Bad Web Design

Bad web design is like pornography—you know it when you see it. Unless the bad design is on your web site.

Most bad web design makes you scratch your head. As I asked in Mistake #6 from Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015—"Have you ever seen another web site? Really? Doesn't look like it.

Here are some articles and topics that cover Bad Web Design.

Mystery Meat Navigation

A now-defunct article had a great definition of MMN:

Mystery Meat Navigation (also abbreviated MMN) is a term coined and popularized by author, web designer, and usability analyst Vincent Flanders to describe user interfaces (especially in web sites) in which it is inordinately difficult for users to discern the destinations of navigational hyperlinks—or, in severe cases, even to determine where the hyperlinks are. The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them.

Flanders adopted the epithet mystery meat because, like the unidentifiable processed meat products historically served in many American public school cafeterias, MMN is unfathomable to the casual observer.

Since Mystery Meat Navigation sucks so much, I had to divide it into six topics:

1. What is Mystery Meat Navigation?
2. Recent Examples of MMN
3. Big Corporation and Classic MMN
4. Music, Movie, and Art MMN
5. Web Designer MMN
6. Coda

Web Design Mistakes

There are lots and lots of different web design mistakes. If you're looking for a list of mistakes see my Web Design Checklists: Checklist 1 - Fatal Mistakes and Checklist 2 - Big Mistakes.

Here are some other articles covering web design mistakes:

1. Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
2. Videos About Bad Web Design
3. Stupid Versions of WPTS Home Page
4. Original Version of WPTS Home Page 1996-1998
5. Architecture — An Industry With Sucky Websites

Web Design Mistakes — Overview