11 Bad UX

App Prototyping Studio

Mick McQuaid

University of Texas at Austin

20 Aug 2026

Week ELEVEN

Popularization via bad design

Norman (2013) popularized the identification of bad design in its first edition in the eighties.

Don Norman is the single person who has done the most to popularize HCI in the public consciousness. He is a brilliant thinker and I don’t mean to criticize him for this, but one thing he did that brought him amazing popularity yet did little to educate people was to popularize the discussion of poor design. His most popular book is fraught with examples of bad design and it is inevitable that any teacher of HCI can boost course evals by allowing students to waste a lot of time critiquing bad design. The problem with this is that it is so hard to get design right that noticing that much of it is poor is, by itself, a minute step.

Most bad design examples remind us of the importance of signifiers and the danger of cognitive dissonance.

that aspect of a thing you can interact with that suggests how to interact with it

can be done well or poorly

central concept for individual user

often skeuomorphic

flat design opposes notion of need for signifiers

Flat design risks

Bad door

Bad and less bad door

Anti-ADA door

Bad dryer

Bad iPad

Bad iPad’s ancestor

Bad elevators

Hotel showers

END

References

Norman, Donald A. 2013. The Design of Everyday Things, 2nd Edition. Basic Books.

Colophon

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