User In Yer Face, a worst-practise UI experiment (2018) | Hacker News Reader

User In Yer Face, a worst-practise UI experiment (2018)

userinyerface.com

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Often thought about designing a print magazine with the same values as a web publication:

* Agree to all sorts of scary things to take off the plastic wrapping

* Peel off multiple big stickers on every page

* Big heavy adverts that overlap the content and weigh pages down

* Built-in Tile/Airtag to track location

* Chumboxes for other magazines at the bottom of each article

...etc

This sounds like a local “newspaper” that’s 90% ads.

I’ve got one that fully identifies as a newspaper but there isn’t even a single article on the front page.

Especially the ones with the sleezy ads on the backpage for massage and other services.

That‘d be a fun art project imo

And then give it away for free of course!

No, only the first couple articles you read are free, the rest are printed in disappearing ink so you get ONLY the ads and pop ups after that until you buy a subscription to the magazine on auto renew.

Excellent idea - and every time you try to put it down for a moment a hidden spring triggers and it flies up off the table and into your face

Also a CD-ROM from AOL!

Recreate the Amazon experience in a store by asking for their name so you can show them different prices and offers, then write down everything the shopper looks at, adds to their basket, and after they've paid sell their information to advertisers so they will see adverts for the lawnmower they've just bought for the next few days.

Are you saying Amazon modifies prices for items based on which user is logged in?

Some sellers do this, yes.

On Amazon? How? Does Amazon provide an API allowing that?

Automated pricing, based on user interest.

https://sell.amazon.com/tools/automate-pricing

This still controls the price for all users though, as far as I’m aware.

yes this is a known thing.

Any recent sources on it?

Browse without login from another device+ip. Back in the day it was subtle and you'd have to browse some category of shit for a while before the prices were inflated for your account.

Looks the same for me in the UK. Even tried it from a few VPNs, and tried it from my Linux disk.

By "back in the day" I mean 10+ years ago, and you'd have to browse for a few days.

I am not sure why I am being downvoted for something that I and others have observed; must be the Amazon fanboys having a hard time acknowledging they work for a shitty company. Other companies have done this for years too, like airlines. It's also not like you need to search very hard to see all the lawsuits Amazon is involved in, but here is one link describing price changes (which occur due to many things, of course, not just user profiling):

https://talkradionews.com/does-amazon-increase-price-after-v...

Don't forget that Amazon is also the same company that removed 1984 from people's devices. Of all books...

Not the question being asked exactly, but there are quite a few people testing the market for live dynamic in store shelf pricing where they can drop or raise on demand. Its a little odd to think that a jug of milk might be cheaper at 1pm than at 6pm.

This not my experience.

I walk into the grocery store to get some fuji apples. I keep asking for fuji apple" but I am affixed with horse blinders and walked to the cell phone isle by a helpful clerk, and a bunch of iPhones are presented.

I ask the clerk for "fruit fuji apple", and I am escorted to a different isle with all kinds of accessories for iPhone.

I walk over to the fruits & vegetables department, stand in the isle with all kinds of apples, and ask for the "fuji apples" again. The clerk promptly walks me back to the iPhone accessory isles, and leaves me there.

I go out of the store, ask a passer-by where the fuji apples are in the store, she tells me exactly. I walk into the store, go to the exact location, and see the fuji apples.

I put it in my basket, walk to the check out. At the checkout the clerk asks me if I want to include a 1 year protection plan, or purchase a charger for my apples. I decline.

I purchase it, go home and wait for the apples to show up at my door.

Two days later the fruit show up. They are williams pears.

Try asking for "Fuji apple reddit" next time and you'll get pointed in the right direction

At least the checkout clerk didn't shove a giant bilboard into your face asking if you want a subscription for their video rental and premium delivery businesses.

With in-store (B&M) tracking based on WiFi/Bluetooth signatures and facial recognition ... this is actually in many cases a near future if not already present reality.

The principle difference being that shoppers aren't actually asked for their names.

(Names are determinable through interpolation of those signatures, or through payment information by credit or debit card.)

> Big heavy adverts that overlap the content and weigh pages down

A lot of magazines have a rip-out subscription card like that.

the fall-out cards are even worse

It should come with free cookies wrapped in consent notices.

> * Agree to all sorts of scary things to take off the plastic wrapping

Wouldn't it just be that one page (not visible without opening it, of course) has the terms and conditions you inherently agreed to by reading the cover?

> Big heavy adverts that overlap the content and weigh pages down

PC Magazine, and other similar mags in the 90's/00's, was literally like this. I used to spend several minutes ripping the thick cardboard ads from every issue before trying to read it. At least web sites don't give me paper cuts.

Yeah, but if you rip out all of the cardboard ads, read through, and then close the magazine the cardboard doesn't crawl back into the magazine for you to pull out again if you pick it back up.

Pickup an issue of Wallpaper, if they're still around.... A design magazine with cover to cover advertising and the occasional bit of editorial content. The advertising is curated and not so in-your-face but it's advertising none the less.

Related - "Engineers are competing who creates the worst UI on Reddit" - https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755496852475906

I particularly like:

- https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755496852475906 - "Enter your phone number"

- https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755532394889219 - "Volume control"

- https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755789313069057 - "Checkbox with a 50% success rate"

Oh the irony of examples of bad UI being posted on twitter where I just get half a UI loading with spinners and can't see anything.

I've got automatic redirects to nitter set up on all my devices.

Don’t give Facebook any ideas.

The QR code one could be made 1000% more annoying by making it one of those slider puzzles.

I now want a QR code slider puzzle.

Real dark mode is great! I can actually see myself profiting from such a design in order to focus in dimly-lit environments.

https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755808300519426?s=2...

I’m also going to plug a tangentially similar game I made

https://termsandconditions.game

I hope you hate it

https://clip.cafe/tucker-dale-vs-evil-2010/ive-never-stood-c...

Question 25 of your game is wrong, I think. Both of the last two options could potentially work.

Delightfully aggravating otherwise!

Very fun, but I couldn't figure out why the answer to 27 is what it is

I didn't see it mentioned, it's possibly this Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/

Yes, /r/badUIbattles

Original sources:

- "Please enter your phone number" by /u/Lamamour - https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/udx3ab/please...

- "Volume Control without boundaries" by /u/Caltrop_ - https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/ey74ya/volume...

- "checkboxes with a 50% success rate" by /u/975miles - https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/s8u3v6/checkb...

Loved the placeholder that you have to delete, that's a classic

The form field didn't reset to default values when submitting something that doesn't pass validation, that's probably a little too convenient.

Jeeze do I ever hate that.

Also password or bank account fields that disable pasting. Just awful.

> password or bank account fields that disable pasting

One of the reasons KeePassXC has an auto-type feature, I bet!

Brilliant website!

Previous extensive discussions fwiw:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27635310 (2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344565 (2019)

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

User Inyerface – A worst-practice UI experiment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27635310 - June 2021 (215 comments)

User Inyerface - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345826 - July 2019 (1 comment)

User Inyerface – A worst-practice UI experiment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344565 - July 2019 (255 comments)

(mild spoiler alert) It took me 00:06:20 to complete and I enjoyed it a lot. I especially liked the ambiguous form state; I was never sure which part of the form is active or has been selected. I appreciate that it didn't feel needlessly unfair; e.g. when I accidentally clicked a "select all" button that undid all my work, there was also an "unselect all" button within reach.

Loosely related: "The worst volume control UI in the world", https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world... .

The send to bottom button making the dialog go down slowly was so hilarious !

that got me too. The very slow speed of it

The ultimate Turing test? I'm willing to bet not even ChatGPT-11 will have the sheer boneheaded level of determination only a human could ever achieve...

The pw really stressed me, I checked the source code to find what a valid pw looked like.

Pretty cool code btw, it has a rule array that with the error msgs, very easy to follow even tho it was webpacky.

Then I realized the errors were displayed at the bottom of the page.

4'17 mostly because I was laughing so hard.

The captcha with the hononyms and the selection boxes where you don't expect them is genius.

There is whole subreddit dedicated to these kind of UIs: https://www.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/top/?t=all

Enjoy.

I'm pretty partial to that draw your countries flag [1]

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/g4aytv/tired_...

Discussed previously on HN:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27635310> 2 years ago | 215 comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353724> 4 years ago | 44 comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345826> 4 years ago | 1 comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344565> 4 years ago | 214 comments

(Re-posts after a year of no significant discussion are permitted.)

https://imgur.com/S0dPEZn

I got 7:39; nice one!

As funny as this is; it truly sarcastically encapsulates everything that is wrong with modern web design.

I got 8:13. Checking all the checks took the most time

This is what my nightmares are like. I have to do something simple like fill out a form or unlock a door, and everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong

Getting there! It needs to completely randomize itself about halfway through your workflow. And more ratings! Don't forget to like us and give us five stars. About the exact moment you are ready to finish.

Love this! There used to be a similar site on HN some time ago, something in a sense "How I see internet these days" and endless pop-ups kept on annoying you. Anyone remembers that?

Yep exactly

Oh, I know that one. It comes built-in as an easter egg in uBlock Origin - you can open it by clicking the big "Power" button that shows after you click the uBO logo in the browser toolbar.

Doesn't work on Hacker News though

The only winning move is not to play.

This really doesn’t seem that different from most 2023 websites.

You are, of course, exaggerating a bit for rhetorical effect, but it is indeed too close to home. The bulk of my time was spent grappling with things that frequently give me a hassle on real websites.

The dialog box

The strenuous password requirements

Especially the "select all pictures of" bit. Anyone who has tried browsing with a proxy can confirm.

I literally was unable to purchase something from Currys on my phone, it was so bogged down in JS madness that it just didn't work. It would only work on my computer, and then only in Chromium (the payment flow just stopped loading after entering the card details on Firefox). When I did manage to place the order, the payment was processed twice, so that white loading screen in Firefox did so something. When I picked it up, I was told that they can't process online returns, I would have to take the extra one away, arrange a return online and then bring it back.

Wow, those timers are fear inducing

How can we help?

Seven minutes. The most aggravating seven minutes of my life.

The site actually crashed Chrome as soon as I uploaded an file, to the point where even mouse clicks on the address bar or other tabs wouldn't work. I didn't think that was supposed to be possible. I guess we can dig into the code and figure out how to crash peoples' browsers with a website?

@ChromeDevTeam Your bug reporting process is too complicated so I'm just leaving this here on the internet for you to find

Very clever, I enjoyed getting past all that. I have seen the "needs-to-be-deleted" placeholder text in the wild before. It's very silly.

3:13! I had some good chuckles at finding "Unselect All" or "Select all Bows". Birthdates not matching on the one form got me too

09:21

5:34!

Incredible! I got 3 steps in before I wanted to die.

Thanks, I hate it.

Reminds me of the cursed form fields that don’t allow pasting for bank account numbers, which I’ve seen recently at multiple financial sites. What on earth makes them think that typing something manually twice is less error-prone than literally pasting it from a known-good source??

Brilliant work. This is the equivalent of internet hell. Horrible experience. Thank you.

4:22: https://imgur.com/Wv9zZci

Naturally, the process of uploading that screenshot to Imgur made me wonder if I was still in the "experiment".

I couldn't get past the captchas. I wonder if it's possible to do so...?

I failed it a few times, but passed when I got the glasses option and selected every box.

What did you put for light and circle ones?

Most of the images in light, bow and circle has to be selected. I passed the test in bow with all images selected.

They all have bows.

Bow ties. Hunting bows. And people bowing.

I was disappointed there were no "bow"s of a ship. I guess they all fell off.

Can't even beat level 1... are there more pages than just the frontpage!?

the slow-roll "send to bottom" on the chat box is so damn funny

Web version of Homer disappearing into the bushes.

Needs a "sign up for our newsletter!" popover as well

No back button hijack?

Came here to say this too. That definitely leaves some UX pessimisation potential on the table.

3:10. Honestly, I would expect meatspin at the final page.

Me too. The design brings back memories of those old jumpscare flash games.

Bravo, alas I could not finish, my anxiety got in the way. There are actual gov forms similar this.

I love that meme of the Phone number input being a trackbar.

My pet insurer's web site has a box for you to enter your policy number, which only accepts numbers and has a spinner. The policy number is seven digits long. It's sort of fun typing the first few and then playing with the up and down arrows.

My favorite was the "select all" check box.

This made my heart boil with rage..... I LOVE IT

Still HN: frontend development takes no skill

I do have to say. In all my years (10+) of programming both frontend, and backend, UI is by far the most difficult thing to do properly.

I gave up scrolling the terms and conditions.

Oh, I hadn't even seen that. You don't need to open them up. just uncheck the checkbox.

The CAPTCHA at the end was my favorite part.

Because you missed this line:

> Holding ALT to scroll faster is cheating and not allowed.

or wilfully decided to not cheat.

Is like a tough game

5m50s, how did I do?

4:49 for me, but I cheated. My address number is 1744, and I quit incrementing at 5. I suspect it would've been well past 7 minutes if I'd been determined to enter accurate information.

expect order of certain things.

User interface is like reading, people

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