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.
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
See that little picture of a house. That's the quick take out a mortgage button so you can pay for this ink.
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The basic rule is never allow a firmware update if you're happy with how something works!
Sometimes updates are automatic and you don't have a choice.
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Just had Epson do this to me. F**k printer companies. They are the worst. They also purged the old firmware from everywhere so you can't roll back to the previous version.
I think the EcoJet was designed to sort of solve this problem? I've had my eyes on one for years but never got around to ordering one.
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That's why you always turn off automatic updates. In fact, printers almost never need updates. They are almost all a scam. Let others do updates. Then, when you think you want to update (because you've been scared by some sort of report of external "takeovers" or something, google the update and read third party reviews to ensure that this kind of nonsense isn't part of the update package.
Get the newer bulk printers - thousands of copies in colour & monochrome and the ink hoppers are refillable - moderately cheap to buy the unit too
I wish I could. But for one - money. And second - I don't want to throw away a perfectly working printer just because the ink-system sucks!
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I'm convinced that printers (especially small, personal ones) will make themselves obsolete faster by being an over priced racket of technology that constantly breaks. Can't wait for them to go the way of the fax machine.
There is a way to make it work anyway. Take out cartridge, put it back and close. Then press the resume button for 5 sec minimum. The button usually looks like a triangle with a circle around it
Did you know that all ink cartridges are scams Like they barely have ink inside and in modern models they have a chip that tells your printer to stop printing after only about 30% of the (already not enough ink) gets used And the refilled ones get recognized and rejected
Ink cartridge is too cheap please replace with a cartridge at least $10 dollars more
Oh hell naw. I purchased you. I gave money in order to use you how I want. Either you use what I give you, or we'll reenact the "Office Space" copier scene, and your company will never see another dime from me.
I have a different printer brand, but I get cheap knockoff ink for it, and get to laugh a little every time I put in a new cartridge and the screen says 'You have installed your GENUINE CANON ink cartridge!'
My time has come. A few months ago, my mom was given a new HP printer and she replaced our perfectly fine Epson printer with it. The HP printer came with some free trial for sending you ink. Fast forward to last month when I needed to print a document, sign it, then scan it again. I go to print from my phone. Doesn't work. Print from my computer. Doesn't work. Print from her computer (which is the one I used to set up the printer). Doesn't work. The printer doesn't have a screen, so I launch the HP program to check the ink levels. They're good. A page prints out saying that the trial subscription ended and had to be resumed. I go to just end the subscription, but I read on the final page that if I end the subscription early, the ink cartridges currently in the printer simply won't work. Yup. The cartridges they send as part of the service have a different code than ones bought elsewhere. They were holding the ink hostage.
I really needed to do that task that night, so I paid for the service and did what I needed to do. The next day, I canceled the service and bought regular ink cartridges that weren't tied to a subscription. They worked. I'm still in disbelief that such a wasteful program is legal.
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Yep. Printers are basically loss leaders, same as Swiffer WetJets. They don't make money on the initial purchase, they get the profit off the stuff you have to buy to keep using it.
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My printer isn't allowing me to use ink I got through their subscription program (aka for x$/month you'll get y amount of ink every z weeks) because I can no longer afford the subscription. It's not gonna end the way they want it to. I'm just gonna buy ink from Walmart.
I bought an HP Printer and it wouldn't even recognise the HP print cartridges that came with the printer.
I bought a set of branded cartridges and I also bought the ink in large bottles. When they were showing as empty, I peeled the stickers back and drilled into the top, then refilled with a syringe from my larger inks.
That's what I'll be doing from now on, too. I will NOT pay a firstborn child just to get cartridges my printer will accept.
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It’s cheaper to buy a new printer every month than replace the ink. Craziness!
I have a color laser I can't use because of this. And their cartridges are super expensive, three changes equals a new printer.
Been there, done this, bought what they want me to,. The third-party inks were nice while I could get by using them. Thanks HP!
This was WIDELY announced in the tech community and youtube literally months beforehand. You should not have allowed that firmware update. Same issue with HP and Canon.
HP got sued for a similar issue and had to change their printer setup.
don't you hate when they do that. Nothing belong to you anymore, and they wrest control that should be yours, from you and then do as they will with your machine. don;t like that at all. funny thing, I did a scan the other day to see the problem you have in your machine, and my god, my Win7 is filthy, in every category thousands of bad thing in the computer, but if I pay them the money they will claen out all that nastiness and make my machine prestine again. I said nah, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Wow! I'm worried now...hopefully my Canon etc is nice to me...I need new ink.
Each ink cartridge has a chip on it. The 3rd party ink cartridges were compatible with the previous firmware version. Epson did the update forcing you to purchase OEM ink. Which in my opinion is an a-hole move. I have a Brother laser printer and I have zero compatibility issues with 3rd party toner cartridges.
It's easier, and sometimes cheaper, to just buy a new printer when the ink runs out than buy new ink cartridges. Sucks for the environment, but, they wanna play that game..
I feel the pain. We had a lightning storm knock out our cell service and once our service rebooted. My own password no longer applies to my voicemail. I'm locked OUT of my own voicemail 😂🙄
It’s cheaper just to buy a new printer that comes with ink than to buy new ink. Horrible!
I just took the chip off name brand one and put on third party ones and worked
Updates man.. often the nail in the coffin, of a planned degradation of product you never really owned.
Yeah, many new printers come like this from the beginning. I bought a new HP color laser, small office printer and there was a tiny bit of text on the box that warned the printer looked for a chip embedded in the toner cartridges, and if it didn't find it, it would reject the cartridge, and no print for you. I hate smart appliances and equipment.
Don't even get me started on Epson!! They did an update on mine & it would not boot up, it would get stuck in an endless cycle of booting, call the support they are open 9-4, I work 7-4:30, email the support, it tells you to troubleshoot with the website or call support. Ended up tossing the thing (less than a year old) & buying HP, haven't had a problem since.
I've had something similar with my A4Tech mouse. With the first version of the software I was able to bind volume change under scroll wheel which was sooo convenient to use, but after an update I was unable to do that again. I tried downgrading the software but the mouse's internal memory remembered the latest version of the software used with it and it was impossible. Volume under scroll wheel wasn't a default behaviour, I had to press another button first to switch to another mapping scheme. I loved it a lot. Then I started using mouse4 and mouse5 for that.
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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