Is being rude in UX design the norm ?

If I must explain why I enjoy static and simple websites, the main reason would be because they’re not annoying attention-seeking kids yelling at you. The web surfing is a complete mess of distraction and rude behavior with absolutely no respect to the viewer.

Here is some examples of what I found to be rude and counter-productive when you inflict then to your visitors.

Newsletters popups

I’ve tooted about it this morning. Seriously, please, stop interrupting people while they read the content with a stupid popup asking to subscribe to your shitty newsletter.

Interrupting people is rude. If they want to subscribe to a newsletter, just indicate where to find it and let them do and don’t beg for it 3 seconds after arriving on your site ! When I get on a site like this, usually after a web search, I even don’t know the content and you ask me to subscribe for more. Let me read first and I’ll decide after if it worth it or not.

Punching your newsletter subscription form in my face directly after landing on your site will only end-up to me leaving it.

When I see that, the first thing I have in my mind is a kid yelling “hey look at me, HEY LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYY”.

Delayed banners

This is when you land on a site, you’re about to click on something, and suddenly a banner on top appears and you miss your target because of it.

Example on Wikipedia : the “Sound” banner appears 2 seconds after.

That’s annoying.

“That’s because is a third-party content that takes more time to load !”

– An excuse

I don’t care, it’s annoying.

Adblock banners

Thanks to my favorite browser, I’ve a builtin trackers and ads blocker.

Sometimes, the ads spaces are replaced by a red banner saying “that’s not cool”, but you can still access the content. That’s acceptable to me.

But the other time, you have a big wall saying “disable your ad blocker you thief !”. My answer in this case is simple : Go. Fuck. Yourself. Then, the tab is closed.

You don’t want me to judge if your content can worth a whitelisting or not ? So be it, you’re already dead to me.

Smartphone apps banners

Surfing on smartphone is the most terrible experience I could endure. Mostly because of the screen size and because all the annoying stuff I’ve listed here are even more annoying because of the size and the difficulty to tap on a close button (you know what I’m talking about) ! Despite having Vivaldi’s content blocking enabled, they look less efficient to me than their desktop counterparts.

And an annoying banner is the one asking to install a shitty app just to read the same content I read in my browser.

“Rate us” popups

That’s one of the most annoying thing I can endure. When I want to use an application, I want to use it, not to answer a stupid “rating” survey especially in the middle of the usage.

You want to know if I enjoy your application ? If I’ve installed and keeping it, that’s the case, so don’t ask. If you want me to send you feedback, just make a section in your application for this and if I see something that could be better, I’ll tell you.

BTW, I deeply hate the ranking dictatorship. Rating something “4 or 3 stars” doesn’t mean anything to me without the associated criteria. What does it mean to have “5 stars” ? Nothing to me. And with the stars wars raging on the various platforms when bots and paid people are just here to leave good or bad rates, they mean absolutely nothing to me.

And if I can’t skip the rating screen, you’ll just have the worst note.

Cookie walls

Because of EU’s regulation regarding personal data privacy, the website publisher must obtain the consent of the viewer to set cookies on their browser and explain the usage. And also, allowing the user to refuse them.

If some website play fair and have a simple banner on which you can accept or refuse immediately, a loooooot of other are just using this as an excuse to make more difficult to refuse the cookies. You’ll have a big banner in the middle of the screen with an eye-catching “ACCEPT” button and a more hidden “refuse” button… When this button is displayed. Most of the time, you won’t be able to refuse immediately, you’ll have to go in the “customize” section to refuse them. Sadly, these practices are not illegal and that’s just recommendations from data protection authorities. So a lot of publishers use this breach to force the user to give their consent because refusing is too complicated.

The publishers who use these practices are a bunch of morons for me, nothing more. They’re insulting their visitors by giving them a complicated choice and an over exaggerated consent list in the customize banner just to ensure the visitor will be annoyed and click on “accept”.

My recommendation is to have a cookie cleaner extension (or if your browser has builtin feature, use it) that will delete them after. The problem is that you will have every time this banner. Some lists in the content blockers are supposed to disable them (and, if the website respects the law, it means “no” to the consent, otherwise it’s illegal regarding to the GDPR), but they don’t always work.

This little list is over, I’ve emptied my bag. Don’t hesitate to share the other behaviors you find annoying too !