"That is bad UX"

User Experience

Today I’d like to talk about this expression that pops up every now and then that “something is bad UX” or that the “UX is not good”.

First, when I hear people say this I wonder if they know that UX means user experience. And if they do know, then how can you say if something has a good or bad experience with such conviction, having just looked at it.

When we say we like something or that it looks nice it’s a personal comment based on our personal taste and the environment we exist in. We could say that a specific action or flow in the product felt strange to us, as in, not natural or expected.

There are indeed cases where we could use something similar to this comment: if you find that a product is using “Dark Patterns” to prevent people from doing what they want (unsubscribing, deleting account, confusing checkbox states) you could say that the experience is damaged.

However, we could argue that as people get more and more used to dealing with certain dark patterns they become part of the common language and while they are still manipulation methods they no longer impact the overall experience in the same way.

Next time you hear someone say it’s bad UX, try asking them why.