Week 8: Bureaucracy: Designing the Impossible

Sometimes the worst interface isn't a screen at all — it's a form, a queue, and a rule nobody can explain

26 April 2027

The worst interface might not be an interface at all — it might be a process. University administration, government forms, insurance claims and refund requests are all systems where the rules, not any single screen, are what a person has to navigate. This week’s claim is a hard one to argue with once you’ve lived it: a beautiful interface cannot save a terrible process. Polishing the form does nothing if the sequence of forms behind it is the actual obstacle.

Outline#

• university administration, government forms, insurance and refunds as interfaces
• how one reasonable requirement, repeated across departments, adds up to an unreasonable process
• why a beautiful screen can’t rescue a broken process underneath it
• The Maze, this week’s session
• next week: testing whether any of this actually works