Hate Catalogue

Five examples of design that make people miserable, picked apart until you can say exactly why each one works

Due: 8 March 2027 · Weight: 15%

The brief#

Collect examples of design that makes people miserable, analysed rather than just complained about.

Across the Hate Wall, Follow the Incentive and Make Me Click It, you’ll have gathered more than enough candidates. For this assessment, pick your best five — an app, a kiosk, a form, a physical object, or any process you’ve had to sit through — and explain each one properly: what the person was trying to do, exactly what got in their way, who plausibly built it or benefits from it, why it might be deliberate rather than accidental, and the specific mechanism at work. Around 150–250 words per entry is the target: enough to show your thinking, not enough to pad it. At least two of your five have to come from something you noticed yourself, not an example that’s already all over the internet.

What you submit#

Your five best entries, each with a photo or screenshot and its full analysis, plus a short reflection naming a pattern that shows up more than once across them. Keep it in a format you’ll actually reopen in week 5 — this becomes the dataset the rest of the semester draws on.