Week 1 Session: The Hate Wall
The first session — a quick orientation, then the class's first pass at naming what actually makes something hateable
22 February 2027
Before the session#
Bring three examples: ordinary things you use regularly and hate — a ticket machine, a subscription, a printer, a self-checkout, a door that lies about which way it opens. Ugly doesn’t count on its own; you need the moment each one goes wrong for you.
In the session#
A short orientation first — the toolchain, the site, how the semester is graded — then straight into the Hate Wall: each student names their three examples and the exact point where each turns from fine to frustrating. The class sorts submissions by what the user experiences, not yet by why it happens; that question waits for week 2.
Afterwards#
Every submission joins the semester’s shared Hate Catalogue, which becomes the dataset Assessment 1 draws on. Keep your example in mind — you’ll come back to it before that’s due in week 3.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you arrive with three things you already hate using, each named specifically enough that a stranger could recognise it
- for each one, you can point to the exact moment it turns from fine to frustrating
- all three examples are added to the class's shared Hate Catalogue by the end of the session
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor