When you start on anything academic, you first have to define the terminology you're going to use and in what capacity. Just as an example, affordance means one thing in economics and another entirely different thing in interface design and another thing again in engineering. They all derive from the same space, you can see how they relate, but you absolutely cannot use them interchangeably. A musician's scales are not the same as a mechanist's scales are not the same as a oceanographer's scale.
So when we say 'these things are not bad design' or 'bad design doesn't exist,' that's shorthand. When I say it, to students, 'bad design doesn't exist' what I am trying to do is get them out of a mindset that I want them to execute on previous forms they may recognise. I don't tell them to avoid roll-and-moves because they're bad design, I tell them to avoid roll-and-move unless they can explain to me why they're using a roll and move, and what the roll and move means. What need in the design is being met. When I criticise trivia games, I often say they're shallow design pools with limited audiences that make themselves less replayable over time. The design of a game, in a class, is the choices made to achieve the stated goals of the designer to make the game what they want it to be and why.
But in a common casual conversation, I can sure short-hand both as 'rubbish' or 'shitty' or 'boring' or 'bad'.
It's not like suddenly I vanish in a puff of logic at my Hipocrisies to Language. It's that language is a fluid thing over time.
When talking about this kind of thing in the past, I pointed to the times that the Dice Tower crew would call a game 'not a game' or 'bad game design' just because the game was boring or sucked. Except that, to me, projects the idea that design exists on a spectrum of goodness to badness, and is failing to appreciate the real thing they want to say, which is 'I didn't like this, I think it sucks to play,' or 'I was bored' or 'I felt helpless.'
So 'bad design' is trying to present insight into intentions and parameters of the designer, which you don't have access to, and often elides much more meaningful or interesting personal criticism in the name of pointing to a sort of rational maximalism, a sort of 'this is a bad game because it has bad design.'
These words are things we use to point to ideas we have to construct through negotiation. I prefer the form that gives me more insight into who is saying it. There's no such thing as bad design because design is not a thing that exists without us to talk about it.
One reason of course is it builds community when done right, and art is about communication so you want to know what you are communicating to people.
The other reason is it helps you understand your own art practice better! Reflecting on why something has influenced you and which parts of it are most meaningful to you is super important! If you don't do this kind of work, you won't be making your art your own.
Plus it's much more fun to be able to have a conversation about any kind of art, high or low brow, schlock or sublime, and look at what worked and what didn't for you
