Hi. UX designer here who reads Hacker News as a way of keeping tabs on what geeks are up to :-) I think the article is generally correct when it concludes that

Hi. UX designer here who reads Hacker News as a way of keeping tabs on what geeks are up to :-) I think the article is generally correct when it concludes that we're on the wrong path. But I'd just like to assure the "engineering community" that the "design community" is fully aware of this and has been since about 2003 (mainly due to the effects of Flash at time - remember the loading screens?). Part of the problem stems from the fact that UI design has swung into a bit of a dark age at the moment in terms of usability. Most designers are "visual designers" who don't know much about the history or practice of interaction design as developed by Norman, Raskin, Tognazzini, Nielsen, Cooper and others. With so few interaction designers around it's not surprising that UIs are designed to just look good rather than also work well. Some of the main issues are summarised here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi... I'd also point out that this means engineers are probably just as confused about the difference between visual design and interaction design, since there are so few people to look to who are practising the latter. So articles like the one at brandur.org will be written as though they are broaching new issues on the topic. In fact, discussions around the advantages of CLUIs are pretty old and nothing in the article is particularly new in that regard. The only thing I'd say after that is a minor point: he says native phone apps are faster and more responsive than web ones. Is that true? The apps I have on my phone mostly use webviews or network API calls for large parts of their UX which is by definition practically the same speed as the web, no? At least, I can't tell any difference between using, say, Amazon's native app to search for and buy something compared to if I go to Amazon with my phone's browser.