‘User Inyerface’ teaches you about terrible modern web design by making you suffer through it – The Verge

Bad website user interfaces are perhaps the worst part of the internet: spammy pop-ups designed to trick you, dark patterns that are intentionally misleading, and just plain obtuse design decisions that make filling out a form virtual hell.

But don’t take my word for it: let “User Inyerface,” a web app from design firm Bagaar, show you in an intentionally nightmarish take that tries to build the single worst online form of all time. And boy, it is infuriating. (Spotted by Michael Lopp on Twitter.)

Basically every aspect of the “game” is designed to induce rage: mislabeled buttons, complicated password rules, nearly impossible to close pop-up windows, slowly scrolling terms and conditions, and annoying CAPTCHA forms. Even if you’re a veteran internet user, chances are something here will trip you up. And to add to the pressure, User Inyerface also has an enormous timer clocking how long it takes you to figure it out.

Of course, this being the internet, the game is actually a marketing tool for Bagaar (it literally rewards players with a link to the company’s career page), but what makes it so horrifying is not that it’s a miserable site (although it is), but how closely to reality it hews. Sure, nothing on the internet is quite as bad as User Inyerface, but there are plenty of sites out there that are pretty close, and therein lies the true horror.