UI designer here. This guy's advice is OK-ish as far as it goes. However, he fails to exhibit the one thing that sets an actual UI designer apart from somebody

UI designer here. This guy's advice is OK-ish as far as it goes. However, he fails to exhibit the one thing that sets an actual UI designer apart from somebody with just some opinions about the practice: observational research. The FIRST thing you do is observe. Watch people in relation to the problem you are trying to solve. Listen to them. Ask them WHY they do what you observe. If at all possible, work out what motivates them and what problems they really have (which they often will not articulate to you). Only then start designing solutions. I'm not saying his ideas about the design of the oven are invalid. But the fact that so few people in design roles even attempt the work of exploratory research is fundamentally the reason why so much of stuff is shit. This isn't surprising though. Observational research is often frustrating, confusing or difficult to interpret. But above all it takes a lot of time. This is also the reason why, if you have another job like coding or marketing or whatever then you will not have enough hours in the day to do effective design.