“Houston, we have 1 problem(s).” – Unsung

In my head, some bugs belong to categories that feel important, and yet remain hard to define and quantify: embarrassing bugs, dumb bugs, flow killers.

Somewhere in the hard-to-explain space is another tricky category: UI decisions that feel cheap.

The examples of cheapness that come to my mind readily will, I bet, be different for each one of you reading this:

using emoji instead of iconography

using text and typography instead of graphic design elements as UI (except in terminal/​text-based interfaces)

excessive centering

obvious misalignments and overflows

accidentally mismatched fonts and unspecified fallback fonts

reflow and bad loading states that do not match the eventual UI

selectable user interface element that betray “bad webiness” of the UI

typos

But my absolute #1 go-to example is definitely this:

= 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/houston-we-have-1-problems/1.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"><br>= 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/houston-we-have-1-problems/1.1600w.avif" type="image/avif">

Computers could pluralize nouns basically for free already in the 1970s, and sure, there are objective arguments of why this is bad, but there’s also this: I wince so hard every time I see something like this.

I think it’s important for every designer to notice when they wince, and teach others how to wince and notice, too.

(I stole the brilliant title from this short post by Joe Leech in 2018, in which Leech uses the word “lazy” rather than “cheap” – they’re related!)

Mar 10, 2026definitions 20 writing 14

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