Have you seen the “propaganda I won’t be falling for” satirical trend? People on social media are sharing things that have been normalized, but they deem misleading or problematic, such as preventative Botox, matcha, and ChatGPT.

AI Policy: I personally write each draft and final copy on this website. All content reflects my own thinking, ideas, style, and craft.  I do not use AI such as ChatGPT or other LLMs to generate articles. Occasionally, I ask AI (such as Formalizer or Equativ) to summarize or re-state my own ideas and may restructure sections based on the response.

Mega menus – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

The image below shows a mega menu for Splunk, a security and observability software company. Splunk’s website visitors who hover over the first level Security item in the header navigation will see this mega menu.

“Mega menus are panel-like dropdown menus that appear when users hover or click on a navigation option.”

Definition by The Interaction Design Foundation

I often find them to be unnecessary and excessive. For complex experiences with multiple key user tasks and steps across product offerings, sure, mega menus would be congruent and help guide users.

Mega menus complicate platforms with straightforward user tasks by adding unnecessary cognitive load. What would typically be a straightforward selection from a list of surfaced, first level navigation items instead becomes a more complex process within mega menus, requiring users to carefully review and interact with the menu to confirm they are navigating to the correct page.

They’re widely spread as a form of header navigation, but it’s worth exploring with your team whether the complexity of your service or product warrants a mega menu.

UX/UI design – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

UX/UI designer job postings and roles are quite common. Companies can get better candidates in the pipeline by clarifying expectations, which starts with standardizing job titles and dividing duties.

A UX/UI designer may spend 80% of their time on user flows and research (UX), while another spends 80% of their time focused on visual aspects of the brand and bringing those to life through design (UI).

User experience (UX) design and user interface (UI) design are separate jobs with two sometimes overlapping (tools used, cross-functional collaboration, shared end goals), but distinct, skill sets.

Hating spreadsheets – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

Spreadsheets are our friends. They help us get to where we need to go. Spreadsheets enable collaboration and help us analyze, see patterns, and store decisions.

Frustrating UX in technical domains is unavoidable – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

Many websites nowadays feel like puzzles. I want to change that. Even the most technical audiences deserve simple, intuitive platforms—complex domains shouldn’t imply correspondingly complex experiences.

I’ve led 30+ information architecture redesigns for anything from enterprise websites to university admission experiences, backend workflows, open source libraries, search plugins, and I can tell you:

• even experts like simplicity
• there are real benefits to using concrete language
• proven methods exist to structure large amounts of info for easier discovery
• we can facilitate smoother understanding and minimize friction even with complex topics.

Lorem ipsum – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

There is no experience without content. Using lorem ipsum in designs is propaganda I won’t be falling for because it doesn’t consider content management needs, localization, and user interactions. Lorem ipsum downplays the importance of words in an information exchange.

Open the last app you were looking at on your phone (okay, besides Instagram) and remove all the words and content, only keeping icons and graphics. What do you understand?

Hourly rates – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

For large consultancy firms, hourly billing makes sense from a project scoping, employee resource planning, and budget management standpoint.

As a solo consultant, I believe hourly billing causes financial incentives between my clients and me to be misaligned, so I don’t charge by the hour. An hourly rate punishes expertise and rewards sluggishness.

I haven’t enjoyed time tracking as an employee or employer. I’ve had to double-check the time it took someone to make content changes after reviewing their entries. It’s difficult to build trust in this environment.

I want to focus on achieving results for clients and expanding my knowledge, not tracking minutes. Hourly billing being the best way to plan and sell work is propaganda I won’t be falling for.

Throwing more content at problems to solve them – Propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture

Cross-functional collaboration is a key aspect of my work, and it’s common to hear from well-meaning product designers, engineers, marketers, and people from legal: “Could you please provide some additional text to explain to users how this process will function?”

The teams I work with and I design with content (no lorem ipsum here), and start by defining content hierarchy and user goals before moving to visuals and high-fidelity prototypes. It’s not a good use of the client’s time (or physically possible) for me to be involved in every single content decision, so I’ll inevitably get content requests for experiences I haven’t been actively involved in.

Our instinct is to add rather than remove. In a study of 1585 people, University of Virginia researchers found that our brains prefer addition over subtraction, often completely ignoring the option of removing instead of adding.

When copy is needed to explain to users how something will work, take a step back and review whether there’s an improvement that could be made to the experience itself to make it simpler to understand so that it doesn’t require adding tooltips or guides. Our instinct to add rather than remove presents missed opportunities for improvement. A simple pause and “Have you considered…?” before creating could bring immense value to users and the business.

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This is the propaganda I won’t be falling for in design and information architecture.

Comment below and let me know: Do you agree with the list? What are you rejecting from your field of work?