Week 5: Make It Worse

Your first build: taking something that works and making it deliberately, specifically worse

22 March 2027

Weeks 1 through 4 were analytical: recognise, explain, name. Week 5 is the first exercise that asks you to build, and the constraint that makes it hard is the one worth sitting with — make it significantly worse, without removing any functionality and without actually breaking it. Deleting a feature is not a design decision in the sense this course cares about; introducing friction that a user has to work through is.

Outline#

• the constraint that makes this hard: worse, not broken, not missing
• the menu of frictions: cognitive load, hidden information, ambiguity, unnecessary decisions, waiting, punishing errors
• turning information hierarchy against the user without changing a single fact on the page
• this week’s session, and what carries into week 6
• what Assessment 2 asks you to hand in