14 Surefire Ways to Annoy Users

So you're designing a new product and you want to make sure you infuriate as many customers as possible. Be sure to do at least a few of the following things:

1. Force us to reboot our systems any time we install or uninstall your product.
2. Automatically install into the Windows system tray and launch at startup.
3. Force us to read the manual just to figure out how to turn on the damned thing.
4. Pop up little reminders for things we don't want to do.
5. Make tech-support contact information nearly impossible to find--or, better yet, don't include any.
6. Install a bunch of extra software nobody asked for or wants.
7. Automatically sign us up for e-mail newsletters and other announcements.
8. Charge us $35 per call to speak to "Bob" in Bangalore when we have problems.
9. Force us to upgrade products to get the same functionality we already had in the old version.
10. Make us enter the same information (like e-mail addresses) multiple times.
11. Require us to retype squiggly letters that are virtually impossible for humans to decipher when signing up for new accounts. (Note to Microsoft: This means you.)
12. Force us to register products and/or nag us until we capitulate.
13. Promise to remember our log-ins and password, yet still make us enter them every time.
14. Insist on updating the product when all we want to do is quit it and go home.