A college app just got a major overhaul, and the people who reviewed it are not impressed. The update was pitched as “minor UI improvements,” but the results landed closer to a disaster than a fix. The verdict: the new design is sloppy, overcooked, and full of mistakes that any human designer would catch on first pass.
The writer, who describes the new design as a “slop cannon,” is a user who saw the changes land on their campus app and decided to document exactly what went wrong. The result is a running list of gripes that anyone who has clicked through a poorly designed website will recognize immediately.
The Ten Signs of Slop
The writer opens with a description of what slop looks like. Gradients appear on buttons, in backgrounds, basically anywhere the design team could fit them. This is the biggest and most noticeable sign of a slop-coded UI, and it is present in nearly every example cited.
Then comes the rainbow vomit. The design throws colors together without regard for harmony, the writer says, and it doesn’t follow the 70-30-10 rule that governs good color balance. The result is a screen full of clashing hues that look cheap and unappealing.
Pulsing badges are another pet peeve. The app’s digital ID screen now sports a pulsing badge that says the account is “active.” The problem, the writer points out, is that the badge is never inactive. If it were, the app would simply log the user out. So the badge serves no purpose beyond wasting space.
Finger nail cards are a recurring offender. The writer sees them in every vibe-coded UI and finds them overused to the point of looking bad. The piece argues that nobody has ever sat down and thought, “you know what would improve this? a fingernail.”
Emojis are another habit the writer blames on AI. The design loves them, and the writer compares this affection to Sam Altman’s love for pretending he is pacing the frontier. The comparison is playful, but the point is serious: too many emojis in the wrong place make a design feel amateur.
Misalignment is a recurring issue. SVGs, ASCII art, and other elements that aren’t boxed in tend to sit off their marks. The writer points to a list in the timetable of their college app as a prime example.
Font selection is another weak spot. The design sticks to safe choices like Inter, or JetBrains Mono for sites with a programming angle. The writer notes that the design also adds “//” whenever anything close to tech is mentioned, which reads as lazy shorthand rather than careful craft.
Redundant text due to chat context is a final annoyance. The writer was building a previous blogging website and told the design assistant, “Okay, I don’t wanna be writing any HTML; I will write in my comfy Neovim, and I don’t wanna do any web-related stuff.” The result was text saying “Built with Hugo. Written from Neovim.” Nobody cares, the writer argues, and the same pattern shows up in readmes with claims about “Modern CPP 20 features” that nobody actually wants to hear.
The startup screen of the college app carries the same redundancy. The writer says you can practically smell the prompt that triggered it from the wording alone.
Glassmorphism is a design language the writer allows in moderation. The brutalist aesthetic, which the writer admits looks cool until it gets overused, is another matter entirely.
Generic taglines round out the list. The design loves words like “Elevate,” “Seamless,” “Next-Generation,” “Supercharge,” “Unleash,” and “Empower.” Every H1 is followed by a greyish subtitle about the power of task management. The writer calls it obsession with hype words that treat every screen like a landing page rather than a functional tool.
What This Means for Design
The writer’s point is not that vibe-coded design is doomed. The website hosting the piece is itself vibe-coded and looks cute, according to the writer. The complaint is about effort. These designs don’t even try to look mildly good, the writer argues, and the result is a user interface that feels cheap and unappealing to use.
The piece is a personal rant, but it lands as a useful guide for anyone who builds or reviews digital interfaces. The ten signs of slop are real, and recognizing them is the first step toward understanding what they cost.
The writer closes with a question: what does an inactive student look like? It is a joke, but it captures the whole spirit of the complaint. The design is full of signals that nobody asked for and nobody understands.
- Gradients everywhere
- Rainbow vomit colors
- Pulsing badges that serve no purpose
- Overused finger nail cards
- Too many emojis
- Misaligned SVGs and ASCII art
- Lazy “//” shorthand in tech mentions
- Redundant text from prompts
- Brutalist overuse
- Generic hype-word taglines
Source material: “10 Tells of a Slop UI,” vercel.app.
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