We've all heard about crappy design, something that turns a blind eye to user-friendliness, logic and common sense, aesthetics, and people in general. We’re talking billboards, TV ads, product packaging and product design, websites and apps, you name it.
The phenomenon of crappy design is that no matter how much our marketing strategies and advertising techniques have evolved in the past decades, it still finds its place in our daily lives. Check out some examples of crappy design in Bored Panda’s previous features here, here and here.
This time, we are taking a step further. Sometimes the design is so annoying, senseless and defunct that it seems like the brands are doing this deliberately or at least without shame. There’s even a whole corner of reddit dedicated to cases “when a*** design things.”
With a whopping 2.9 million members, the community pokes fun at the mentality that “nothing comes before profit, especially not the consumer.” Below, we wrapped up some of the evilest designs, so let us know what you think of them in the comments!
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Ah Station Design
Taxes
Appstore For You
Bad design can be found everywhere, from the products we use every day to the websites we visit. Poorly designed products can be difficult to use, causing us to waste time and energy. They can also be dangerous, as faulty product or packaging designs can lead to accidents.
Meanwhile, websites with bad design can be hard to navigate, preventing us from finding the information we need. They can also be visually unappealing, making us less likely to return. At the same time app can have a very bad user experience which means people will be reluctant to use it. From confusing navigation to cluttered layouts, anyone can spot a very poor design.
Brand New Protein Powder, Not Even Filled Half Whey
Felt Like This Sub Would Appreciate This Statement
Screw You Pinterest
Your content fills up and pollutes the search engine results yet people can’t even view your bulls**t user-submitted content without signing up for a damn account. Going to add to you to my Personal Blocklist so you don’t appear in my searches and waste my time anymore.
Pinterest is a cesspool. I found some of my facebook photos had been uploaded on pinterest. A girl (wannabe maker/influencer/scammer) reuploaded them with her watermark and used them as example of her creations. Had to subscribe to the website to report the images, and after weeks of waiting... nothing happened. Zero answers, support or even an automated mail. In the meanwhile those images were stolen by others and popped around for a while on other websites, mostly on ads of promoting scams. Stopped uploading my work anywhere.
Jerk designs seem to take a step further than simply bad designs and come across as downright unethical and immoral. They snuck their way into the products and services we consume, and sometimes we don’t even notice them.
According to Danny Sapio, the lead product designer at Method and cofounder of Confettihabits.com, shrinkflation is a classic case of less product and more profit. “Companies use this tactic to discreetly sell less of a product at the same price that it was before.”
Moreover, Sapio argues that “companies can do this through labeling by displaying “FAMILY SIZE” or “PARTY SIZE” despite it being the same amount as the regular item.” For us, the unsuspecting shoppers, it’s something that’s really easy to miss.
Trashy Company
Hellofresh. If I Don’t Need To Call To Make Orders, I Shouldn’t Need To Call To Unsubscribe
Cashing In On That *cough*
Another great example of jer design practices is the use of lethal enforcers. They require the user to take the action that the company wants before they can do what they intend to do.
“Lethal enforcers are essentially a way that companies gatekeep the decision making for users. Instead of giving users a free choice, the company decides for the individual the decision that should be made then makes that their only choice,” Sapio explained.
An example of a lethal enforcer is when you want to write a review on Yelp but have to download the brand’s app first. “Or when a company suppresses relevant search results to display sponsored products or content.”
I Want My Money Back
I Chose The Bottle Because A Tube Wasn't Enough! This Trojan Trickery Is An Abuse Coming From A Brand With Recognition
Well here’s a company that cares FA about both its customers and the environment.
Bought These Sticky Notes Cause I Thought The Gold Border Was Nice
Sapio also urges to look out for one of the trick questions known as the loaded questions. They take an advantage of our good nature. “We assume that we don’t need to read the entire question because we’ve already collected the information we need to answer it.”
Natural Is A Trademark
So It Was A Lie
Really?
Another very shady design practice is throttling. “Throttling is when a company intentionally downgrades the service or product with the hopes that the customer upgrade. This is different than forced obsolescence because the product still works; it’s just much slower and shittier than it used to be,” the product designer explained.
It turns out that even giant brands like Apple have been found guilty of this. Apple has settled a class-action lawsuit over its practice of slowing down older iPhones, agreeing to pay up to $500 million to impacted consumers.
“Another example is ‘unlimited’ data providers that sneakily slow down internet speeds once they pass a certain threshold of data usage,” Sapio concluded.
Youtuber Gets Every Single Video On His Channel Copyright Claimed Despite Having The Rights To All The Music In His Videos
This Mcdonalds Menu
Just hold up the queue on purpose till the ad finishes, so you can choose what you want!
Both Weigh 500g But The Green One Is In A 30% "Bigger Bag More To Share"
Customer: it's a bigger bag with more chips. Company: no no, it's just a bigger bag
Cup Design That Makes The Drink Look Like It Has Actual Fruit
Disney Leaves The Inside Of Their $6 Icecream Hollow
The Sticker Was A Lie
Amazon Prime Video Doesn't Tell You If A Show Is Unavailable In Your Country Until After You Subscribe To Amazon Prime
This Design Pisses Me Off Every Single Day
Unremovable Ads On My $2,500 Samsung Smart TV
Spending $175 On A Textbook Only To Receive A 2 Inch Stack Of Unbound Papers. Binder Sold Separately!
Dislikes Helped You Know If A Video Was A Scam, Misleading Or Had False Information
Read: We intend to continue to host questionable content as long as it generates revenue for us, and no, we’re not going be transparent about it, because that will obviously also affect our revenue.
Yeah.... And with the current events surrounding YouTube... Yeah no it's gotten worse
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Maybe we should start commenting "I hit the dislike button" and have people like that comment so we can get an accurate idea on the trash. See how long until Youtube catches on.
Well if the BP downvote button isn't a perfect example of this, I don't know what is.
On comments too. I desperately need to know how much I upset the Phil McGraw stans.
Or if a video has dangerous advice...such as high voltage electronics projects where kids could watch them, or bad medical ideas...or would incite hatred towards the concept of making your own life situation better with your own effort and hard work....
After this rule I stopped using the like/dislike buttons. If the info is not open for everyone to see, you dont't get my opinion.
There's a chrome extension that allows you to see the number of dislikes in yt vids. :)
That's handy, thanks, but I guess the dislike count has lost its value as when people don't see the count, they simply don't press 'dislike' anymore where they would have otherwise.
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Not necessarily with small, upstart channels. Ones with little to no following tend to get downvotes the most because people don't like the quality, the content itself or the person isn't comfortable being on camera yet, or any sort of silly reason. Or it could be from people who know the person behind the channel and have a personal issue with them. Commenting is actually more affective at getting your opinion across as then the creator can see what can be improved and what is working with viewers.
This. So much this. I follow a few moderately-known channels and before the dislike button got blindfolded, there used to be so many dislikes when they said something that offended a certain group of people. And I'm not even saying that they were offensive! They just stated an opinion about something or reacted to a song that was currently trending in being "cancelworthy" and BAM - dislike galore. If some weirdos do that on a huge channel with tons of likes, it just passes by. But on smaller channels, it can easily get them more dislikes than likes for no reason but people being dipsh*its
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Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, it is just a huge fanbase targeting another artist who has some altercation (verbal, financially, whatever) with their idol.
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It's extremely rare for me to click Dislike on a YouTube video, but when I do, it's because the content was misleading, dangerous, or it contained offensive -isms. Now that the Dislikes are hidden, I will make it a point to include my dislike and reason in the comment section.
Commenting will throw it back into the algorithm. Dislike "numbers" visually, don't do much, other than let you know if it's worth watching. I rarely leave dislikes as well, but if its something that truly deserves it, its best to just report the video, commenting and likes throw content into the algo. There are tons of options to stop certain content from popping up. I kinda get it, it keeps people from being biased before they watch something. I honestly miss it in shorts tho, a lot of people are hopping back n forth between tiktok, and it causes some really toxic fan bases. Definitely showing up in comments. If you need to, hit the 3 dot button, or go to your yt settings and set it to only what you want to watch. I had the weirdest ish for 2 weeks, until I could get my algo back on track.
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I feel like it's kind of odd that uploaders can still privately check their dislikes, though. Wouldn't it be less emotionally discouraging for uploaders if they did away with the whole concept of the dislike button, if they're already doing it publically? I could be wrong.
Yup..the official reason is bullocks. Nonsense, it's just big companies, so they can get away with dodgy products.
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I found it really useful for judging how trustworthy a creator was about the information they give. I find reading people very difficult and don't really trust my instincts when it comes to believing people or not, so the dislikes really helped me know whether a person's ideas were good or not actually harmful. Now I have no way to know and has made accessing information much harder
Read the comments. if all you had were the dislikes to make a decision on the trustworthiness, that's not really helpful at all. There might be millions of upvotes for utter bullcrap that no reasonable person watches (which means few dislikes) and it is still utterly wrong. And if the comment-section has no actual conversation-value and only shows one side of a topic - ... actually, you should really invest a ltitle bit more into researching topics across the board, nut just youtube. I mean that kindly, but really... don#t just believe something because he/she has a big fanbase and they are charming and say a lot of words. if you want videos, try yourself on subjects you know about, find channels that say the right things about this subject, learn how to spot truth and facts and then proceed to more complicated things. But please - don't just believe the snake-oil salesmen!
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Given the cesspool that is youtube comments in general, are lop-sided downvotes (aka brigading) a surprise?
So EVERYONE must lose their voice? Howabout instead, YT better polices their own platform?
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Hey guys on incognito mode you can see hiw many their is still i forgot
Because that number going up gets the big corps to spent more advertising moolah on them!
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If you look up the timeline of this... And no I am not an advocate for either side of our system, I know this was in the talks before, but they pulled the trigger on it a little after Biden got absolute s**t views. The right was up in arms about it and I actually can't say they were totally wrong on that specific part
oh sure. It's all a huge conspiracy. And "the right" is always up in arms, which is exactly the problem!
Load More Replies... I had a reveal thing but lost it when I cleaned my cashed...I should go look how to reinstall that. They mainly did this to cover up dislikes on everything on the Whitehouse channel.
And they keep making their ads longer and adding more. I bet by the year 2100 they will hide the likes, views, comments, and subscribers and make the ads longer than the time it takes to fly to mars
There are dozens of extensions for every browser that reinstate the dislike counter, because the data is still accessible.
There is an actual issue ongoing on YT where smaller content creators are targeted by dislike attacks. Which make them practical invisible for the major audience. There should be a report video option available. If only people weren't so busy so they could and would actually use this report button instead of just clicking dislike. Oh wait you are all bored pandas so from now on forth to be less bored actual report content if a report is needed. The majority probably replies with hell no right now. Hit the dislike button moved on and forgot about it already. And yes those two unskippable adds are annoying. So I always get myself a drink and take a break to stretch my legs. Return to my pc with coffee and rewind the video I want to watch
What. Is. It. With. Social. Medias. Removing. Dislikes. Because. They. Think. The. Button. Itself. Is. Bad?
Funny this dropped shortly after their rewind video became #1 most disliked
Sorry, but the dislike button was (and still is) b******t. Most of the time these dislikes came from haters and trolls. "Ugh, you're a fat b***h. Dislike!" Uhm, nope.
Yea..no not really that big of a problem.. sure there may be some. But there's morons everywhere. You can't use that excuse when the large number of people agree.. same thing happens with people who support something for political reasons. They do it as much.
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Disable dislike count- People commenting- Disable comment- Create seperate videos to dislike- Deleted- People dislking on social media- Take social media down- People riot in the streets- NUKE THE WHOLE EARTH
I wondered why nothing i watched had dislikes anymore. Huh interesting
This helps no smaller creators. It actually hides downvotes on political speeches. Why do you want to hide those youtube?
It doesn't really matter tho. I just use an extension to bring it back
Yeah, I'm sure their reason for removing the dislike visibility is exactly what they're saying. It can't possibly have anything to do with them having their official "YouTube Rewind" videos become the most-disliked video ever 3 years in a row due to them abandoning the community-content focus present in the earlier years to instead feature traditional media figures like Will Smith...
Good thing there are addons that fox that, like return youtube dislike and similar.
I've seen a content creator say that creators can still see the dislike numbers, so the only people who can't see it are the viewers (who don't really care, in general), and does nothing to reduce the impact on creators at all
Maybe you should get rid of your content that has been reported multiple times for items that are abusive towards animals. Jackasses
Keeping he dislike key implies the site has not got any dislike. Therefore it is a positive for the site no matter how awful their scam is.
Every web action, response, input, reaction, or interaction, including pausing to look, is recorded, cross-indexed with all the other data known about you and people like you, and used to manipulate into acting against your own self interest. The notion that Google and its ilk care about how anyone feels about anything is so naive as to suggest either childhood or mental illness.
This is more about saving face for big corporations, esp when they've been caught by the general public. They even have the choice to turn off comments, or only allowing those they mention to comment. This is very dangerous..Yt need to be replaced..
You're actually better off not clicking anything for videos that are scams. Even a dislike feeds the algorithm and pushes the video higher in searches.
Literal Hell For Budget Flyers - Standing Seats
Hey This Hotel Room Is Only $99 A Night, Great Deal!!!
They should have just said the hotel is FREE, then charge the $99 as a booking fee or something. Who wouldn't like a FREE hotel, eh?
They Replaced Half The Mirrors In My Local Shopping Mall's Bathroom With Advertising Boards!
Heard We Are Having A Rigged Democracy Binge
The Fact That You Can't Uninstall Facebook On Certain Phones
They Decided To Completely Cover Their Tenants' Windows With Ads Because Who Needs Natural Light And Fresh Air?
My Work Place’s ‘Low Plastic, Recyclable Eco-Pens’ Have A Secret At Their Core
My Age Preferences Are There For A Reason, Tinder
Keurig Sensor Blocks Your Brew Unless It's "K-Cup Compatible", Aka Has Scannable Foil. Slap On An Old Foil To A 3rd Party Cup And Suddenly No Issue
Such A Great Deal!
My Chinese "Smart TV" Plays A 15 Second Chevrolete Commercial Every Time I Turn It On
Perfectly Fine Lighters With No Way To Refuel Them... Planned Obsolescence Is Asshole Design And Terrible For The Environment
As**ole School System Charging Kids For Lunch And Then Blaming Parents
My Printer Just Did A Firmware Update And No Longer Recognizes My Third-Party Ink
Shrinkflation Used By Cadbury To Literally Cut Corners. The Bottom Chocolate Bar Is More Than 8 Percent Smaller
Mess with my sandwich, mess with my glue… BUT DO NOT MESS WITH MY CHOCOLATE
5$ Pen Size vs. Ink
Designed For Dissuading The Homeless. Literally Just Uncomfortable For Everyone Else
Why do people do this stuff? Like, if you dont want people to sleep on the streets, there are infinitely better things to do
8% Alcohol Or
Food Delivery Service That Tells You “Someone Is At The Door! Okay We Lied”
I Wish My Professors Graded Like This
Press Dismiss To Update This Printer
Facebook, I'm Beyond Words
Tenerife Airport Shows Ads On The Flight Information Screens Every Few Minutes (For At Least A Minute), So If You're Unlucky You Have To Wait Before Knowing Which Gate To Go To
F**k You Vegas
Note: this post originally had 73 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Can we talk about the horrific design behind the downvoting system on this site? Down votes are not dislikes, downvotes get you suspended and then banned. And there are anonymous trolls who follow popular Pandas and downvote comments for no rhyme or reason.
I got banned for a day last week, I backtracked my comments and I hadn’t written anything polarizing or remotely vulgar/offensive etc. i still for the life of me can’t figure out why I was banned and I tried to ask BP for clarification but zilch
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Screw this. This fight against greedy capitalistic demons will never be won if our only hope is waiting for gov official to protect the people. We need to bring back the guillotine and go all french on these bastards.
Bad sirs, you sit on a throne of lies. Thirty percent more lies, to be exact.
Can we add Amazon delivery times to the list? (or did I miss it?) So many times I see "Buy within the next 3 hours to receive it TODAY" So i buy it as i really need it quick only to see. . "Estimated delivery time: TOMORROW". . . Why Amazon? WHY?
The main problem is that it isn’t sustainable to expect people who are poorly paid and poorly treated to bring you whatever you want on the same day you order it.
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1> It took a site 30 seconds to start sending spam to my email, but they want up to 10 days to make it STOP? 2> "... and other natural flavors" - wtf?
One of my favorites was the label on a Mr Goodbar. It proudly proclaimed, "Now! More peanuts!" I suppose it wouldn't help sales if they advertised it as having less chocolate.
Dumb design: Disney Plus doesn't even have all the Disney / marvel movies and it makes me mad 'cause like??? Why does it cost that much then, if you're gonna make people pay to watch the movies that aren't there too- Signed, a girl who got bored and thought she'd watch Spider-Man, the old ones OR into the spider verse and none were there
Can we include Youtube thumbnails for videos that do not feature in any form whatsoever within the video.
I can see why you'd consider it humiliating, but all I thought was how impressed I was that you were willing to give the inside view. Super bad s**t can happen to anyone, and we only think we have control of our situations.
Stellar journalism as always: 1) Report on what someone said 2) Report on what a bunch of nobodies ("Twitter user Katy") said about it. 3) Publish it under the assumption that it qualifies as journalism.
And yet with a quick scroll through you’ll easily find Japanese companies, U.K. companies, Chinese, American, and a few that have no clear country. If the agenda is attacking the U.S. then they are certainly mixing plenty of other nations in there. As for anti-capitalism that’s because these issues relate to being conned by companies, perhaps if they put customers first rather than profit they’d represent capitalism a bit better? It MAY be that capitalism isn’t as good as it could be? It MAY be that you are sucking a bit too much from the capitalism teat? Defending the big business who’ll strip all of your assets is a little hmmm sheepish ain’t it?
Load More Replies... Can we talk about the horrific design behind the downvoting system on this site? Down votes are not dislikes, downvotes get you suspended and then banned. And there are anonymous trolls who follow popular Pandas and downvote comments for no rhyme or reason.
I got banned for a day last week, I backtracked my comments and I hadn’t written anything polarizing or remotely vulgar/offensive etc. i still for the life of me can’t figure out why I was banned and I tried to ask BP for clarification but zilch
Load More Replies... Screw this. This fight against greedy capitalistic demons will never be won if our only hope is waiting for gov official to protect the people. We need to bring back the guillotine and go all french on these bastards.
Bad sirs, you sit on a throne of lies. Thirty percent more lies, to be exact.
Can we add Amazon delivery times to the list? (or did I miss it?) So many times I see "Buy within the next 3 hours to receive it TODAY" So i buy it as i really need it quick only to see. . "Estimated delivery time: TOMORROW". . . Why Amazon? WHY?
The main problem is that it isn’t sustainable to expect people who are poorly paid and poorly treated to bring you whatever you want on the same day you order it.
Load More Replies... 1> It took a site 30 seconds to start sending spam to my email, but they want up to 10 days to make it STOP? 2> "... and other natural flavors" - wtf?
One of my favorites was the label on a Mr Goodbar. It proudly proclaimed, "Now! More peanuts!" I suppose it wouldn't help sales if they advertised it as having less chocolate.
Dumb design: Disney Plus doesn't even have all the Disney / marvel movies and it makes me mad 'cause like??? Why does it cost that much then, if you're gonna make people pay to watch the movies that aren't there too- Signed, a girl who got bored and thought she'd watch Spider-Man, the old ones OR into the spider verse and none were there
Can we include Youtube thumbnails for videos that do not feature in any form whatsoever within the video.
I can see why you'd consider it humiliating, but all I thought was how impressed I was that you were willing to give the inside view. Super bad s**t can happen to anyone, and we only think we have control of our situations.
Stellar journalism as always: 1) Report on what someone said 2) Report on what a bunch of nobodies ("Twitter user Katy") said about it. 3) Publish it under the assumption that it qualifies as journalism.
And yet with a quick scroll through you’ll easily find Japanese companies, U.K. companies, Chinese, American, and a few that have no clear country. If the agenda is attacking the U.S. then they are certainly mixing plenty of other nations in there. As for anti-capitalism that’s because these issues relate to being conned by companies, perhaps if they put customers first rather than profit they’d represent capitalism a bit better? It MAY be that capitalism isn’t as good as it could be? It MAY be that you are sucking a bit too much from the capitalism teat? Defending the big business who’ll strip all of your assets is a little hmmm sheepish ain’t it?
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