I appreciate your edit. I do promise that UXDers are doing their best to make your experience better, and that shareholders don’t have the level of input into design that it may seem when you’re angry at an interface for not behaving in the way you want.
At least at large companies, UXD teams don’t even know who the shareholders are, much less ever hear from them. If the interface isn’t serving you, it’s always because it’s serving a different (likely larger) use case that’s at odds with your use case. That sucks, but it’s not a corporate conspiracy. I’ve been in this industry for decades, and I’ve never seen that happen except at small companies where the owner barges into design meetings (that never happens at large companies because the owners are too busy to even know the names of the designers).
Yes, Steve Jobs was an asshole who was known to call low-level designers at 3am to demand a small change to an icon that somehow bent him, but he was a psychopath. That’s not how anyone else does things, and it had nothing to do with shareholders, just his own delusions about the colour blue. He also killed himself trying to fruit-ninja his cancer. He’s not a good barometer for the industry, or even Apple’s design, tbh. Designers often ignored him until he forgot and dog-squirrelled himself into the next thing.
What I’m saying is that if you hate a UI, it’s not likely because the company is trying to hurt you, but because the design is aimed at someone else or is just inferior.
I appreciate your edit. I do promise that UXDers are doing their best to make your experience better, and that shareholders don’t have the level of input into design that it may seem when you’re angry at an interface for not behaving in the way you want.
At least at large companies, UXD teams don’t even know who the shareholders are, much less ever hear from them. If the interface isn’t serving you, it’s always because it’s serving a different (likely larger) use case that’s at odds with your use case. That sucks, but it’s not a corporate conspiracy. I’ve been in this industry for decades, and I’ve never seen that happen except at small companies where the owner barges into design meetings (that never happens at large companies because the owners are too busy to even know the names of the designers).
Yes, Steve Jobs was an asshole who was known to call low-level designers at 3am to demand a small change to an icon that somehow bent him, but he was a psychopath. That’s not how anyone else does things, and it had nothing to do with shareholders, just his own delusions about the colour blue. He also killed himself trying to fruit-ninja his cancer. He’s not a good barometer for the industry, or even Apple’s design, tbh. Designers often ignored him until he forgot and dog-squirrelled himself into the next thing.
What I’m saying is that if you hate a UI, it’s not likely because the company is trying to hurt you, but because the design is aimed at someone else or is just inferior.