Bad Usability Calendar 2007 is here!
Av Eidar Grande Vollan, 26. januar 2007
Looking for the 2009 version of the Bad Usability Calendar? Go grab it at www.badusability.com.
Finally, it’s here: This year the Bad Usability Calendar is, if possible, even less usable than previous years. Take a look at the earlier editions from 2005 (in Norwegian) and 2006. This years calendar displays exaggerated use of AJAX, navigation overload and a questionable topic map solution.
Download the Bad Usability Calendar 2007 (PDF, A3, 1.2 MB) (PDF, A4, 1.2 MB)
Update: As Jacob Nielsen pointed out in his latest newsletter;
“Violating yet another usability guideline, the file is formatted to print on European-sized paper, and there doesn’t seem to be a version designed for American paper sizes. It’s easy enough to scale the printout, even though it doesn’t look quite as good.”
As the largest room in the world is the room for improvement, we’ve made a version of the Bad Usability Calendar for all of your non ISO printers (PDF, letter-size, 1.4 MB) and (PDF, tabloid-size, 1.4 MB)
The process of making a new calendar started in November when we asked for suggestions on the new version. A special thanks to all of you that contributed! We recieved many creative ideas that we enjoyed and some that we used. We pledged that the best suggestion would be awarded a numbered version of the 2007 edition.
The winner idea came from Design Architect Dov Rosner at Amdocs Product Group. He proposed to dedicate one month in the Calendar to bad error messages. Bad error messages is one of the most annoying usability problems we know, and must rightfully be included in the Calendar. We have dedicated Mars to bad error messages. Thank you Dov! We also would like to give honorable mention to Sebastien Billard who proposed: – Use plain language : not “the month of the god of war” for “mars”. We used this idea on the making of February. Thank you Sebastien!
An important criteria for the monthly displays of the Calendar was that every month should be possible to use, but only in a most unusable fashion. Please let us know if we have succeeded!
This year we have chosen to give the calendar a Creative Commons license. This implies that we will allow other people to distibute and further develop the Calendar as long as we are credited (read the conditions here). We also allow translations of the Calendar.
We hope you all will enjoy it, and that it can help raise awareness of usability challenges.
If you would like to translate the Bad Usability Calendar 2007, you can download the source files, 13 MB (containing .eps, Adobe Illustrator, .svg and .swf files). If you translate – please tell us about it!

The Bad Usability Calendar 2007 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.
Localized versions
Danish version, thanks Jesper!
Portuguese version, thanks Pedro!
Som markedssjef i NetLife Research arbeider Eidar med å spre det glade budskap om NetLife Research og brukervennlige interaksjonsløsninger til verden.
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Bill Abel, 29.01.2007 6:00 pm
The month of January lacks graphic design as do all the examples. Design is a way to solve problems not create them.
The graphic design field has been overwhelmed with the inappropriate use of the term “graphic design” and “graphic designer” to describe typesetting, or page layout or those who perform those taskes (skilled or unskilled).
One would not refer to poor draftwork as overuse of architecture.That is absurd and so is your use of the term graphic design in your calendar.
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Jesper Rønn-Jensen, 09.02.2007 12:09 pm
Danish version now available
Download and read more on
justaddwater.dk: Bad Usability Calendar 2007 in Danish
baekdal.com: Bad Usability Calendar – in Danish
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Alexander, 12.02.2007 5:59 pm
Great idea – thanks!
I suppose, there aren’t enough days even, hours in a year to illustrate all problems.
All the best,
Alexander in Vienna
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Jonas Feiring, 13.02.2007 2:56 pm
Grattis med link hos Jakob Nielsen. Han fant tilogmed noe jeg tror er en utilsiktet feil:
(Violating yet another usability guideline, the file is formatted to print
on European-sized paper, and there doesn’t seem to be a version designed
for American paper sizes. It’s easy enough to scale the printout, even
though it doesn’t look quite as good.)
Er det forresten noe galt med formateringen av forsiden deres i dag? Alt er formatert med understreking.
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Shaper, 14.02.2007 2:32 pm
Brilliant idea, and the joke’s carried even further by the fact that it doesn’t mention anywhere that it’s a 1.21MB file, causing Adobe Reader to hang while it downloads (unless you first save the link to your hard drive *then* open it in Adobe Reader).
Thor, 14.02.2007 2:43 pm
Shaper: We’ve added the sizes to the files, but I’m sorry to hear that you have problems with the PDF’s. We’ve tested them, and the work all right for us. Any details?
Gerben, 14.02.2007 6:26 pm
Great idea,
Have it hanging on the wall already. Now printing another copy for the webmasters
;-)
Thnx
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Dan, 04.03.2007 3:18 pm
1. No explicit instructions for how to credit the authors. Exactly what should be included in the credit? Please provide an example to avoid ambiguity.
2. Some of use are looking for an A4 version (English).
Thanks!
Thor, 05.03.2007 1:06 pm
Hi Dan – we would like to be referenced by including our logo on the final product. It would also be nice if you referred to this page if you post it on your page. Are you working on a translation?
Download an English A4-version
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/blog/4574549644/Michael-Kors-Braided-Grommet-Tote-In-style/5129127, 16.03.2013 7:43 pm
I do not comment, however after reading through a few of the remarks here Bad
Usability Calendar 2007 is here! — iAllenkelhet.
I do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be simply me or do some of the remarks come across like they are written by brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing on other social sites, I’d like to keep up with you.
Could you list of all of your social pages like your twitter feed, Facebook page
or linkedin profile?
Eidar Grande Vollan, 09.04.2013 7:40 am
Thank you for your comments! You can check out more examples of bad usability on badusability.com. You can follow us on @netliferesearch and @badusability.com, and on http://www.linkedin.com/company/netlife-research?trk=top_nav_home and http://www.facebook.com/netliferesearch
It can also be worthwhile to check out our conference http://webdagene.no/en/