Poor UX Design: Real-Life Examples of What Designers Should Not Do
Imagine you’re rushing to grab a few groceries. You walk into the nearby supermarket, only to find chaos waiting for you. There are no signs to guide you, no order to follow. Soap sits beside cereal, electronics beside milk, shampoo right next to bread. The carts yell loudly, and checkout lines are messy. You try to find your desired items, but after a couple of minutes, you get frustrated and leave the market without buying.
This is called bad user experience, and it is not only related to websites and applications but also real life. User experience is how different people feel when they come into interaction with anything. It can be any physical service or space, or digital interface. The User Experience(UX) is invisible when it is good, and it is exhausting and frustrating when it is poor.
At Emoris, this article will help you learn the impact of poor UX from old-fashioned and heavy websites to real-world platforms. We will also try to figure out some UX design mistakes that are common and understand how & why user frustration in design can damage brands and users’ trust.
You should not worry about it because it is not about perfection or shame; rather, it is about learning that the right use of empathy can convert a frustrating design into a delightful one.
UX Design Go Beyond Screens
When you hear UX design, what comes first to your mind? Most of you picture an online application or prototype of a website. This is not true because user experience is the experience that you will have after interacting with any service, product, or even environment.
Every small or big interaction has a chance to make your life either easier or difficult. For example, when you go for a medical consultation with a random and confusing process and fuzzy signs, it is called user frustration in design. Similarly, if you go to a coffee shop and it has 7 similar buttons without clear signs and instructions, it is termed a bad UX example.
On the other hand, if you go to an airport with limpid signage, instinctual check-ins, and helpful and friendly staff, then you will have an effortless experience. It means the Airport has great UX because it is clear, calm, friendly, and above all, human-centered.
It is important to note that poor UX design can create emotional scars such as stress, confusion, and impatience. With time, these scars combine to distract people from that brand, product, or service. The impact of poor UX is real; it can cost loyalty, reputation, and valuable customers.
Once you start recognizing the UX design mistakes, you will start understanding the influence of design on decisions, satisfaction, and mood. This awareness is the first step as a designer towards empathy for better products for your users.
The Emotional Cost of Poor UX
Design is always connected with emotion because it does not shape only behaviour but also emotions. A confusing website gives a feeling of incompetence, a slow checkout process gives a feeling of being ignored, and emotions hang on.
Do you remember when self-checkout machines were introduced in different supermarkets? It was considered to save time, but instead, it was a source of anxiety for many shoppers. The reasons were errors during scanning, bagging areas with unexpected items, and the red light blinking that rushed customers to the counter, creating a bad user experience. People felt bad and embarrassed because they were blamed for all errors. All these are examples of impacts of poor UX because the design has not used empathy in a way to guide users to new behaviour gently.
Conversely, when design is clear and frictionless, such as Apple packaging, which can be opened without scissors, it communicates love and care. It means the brand thought about people. Therefore, designers must reduce user frustration in design implying that you are not only building functional design, but you are creating emotional safety.
7 Common UX Design Mistakes That Drive Users Away:
The following are the common mistakes that can decline customer retention on different platforms.
1. Unclear Navigation:
It means you get lost before you start. The most common type of UX design mistake is unclear navigation, whether it is an online platform or a physical space.
Physical Example: The old remote controls of an electric device consist of 36 identical buttons, and the majority of people do not know their use except for 5-10.
Online Example: when you endlessly click to find a contact that is hidden in dropdown menus. Similarly early design of IKEA’s website has simple function buttons under a couple of tabs that frustrate the users because it is similar to a superstore without having clear exit signage.
Therefore, the impact of poor UX is long-lasting because it loses the trust of users, and they feel disoriented.
2. Overloaded Interfaces:
Have you ever opened an online food store or restaurant that has 20 pages? This is called too much of every food or overloaded interfaces, which leads to paralysis of that platform. It can happen similarly with a huge number of buttons, flashy banners, and pop-ups.
Have you ever used the Yahoo platform? In 2000, its home page was crowded with ads, new blocks, and links, and users became confused about how to start it. It has created cognitive interface overload for users, and they leave with exhausted.
3. Tiny Click Targets
Have you ever experienced a notification with ‘I Missed it Again’ notifications? Such text copy frustate users because the notifications are small and hard to click exit.
A bad UX example is when you want to close an ad and you click on it accidentally. It is not a user mistake rather design issue. When the interface is poorly designed, users get angry and consider it their own fault.
4. Ignoring Accessibility
Accessibility means messing up font size, color contrast, design type, not thinking about the age of user, or disability or even a combination of all. These elements decide whether your product or service will be used with dignity or not.
Do you know that in 2019, Domino’s Pizza faced a disaster because its website and application was not accessible to those users who were blind. They were unable to order on their own coining a new UX term: The Blind UX Loss.
As a result, the impact of poor UX on business was frustration, exclusion, lawyer fees and a decline in customer loyalty.
5. Broken Trust
On different platforms, misleading ads and unanticipated hidden costs at checkouts are very manipulative. These are considered dark patterns where users are provoked to click through an ad or the costs hidden forefront.
Have you noticed that many airlines have hidden fees as a service fee at last? It makes users aggressive and unhappy, and it is a bad UX example. The impact of poor UX in a brand or product can damage loyalty, create negative customer reviews, and broken trusts for potential repeat customers.
6. Overcomplicated Processes
It means when simple tasks and processes are made difficult through unnecessary procedures.
For example: Government registration forms require retyping of personal data on a couple of pages, and one error erases all data. It is a bad UX example, and as a result of poor UX, it causes irritation and fatigue in users.
7. Unclear Feedback
You upload a file to a website, and after clicking “Submit,” nothing happens. The button turns gray for a moment, then returns to normal. You’re left wondering whether the file got uploaded? Was it too large? Did something go wrong? Should I try again?
You made a payment online and portal froze. Now you’re stuck without knowing whether the payment was successful or not? These bad UX example creates anxiety, money loss, and increase in clicks thus decrease in sales and a poor experience for the users.
Real World Bad UX Design Examples
There are multiple real-world examples that teach us the working of bad experiences for user.
- Some hospitals and shopping malls have unlabeled navigator buttons on elevators that will lead to user frustration in design. It is a big UX design mistake.
- Few healthcare waiting areas have huge queues without any guidance, that confusion and anxiety. It is the best bad UX example.
- Ticket machine in public transport has unclear instructions most of the time, which creates a lot of frustration for the users.
On the other side, a good UX example can be Starbucks having a simplified order process where the menu is clear and has a deep human touch.
Turn Frustration into Delight
Not all bad user experiences are permanent; rather, they provide an opportunity to refine in that field. When someone complains that your platform is confusing, listen to them carefully. Because it is not only criticism but a new way to create UX design.
Small changes can handle the impact of poor UX because perfection is not necessary; it is important to include empathy in design by taking fewer steps, better lighting in physical space, clear wording, and a progress bar.
Conclusion: Design is About People
At Emoris, we’ve learnt today that UX design is about the emotions of people at its core. Poor UX Design is inefficient because it frustrates users; therefore, it is important to consider bad UX examples so you can create good experiences.
Design is about empathy in action, not just screen or pixels. When design is made with care, the technology results in calmer, easier, and kinder user experiences. This is the real purpose of UX: to help people feel home with your brand so they are excited to come back again.
If you can train your eyes to spot bad UX, you’re already halfway to creating great ones. Because true experts aren’t the ones who know everything that works, they’re the ones who deeply understand what doesn’t.