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The designers took over. They finally gained power and with it, unfortunately, users lost out. In my unified theory of organizations, the organization is event

The designers took over. They finally gained power and with it, unfortunately, users lost out. In my unified theory of organizations, the organization is eventually taken over by the employees/"servants" and instead of serving the constituents it becomes about serving themselves. Think Congress, teacher's unions, USPS, IT depts. In programming it's resume driven development, playing with new toys constantly instead of delivering solutions.

noahadavis 7y ago
This kind of finger pointing is really not useful or constructive. Who do you think designed the interfaces that the author of the article prefers? Do you think he'd agree that designers —a whole class of professionals with a large diversity in skill and experience—are the fundamental problem? It's like saying that the developers took over in response to an article complaining about buggy software.
MattGaiser 7y ago
All of that lies at the feet of management (defined broadly). The people re-elect Congress consistently. Employers reward resume driven development on the open market. UX people win prizes for how their UIs perform on high-resolution large monitors even when they will be used on mobile. I think it would be more correct to say that management exerted greater control and deferred to the UX designers who were focused on keeping management happy as management doesn't ever go back and see whether the pretty mockup works.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I love how the pretty mockup always assumes that text or images fit perfectly. It’s probably the single biggest cause of issues we have. It’s interesting, because the one time a designer asked for my feedback before handing the design to management (the best one I’ve met, but they left the org) they hadn’t even considered it, but were all too happy to take it into account.
mcswell 7y ago
Yeap. Look at the users' reaction to changes to Google News (must be ten years ago now), or to Google Maps. The GooN fiasco resulted in tens of thousands of complaints on their feedback page, and only one single "that was a good change" post that I ever saw--and that change was sarcasm (and tagged as such). Did Google learn the lesson, and go back to the earlier UI? Of course not, because the Designers saw that the change was good. (Just in case anyone misses it, that last clause is sarcasm.)

noahadavis 7y ago

This kind of finger pointing is really not useful or constructive. Who do you think designed the interfaces that the author of the article prefers? Do you think he'd agree that designers —a whole class of professionals with a large diversity in skill and experience—are the fundamental problem? It's like saying that the developers took over in response to an article complaining about buggy software.

MattGaiser 7y ago

All of that lies at the feet of management (defined broadly). The people re-elect Congress consistently. Employers reward resume driven development on the open market. UX people win prizes for how their UIs perform on high-resolution large monitors even when they will be used on mobile. I think it would be more correct to say that management exerted greater control and deferred to the UX designers who were focused on keeping management happy as management doesn't ever go back and see whether the pretty mockup works.

Aeolun 7y ago
I love how the pretty mockup always assumes that text or images fit perfectly. It’s probably the single biggest cause of issues we have. It’s interesting, because the one time a designer asked for my feedback before handing the design to management (the best one I’ve met, but they left the org) they hadn’t even considered it, but were all too happy to take it into account.

mcswell 7y ago

Yeap. Look at the users' reaction to changes to Google News (must be ten years ago now), or to Google Maps. The GooN fiasco resulted in tens of thousands of complaints on their feedback page, and only one single "that was a good change" post that I ever saw--and that change was sarcasm (and tagged as such). Did Google learn the lesson, and go back to the earlier UI? Of course not, because the Designers saw that the change was good. (Just in case anyone misses it, that last clause is sarcasm.)