Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Laws of UX
Raised as a usability problem by 40 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2018–2026), in 4 threads.
People raised many different problems with Laws of UX, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 42 complaints
- Language menu stays open and doesn't close when clicking elsewhere2026-04-30
- Gaudy graphics are cumbersome to scroll through and take up lots of screen space2026-04-29
- Site is annoying to use on desktop, designed for tablets or phones2023-07-12
- Back button scrolls to top and plays slow fade animations before showing the index page2023-07-11
- Black text on dark grey background is hard to read2020-08-03
- Scrolling stutters and lags while content loads on an older laptop2020-08-03
- No visual cue to scroll, so users click around confused for seconds2020-08-03
- Blocks too short to read titles; slow animations and graphics overlap text2020-08-03
- Low-contrast LEARN MORE buttons are easily missed and don't look clickable2020-08-03
- Stylish layout makes it incredibly hard to understand what the author wants to say2020-08-03
- Site stutters and lags badly when scrolling and navigating on low-end laptops2020-08-03
- Trackpad and wheel scrolling stutters slightly in Firefox on Windows2020-08-03
- Buttons can't be used until the transition animation finishes2020-08-02
- The site is impossible to read for the commenter2020-08-02
- PREV and NEXT buttons ignore clicks until the CSS animation finishes2020-08-02
- Mobile first screen shows many titles with no explanation, so they mean nothing2020-08-02
- Must click each opaque block and sit through animations to reach explanations2020-08-02
- Actual content is hidden below; user must scroll to find it2020-08-02
- NEXT button ignores clicks during transition, forcing slow click-wait-click navigation2020-08-02
- Unclear whether a tapped box requires scrolling; interaction is uncertain and not easy2020-08-02
- Users can't tell they should scroll; the page looks like slides with prev/next links2020-08-02
- Uses slow 400ms transitions and page loads, violating its own wait-time rule2020-08-02
- Navigation button placed far from content, hard to find and reach2020-08-02
- Keyboard arrow keys do nothing and next/prev controls clash with the scroll-based layout2020-08-02
- Long scroll of blocks with meaningless titles; must click each and sit through animations to reach explanations2020-08-02
- Clicking the Twitter link pushes you into tweeting the page instead2020-08-02
- Scroll indicator looks like a next-slide button; explanations hidden until third visit2020-08-02
- Mobile users must wait for network page loads that desktop avoids2020-08-02
- Large down arrow used to signal more content is awkward or unnecessary2018-01-19
- The next button is extremely difficult to find2018-01-19
- Law content hidden behind large icons that must be clicked to reveal2018-01-19
- Links won't open in new tabs, which is annoying2018-01-19
- Clicking a book cover shows a long animation before the page header is recognisable2018-01-19
- Must click through slow animated pages for each short explanation, and returning home resets scroll position2018-01-19
- Animation with no visible text makes it look like loading; text only found by scrolling2018-01-19
- Navigation is hidden on desktop, making it hard to move between laws2018-01-19
- Gives impression of a foreground mode the visitor must escape before accessing the site2018-01-19
- Shows only small pieces of information at a time, with slow transition animations between them2018-01-19
- Laws of UX principles are too vague to apply without context, so they don't help design2018-01-19
- Site is hard to use as a bookmarked reference to return to2018-01-19
- Unclear what to click, animation mistaken for loading bar, back button shows blank page2018-01-19
- Site is almost impossible to use on mobile; unclear what to click2018-01-19