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A one-day design hackathon with a twist: the goal wasn't to build something great — it was to build something spectacularly, deliberately, gloriously terrible. BAD UI BATTLE challenged participants to out-awful each other with the most confusing, frustrating, and absurd user interfaces imaginable. Naturally, I was in.
I spent the afternoon leaning hard into every UX anti-pattern I've ever had to fight against — mystery meat navigation, buttons that move when you hover them, colour contrast that could blind a bat. It turns out that breaking the rules on purpose is both deeply satisfying and a surprisingly sharp reminder of why the rules exist in the first place.
Entries were judged live by crowd vote — the worse the reaction, the better the score. It was chaotic, hilarious, and one of the most fun afternoons I've had at a work event. Proof that sometimes the best way to sharpen your design instincts is to weaponise them against yourself.