I wish to understand what elements or aspects of the design of modern websites the end users are annoyed from. Though you are free to express your personal opinions, it would be even more insightful if you could provide objective criticism and suggestions for alternative implementations so that I may incorporate the same in my current and future projects to make them as user friendly as possible.
Some criticisms I have encountered a while back include:
- Switches being basically checkboxes with more ambiguous active state
- Scrolling animations that prohibit user from linearly scrolling through the page
Make sure that the opinion is not
- Related to business/legal matters e.g. Cookie consent notices, ad banners etc.
- Too vague e.g. Poor website layout
- Highlighting objectively bad practices e.g. Lack of accessibility features
I recognise I could have followed a design system for this question, but I want to understand the situation from the perspective of the end users to see if they have a differing view on what a convenient user experience should be like.
One terrible combo is infinite scroll plus links in the footer (Bing does this, if you needed another reason not to use that site). I think pagination is generally a better pattern, since you can link to a specific page.
Also lack of back button functionality and having your state reset on refresh are also pet peeves.
Sometimes it becomes a race between me and the site implementing infinite scroll to see if I can reach the footer before the site can load more content; the only time I curse my internet connection for being good
Related, pagination can still get broken if you try hard enough. Some sites have pagination, but bump up the id of old posts every time there’s a new post, so it’s still useless because the links will change content
bump up the id of old posts every time there’s a new post
That’s probably the worst thing I’ve read today, it’s such a bad thing to do on so many levels wtf
Bing does this
I’m pretty sure you can disable it in options, because it has defined pages for me.
Large empty margins, especially when the content in the middle doesn’t fit due to a lack of space
One thing i hate most is when websites act like an app without url changes. So when you click “back” in your browser, nothing fucking changes and you are still on the exact same page.
Same thing happens when you change for example a filter on a website showing a list of items. So when you set up the filters and then click on an item, then click “back”, everything fully resets because non of it was set in the url.
You can’t share the url with anyone because it just opens the website in its default state.
As an example, imagine a website showing all games. You set the filter to show playstation only or sort it by popular. Then if you click on a game, then go back to the list, everything has reset. Its no longer sorted by popularity. Its no longer playstation only games etc.
It fucking infuriates me.
Or when browsing images or videos, and when you click on one and go back, it goes all the way back to the top. Because the genius that made it wants shit to load as you scroll. And then not store that scroll position in the url. So you are right back to where you started.
I can relate to this too. I try to fight the site out of spite by furiously clicking on the back button of the browser to get me to the home page, and it does show the page for a split second before undoing the redirects and pulling me back to the page I was originally in. In the end I have to succumb to using the website’s own navigation buttons to incrementally head back to the starting page.
Single page applications and their consequesnces.
Yeah, particularly bad SPAs. All these things can be solved correctly, but implementing an SPA means you suddenly have to solve these problems, which just don’t exist with traditional document-like webpages.
Mouse-over menus that don’t stay open to be able to navigate to the other end of that menu.
A morbillion javascript frontends, data hoarding middle ends, and another morbillion tracker tags all so you can display 5 sentences of text and a default picture which causes the website to take 5000 years to completely render as you watch Wappalyzer light up like a christmas tree on fire. Use static HTML and CSS ffs, it’s there for a reason.
Modern HTTP is such a horrendous steaming pile of crap that I could honestly spend an entire day talking about the horrible ways we accomplish WWW, with about a solid 70% of it being directly attributed to pos Google.
Basically the entire UI and content feels built around / optimized to serve ads. Which means everything sucks
Giant tiles or moving pictures instead of small buttons to click to navigate.
I’m not saying I want every website to look like Wikipedia but if I had to choose between mostly text with obviously clickable links vs abstract art with bullshit hit boxes I’ll take the “boring” text every single time.
Too many UI devs forget that they need to make it functional and easy to navigate first and THEN you can add flair. Never add pizazz if it inhibits functionality or visibility.
Auto playing video if I clicked a link that was not indicated beyond any reasonable doubt that it was a video.
Making any sound at all unless instructed to.
Really appreciate these responses as an a11y and UX focused frontend SWE
Fucking with scroll in any way. My browser and OS scroll in a familiar, reliable way and the chances of any change to that a website could possibly make improving my experience are infinitesimal. https://dontfuckwithscroll.com/
What would be your opinion on making a website that has no scroll because it’s just a single, small page, and the hijacking scroll to do some useless visual thing because scrolling wouldn’t do anything anyways?
That sounds like a novelty page to show off CSS/JS tricks. I think that’s out of scope for the original question, which I took to be about sites with a functional or informational purpose.
The one thing that really grinds my gears above everything else is how on some news sites, there’s an autoplaying video at the top of the article that follows you when you try to scroll past it. An autoplaying video is bad enough, but that’s just infuriating.
I find news sites tend to make the most aggressively bad UX decisions, most of them are a nightmare to visit even with an adblocker installed.
RSS Feed was a godsend for me, because it finally relieved me of the chore of visiting a webpage of news site to look for latest news.
Agree on the hostile UX of news sites. The experience is worsened extensively when viewing on mobile.
Grey on grey. (Grey background with the font in an off grey.)
Or
Having what appears to be a greyed out option but it’s still an actual choice (greyed out means this is NOT an actual choice)
I’ve witnessed it is part of dark patterns in most websites. Often the more consumer friendly option in a consent dialog box is greyed out as if the option itself is unavailable. Even I would’ve been fooled by it if not for my habit of clicking on the button regardless.
Wizards / steppers
They suck and I’m tired of pretending they’re in any way a good design.
Pictures that don’t change size when you pinch zoom the page.
Put a damn selection area around your switches/check boxes so I don’t have to click precisely on the teeny tiny little box with my giant fingers. You know what I want to do, There are no other elements near it. Just put a damn div area around the object that has an onclick so I can toggle the thing without zooming it to the size of my screen to press right on the tiny little button to toggle my setting
