What Can We Learn From Bad Design?
Image generated by Microsoft Copilot AI, with the prompt: "student learning from bad UX design, abstract, watercolor"
When we want to improve ourselves as a designer, it makes a lot of sense that we want to look at designs that are outstanding. Looking at great work from some genius designers can be just what we need to get our own creativity flowing, but that doesn’t mean that we should intentionally avoid looking at bad design choices. Learning from design failures can be just as important as being inspired by great designers - think of all the times you’ve learned from a mistake instead of just being told what to do. Sometimes reflecting on what went wrong can be a lot more enlightening than focusing on what went right.
Understand Your User’s Pain Points
Looking at bad design can be extremely enlightening when we want to figure out what can be frustrating for users. It’s no secret that designing the big, fun, and unique elements of an app or website is the most exciting part, but that’s no reason to skip out on the details. They may be less interesting, but if we ignore them entirely, we’re going to be facing a ton of upset and confused users.
If we’re being totally honest, we don’t want to make mistakes ourselves and then go back and fix them, so the best way to avoid launching and relaunching to fix all the details is to find pain points before anything goes live. A great way to do this is to look at complaints about other professional apps and websites. If those guys forgot a detail that upsets users, there’s a good chance that you might have forgotten it too! Getting to these mistakes before final iterations of a project is super important.
The folks at CareerFoundry dig into some bad UX design choices and highlight that Ryanair’s booking website made it extremely difficult for users to choose the option of having no flight insurance. Admittedly, when we have to design a page about insurance, chances are we might not even process the fact that not everyone will be interested in it. The option to choose “no insurance” can’t be overlooked like it was here - it feels like an afterthought, and that made users extremely unhappy.
By seeing mistakes like this, it can remind us to double and triple check what we have designed. Sure, you may be designing something great for a specific group of people, but does everyone need to see it? If it shows up to somebody who doesn’t care about that content, would it be frustrating? As designers, these are questions we need to remember to ask before releasing final products. By looking at where people fail, we can be reminded of these questions to ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes.
Good Design is Invisible
As a designer, you might be more inclined to notice a really nice nav bar on a website or a really nice scrolling mechanism on an app, but the average person isn’t going to be able to pinpoint that those elements are great. Instead, they’re likely just going to keep using the app and not mention it at all.
Now, when something goes wrong is where people start talking. When you try to use an app and the navbar breaks and doesn’t take you to the intended page, that’s when you start to notice it and say “wow, this design sucks.” It would be great if we can appreciate a nav bar every time it works, but that’s just not reality. Sometimes we just overlook these parts of UX as things that exist and we don’t really focus on what makes them good - not until we see them done wrong, that is.
Scott Berkun talks about a pretty profound statement that a senior design student said to him once:
“I don’t know what a good idea looks like until I’ve seen bad ones”
I think this is an immensely important part of design to understand. The reason we create so many wireframe sketches, logos sketches, and interactions of designs is because not everything we sketch is good. In fact, some of it can be really, really bad. But that’s what sets our good designs apart. We can appreciate and work with a really good design because we understand what could go wrong and how terrible it could look if it wasn’t really good, and that’s important to understand as a designer!
Bad Design can Yield Good Ideas
As designers, it’s no secret that we’re creative people. Thinking outside the box is one of the most important parts of creating a good design, but sometimes we can take it too far. It would be super cool if every app and website could have a custom navbar that operates like no other, but is that really useful? It would definitely be unique, but imagine how frustrating it would be to have to relearn how to navigate a website for every new website you visit. That doesn’t seem very fun.
We want to be able to push the limits of design, but pushing them too far is where we run into some really bad design choices. Userpeek is a company dedicated to user testing and they emphasize the importance of universal design, which is creating design that everyone can utilize. When we start thinking outside the box, we need to ensure that we don’t cross over the line that makes our product inaccessible. If we examine apps that make it difficult for users to navigate, we can find some really interesting design choices. If we look deeper into these choices, sometimes they begin to seem intuitive after we learn about them. However, learning about them takes time and effort that not everyone is able or willing to put in.
We can look at designs that push the limit too far and combine them with designs that are universally understood. Finding and understanding that balance is how we can create some really cool looking UX without making our design too difficult to navigate. It’s not an easy balance to find, but it sure is a satisfying one when done right!
Let Yourself Create
Part of creation is making things that are bad. That’s just a fact of life - we make things that don’t work, that look horrible, or that we just hate. The important part is learning why we don’t like it and how we can create something that is better in the future. Sometimes this means stepping away from our work, letting our ideas linger, and coming back later. No bad design is useless; they always provide us with an opportunity to learn and better our skills as a designer!
Hey! I’m Maggie Theall
I’m a graphic designer with a passion for creating work that not only looks great, but functions as intended.
Through my design journey, I’ve made plenty of mistakes and learned lessons from every one of them. This blog exists to document my experiences and research, so let’s learn together!
Have similar experiences or want to discuss further? Reach out, I’m always excited to connect with other designers!
