As the current Reddit commercials made it clear that there is a community for everything. Nihilist horror, Game of Thrones’ Hodor, Avocado Food Porn (why not)… you can always find your people. A case in point is a subreddit dedicated to cruel UIs, whose members are now trying to outdo each other by creating the worst UI designs possible.
The term is self-explanatory: a user interface enables interaction with technology, from computers to McDonald’s kiosks and exercise machines to video games. Some, How Elder Ring‘S, are good. Most just get the job done. However, when you come across a bad UI, it’s like a painful hair in your eye and a sour taste in your mouth. Ubisoft games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Bungies determination have been derided for their cluttered or clunky user interfaces. But the nightmares dreamed up on Reddit definitely, albeit intentionally, take the lazy UI cake in stride.
Thanks, these user interfaces are making me hate here
As Twitter user Aleksandr Volodarsky spotted, engineers are up the badUIbattles subreddit scratching the bottom of the barrel to create the most annoying user interfaces ever. A forum for people”[creating] “bad UIs just because they’re bad,” Redditors design UIs that, if ever implemented in real life, would never make you want to interact with technology again. Take This was designed by Redditor Lamamour last Aprilwhere you have to inject digits into a moving series of blocks to enter your phone number.
This “enter your phone number” concept has been introduced iterates, optimizedAnd deteriorated since Lamamour uploaded her initial atrocity. The latest entry from user NotYourBoii confronts you with a messy drop-down menu This makes entering a phone number (twice, I might add) a sheer agony.
But what if you want to unsubscribe from a newsletter, YouTube channel, or other subscription service? Well, you wouldn’t be able to do that Redditor OrangePrototype logout buttonwhile a fan blows your cursor away.
People saw the challenge And wanted to make the unsubscribe worsewith the post of user KountrySelektorXpert asking you to do this Break through a 3D animated web to reach the cursed button.
Typing your name is usually pretty easy if you have a keyboard, but leave it to those jerks to pick up a wrench. consider Redditor IlluminatingEmerald’s Donkey Kong Country-inspired input methodwhich the spelling of your name really sucks.
Funnily enough, there wasn’t much more competition in the name entry arena. Although IlluminatingEmerald has probably created the worst UI of its kind to date, Redditor jordanE124567 submitted one requires you to upload individual JPEGs of each letter.
There are so many annoying UIs on this subreddit, and Volodarsky tweets some of the worst he’s found. For your frustration — I mean, pleasure — here’s a little synopsis of Volodarsky’s incredibly annoying realizations.
All of this was intentionally designed to be as irritating as possible, and luckily I can’t think of a game developer who would take inspiration from user interfaces designed to annoy you (unless it was as part of the gaming experience thought as in Getting over it with Bennett Foddy or QWOP). Still, it’s hilarious to see Redditors doing their best to create the worst UI ever.
