Hackathon: Learning from Bad UI
As part of our monthly hackathon in July, we dove into a rather unconventional topic: bad user interfaces — inspired by the subreddit r/baduibattles. Instead of drawing inspiration from best practices, we deliberately analyzed and recreated so-called “bad UIs”, gaining valuable insights we’d like to share in this article.
What Actually Makes a UI “Bad”
The examples featured on r/baduibattles aren’t simply failed or broken interfaces. Their appeal lies in the fact that they’re intentionally designed to be impractical, absurd, or unexpected. They challenge the conventions of UI/UX design, often in a humorous, sometimes even frustrating way.
Importantly: These are not accidental design flaws, but deliberately exaggerated and often sarcastic constructions that consciously push the limits of good UX.
Such “bad” UIs often feature:
- confusing or overloaded layouts,
- absurd user interactions,
- or technical gimmicks involving unusual browser events.
What We Created
Inspired by some particularly bizarre examples, we built our own bad UI prototypes. The result is a small, interactive collection that you can explore here:
View the Bad UI Collection on GitHub Pages
But Why?
As paradoxical as it may sound: engaging with bad design is one of the best ways to understand what makes good design work. The satirical approach of r/baduibattles acts as a kind of reverse textbook: it highlights anti-patterns, exaggerated UX flaws, and pitfalls that should be avoided in real-world product development.
For us, this experiment was not only insightful, but also highly entertaining. And as a nice bonus, we ended up creating a publicly accessible application hosted on GitHub Pages.
Conclusion
r/baduibattles is more than just a collection of terrible interfaces — it’s a creative outlet, a satirical reflection by the design community, and an unexpectedly effective learning platform. It blends humor, technical experimentation, and UX awareness in a refreshingly clever way.
From this hackathon, we didn’t just walk away with a few especially questionable UI components, we also gained valuable insights into how users think, click, and despair.
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