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Fugly Friday, a new Download Squad series
According to a statistic I just made up, almost half of all interfaces for software (web or download) look like garbage. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With that subjectivity in mind we want to ask you: what are the ugliest, most cumbersome, least effective interfaces out there? Mind you, we're talking GUI here -- command line interfaces are a kind of beauty you simply can't assail. Let's not devolve into a ClearType battle, OK?
Submit your nominees in the comments and we'll take a look at the fugliness. Web apps, downloadable stuff, on any platform you wish, we'll open it up and peek at the steaming guts. Starting next week and running for every Friday (until we wipe out bad taste from the internet, naturally) we'll highlight one special ugly duckling. We'll try to be constructive in our criticism.
Despite the harsh moniker, we're not looking to take cheap shots. The ultimate goal is for developers to learn a little something about user interface design. While we'll keep it tongue-in-cheek, there's always a lesson to be learned in doing things wrong. Considering the specialized nature of design (and UI design in particular), it's completely understandable that indie devs will do what they can. If you take a look on the iTunes App Store, you'll see dozens of atrocious designs, but those are devs who likely have no training in this area. Again, totally understandable. Hopefully we can all learn a little something from these mistakes. Keep it constructive, but don't be afraid to point out foibles, that's what I say.
Comments
48
Subscribe to commentspurplecomet84Jan 30th 2009 12:16PM
Lotus Notes 6.5
Yeah... for some reason my company thinks it's great. The GUI is so deplorable it's impossible to find anything important like preferences without the "Lotus Notes for Dummies" book. Don't even think about naming things with typical conventions either. Ugh. So much hate for this program.
Mitchell McKennaJan 30th 2009 12:20PM
@downloadsquad should we include old versions of interfaces here?
@purplecomet84 in lotus' defense, it has improved quite a bit in version 8
peteFeb 23rd 2009 6:11PM
Yeah - Notes 6.5 is at least 5 years old
Try Notes 8.5 - much prettier - and better !
Alex MJan 30th 2009 12:24PM
http://education.alberta.ca/
I work for this Ministry, but not creating this web site. Besides, the design was probably mandated by someone with no clue.
Also, http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.itesm.edu%2Fwps%2Fportal%3FWCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT%3D%2Fwps%2Fwcm%2Fconnect%2FGDA%2FGuadalajara%2F&sl=es&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1
It's the Google-translated version of the Mexican University I used to work for, too. Again, I'm not a designer, and was not part of this web site.
They're actually pretty similar, it's sad.
Alex MJan 30th 2009 12:27PM
I guess I didn't say much about them.
My main problem is that it's impossible to find anything in them. Neither the menus, nor the headings, make any sense. The _content_ is not king in these sites.
And the source code makes me cry.
Matias KorhonenJan 30th 2009 12:30PM
Most things in Windows, any version. And of course the command prompt is hideous, just compare it to Terminal in XFCE or Gnome...
Halo2MasterJan 30th 2009 12:35PM
Fanboy alert.
He actually specifically mentioned we should leave the command prompt stuff alone.
polobunnyJan 30th 2009 12:36PM
Sorry everything can't be GTK+. ;)
For the record, GTK+ with any theme is hardly bearable. Is it a trend for GNU related projects to make everything look big and childish? Where are my stern, cold, square-cornered windows and icons?
Eye sore to the maximum.
MuttJan 30th 2009 12:47PM
Great idea! It's like Mirsky's for Web 2.0!
I think I'd nominate documentary.org. A great organization with a lot to offer, and a site that really goes all out to hide that fact. The depressing grayscale design and the irritating Flash interface just scream, 'You don't want to know anything about us! Go away!'
Halo2MasterJan 30th 2009 12:52PM
Any of those damn articles, lists, etc where you need to click through a slideshow to read the content. It sort of makes sense for a picture-only slideshow, but that's about it. Nothing will make me decide not to read a "Top 10" list faster than seeing I need to click through 10 different pages, with a paragraph in each.
Actually, come to think of it, I think X3F did that with their recent "best of the year" lists. Despicable.
DICKJan 31st 2009 3:56AM
Agreed. The other day I googled 'best iphone apps' and came across Time Magazine's website for their top 10 iPhone apps of 2008 and it was presented in this god awful format. Come to think of it, I think Time uses that format pretty often. AOL is a blatant offender as well.
LarryJan 30th 2009 12:52PM
Office 2007
Halo2MasterJan 30th 2009 1:18PM
Yeah I'll second that one.
ChrisJan 30th 2009 3:53PM
I don't think the '07 Office is bad. The problem before was that it took 3 minutes to navigate all the menus for novice users, and a lot of keyboard shortcut memorization for advanced users. With the newer ribbon, at least they're (Microsoft) making an effort to condense popular features into easily accessible buttons, reducing the number of clicks or time it takes to get to any one function (at least after you have learned the interface).
AbscissaJan 31st 2009 3:44PM
The ribbon doesn't bother me, but that unholy garbage they stuck into the title bar as a menu-bar replacement makes me gag.
JosiahJan 30th 2009 1:07PM
The University of Akron requires all student organizations to use "Editor2" page editor as the only option for creating websites. Two years ago, we used to have the freedom to design how we wanted, but now we have to use this system. It wouldn't be too bad if the system was standards compliant, or easy to use. According to the web master, the reason everyone has to use the system is because "people who are unfamiliar with web design may have to edit the web sites" and they don't want "broken" web sites on their server. If someone can't figure out web design, they will never be able to figure out this page editor. Using this editor it's not even possible to generate a page that doesnt contain errors on W3C's code validator.
Here's a screen shot; http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/159889/Images/editor2.JPG
Grant RobertsonJan 30th 2009 1:16PM
Whoa. There is no such thing as a "root canal enema" but, if there were, I would imagine it to look almost exactly like that editor.
Mad Dick BonesJan 31st 2009 3:54AM
Wow... I was thinking about voting for Office 2007 and the guy who mentioned top 10 lists with slideshow setups definitely has a point, but this piece of shit really takes the cake. Good luck making a website with that garbage that a 10 year old couldn't make with raw html in a text editor.
JosiahJan 31st 2009 11:42AM
If anyone has any advice on how to get my University to change their policy and allow more freedom and forward thinking in their web design, any help would be appreciated. :-) I'm tired of this editor2.
AbscissaJan 31st 2009 4:13PM
"If anyone has any advice on how to get my University to change their policy and allow more freedom and forward thinking in their web design,"
Get all of the affected organizations to just simply NOT use it. Hopefully, when the powers that be realize that the school has practically no web content and that nobody is using their beloved editor, they might be more willing to listen to sense.
You have to remember, the best way to prevent a bad decision from getting reversed is to blindly follow along. In this case, that would be putting up with the bad editor and using it anyway. Don't do it!