Most people, however, care a ton about the aesthetics of a
webpage. And most people don’t even know what reader mode is. Also, not sure
how your second paragraph is at all related to the article.

~~~
battery_cowboy
Any citations to your claim that most people care 'a ton'? I think most people
would prefer simpler stuff over the flash if they could see the benefits but i
have no proof, so i won't claim it's a fact.

The reader mode note was simply to say I prefer the text only style.

The second paragraph is there because this article is talking about a simple
web page, and I'm complaining that more sites don't do simple styles.

I'm not sure why you had to be so condescending about my comment, maybe you're
a designer?

------
saagarjha
(The actual title doesn’t phrase it as a question.)

~~~
claes-magnus
You're right! Sorry, missed this. :) It should not be a question mark in the
title. There is none in my post

------
mikewhy
A good few years ago now, I was working with an illustrator/artist developing
a few websites for bands like Cuff The Duke, PS I Love You, and Bahamas.

Nothing was shared between sites, lots of cutting up pngs for link headers,
cryptic navigation, all that stuff I have to avoid doing now.

It was probably the most fun I had working with a designer.

------
hnarn
One of my favorite UX anecdotes is how apparently Snapchat is purposely made
to be confusing to keep older people from using it. I'm not sure if it's ever
been verified but anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that if that was
the plan, it has worked.

------
gitgud
> _" The Web is built to house both megacities and small taverns. And we know
> it works just fine."_

This is a great analogy for the web, hopefully it will remain true without
succumbing to authoritarian control.

~~~
claes-magnus
Thanks. :)

This makes me worried as well. Even though I know this, I always tend to, at
the moment, forget the limitations some countries have. China, Russia, Iran,
and others.

There such tendencies, or views only (so far), in Europe where I live, that
seems to think this is a good thing. Not as extreme perhaps. But like: in
relation to values x, y, z the content and values a, b, c are bad and because
they are bad they should be removed. And no, not speaking about things like
child pornography.

The difference between liberal values in general and others is that liberal
stance (interpreted very broadly) allows criticism of the liberal stance,
while we know from history that totalitarian states and ideologies such as
communism, fascism, and so on solve things with bans and by burning books.

I know what kind of world I want my children to get older in...

I'd rather have them interested in communism at 15 and radical. That they have
the possibility to browse the Web for texts on communism than an authoritarian
control saying communism (or some other ideology) is wrong and removing such
sites. And the Web is best aligned with a liberal stance. I write more about
my view here: [https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-28-the-web-is-
ama...](https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-28-the-web-is-amazing). But
I want to add - even though I've been active in the Swedish liberal movement
for a while - that market economy when too far also threatens the Web.

------
identity0
I like this post a lot. It’s rambly, but you can tell that the author has been
mulling it over for a while and it just feels very personal. It feels like I
just got a glimpse of the workings of the author’s mind.

~~~
claes-magnus
Thank you!

------
dkdk8283
Craigslist stands as a solid example. It’s been the same forever, and I’m
glad. It’s simple, I already know how to use it, etc.

Kudos to them for not falling into the productivity trap of constantly
changing UIs.

------
jimmaswell
I can't believe such a simple site somehow ended up with node and markdown
thrown in. Why would PHP or even plain HTML not be sufficient?

~~~
claes-magnus
Markdown is way easier to use for people who don't like technology. And I
don't PHP. Perhaps it would've been better but I did not suffer from writing
30 lines of code. However, I guess it would be possible to still combine
Markdown with PHP? But even though you are skeptical, I think most people
(especially people who are not familiar with technology) prefer writing
Markdown...

------
busymom0
Shouldn't this be called bad UI and not bad UX? Actually, not even "bad UI".
More like "rough design".

~~~
claes-magnus
I don't think so, but perhaps you're right. UI is included in UX as one of
many considerations. Depending on what consideration should be emphasized we
may need strong UI, or we can solve things like I do on my blog
(herebeseaswines.net) - I deliberately put "about" and the "archive" at the
bottom. :) In my view aesthetics is a more problematic term. But it is very
useful, in aesthetics we have arguments on we have arguments on why things are
(as someone say they are). In this, we have to have many considerations. For
instance, I try to justify the aesthetics of blog here:
[https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-21-the-
aesthetics...](https://herebeseaswines.net/essays/2020-04-21-the-aesthetics-
of-my-blog)

------
netdur
any ‘bad UX’ is a 'good UX' if people actually can use it.

------
ah-zeep
i like how the contact emails resolve to "404", nice touch

~~~
claes-magnus
Haha! I fixed this one straight away. :)

