What Makes You Hate Something?#
Designing Things People Hate
A provocative title, a plainer question#
If good design makes people’s lives easier, what makes bad design so effective at making them worse?
“A truly effective bad design does not necessarily look terrible.”
The instinct to resist#
- ugly buttons
- garish colour
- confusing icons
All real. None of them are this course’s subject.
What this course is actually about#
A bad design is bad because of what it makes you do — not how it looks doing it.
Behaviour, not appearance#
The shape of the semester#
Notice → Explain → Manipulate → Break → Measure → Design → Defend → Redesign
Eight verbs, twelve weeks, one system you’ll come to know uncomfortably well by the end.
Today: the Hate Wall#
Everyone names one thing they use and hate, and the exact moment it turns from fine to frustrating.
What happens to it#
Every submission joins the semester’s shared Hate Catalogue — the dataset Assessment 1 draws on.
Before next session#
Have your example ready: something ordinary, used regularly, and the precise moment it goes wrong.
See the session page for the full brief.