Sessions
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each session, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
Every session is where that week's lecture stops being a claim and becomes something you have to actually do. What to bring is on each page; so is the exact thing the session checks before it counts as done.
The Hate Wall
The first session — a quick orientation, then the class's first pass at naming what actually makes something hateable
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Follow the Incentive
The Hate Wall meets its first question — not what you hate, but who the system was actually built for
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Make Me Click It
Behavioural mechanics enter the Hate Catalogue, and Assessment 1 is due at the end of this week
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Dark Pattern Detective
Naming the dark arts — confirmshaming, forced continuity, bait-and-switch — and what behaviour each one is actually trying to produce
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Make It Worse
The semester's first build — take a working interface and make it significantly worse, without breaking it
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Friction Lab
Not all difficulty is equal — redesigning one task three ways and comparing what each version costs the user. Assessment 2 is due this week
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
Hostile Object Safari
Leaving the screen — doors, chairs, packaging and vending machines that tell you the wrong thing about how to use them
Week 7 · 19 April 2027
The Maze
A single objective — change your address — buried inside a process built from conflicting instructions and repeated forms
Week 8 · 26 April 2027
Human Guinea Pigs
Testing whether your week-5 interface actually produces the frustration you designed it to. Hostile Design Experiment due this week
Week 9 · 3 May 2027
Defend the Indefensible
Is bad design actually bad? Each student defends a hated design from the Hate Catalogue as if it were good
Week 10 · 10 May 2027
Redemption Studio
Returning to your original bad system to fix it, without destroying whatever legitimate goal it was actually serving
Week 11 · 17 May 2027
The Worst Design Awards
Final presentations, run as an awards ceremony. The Redemption Project is due this week
Week 12 · 24 May 2027