UX is too broad a term and it lumps together what used to be called "human-computer interaction", branding, web development, entertainment, and user interface d

UX is too broad a term and it lumps together what used to be called "human-computer interaction", branding, web development, entertainment, and user interface design. If we want to talk in broad terms about "experience", then a movie is an "experience"--entertainment. The redness of the red in the Coke logo is an "experience"--branding. Designing either of those things are naturally very creative tasks. But computers are interactive tools that need to be usable by people and those first two things just muddy the waters when trying to get humans to be able to use and master software, IMHO. I'm an engineer and mostly I want to use software to accomplish tasks. I don't want it to entertain me or infect me with marketing. I would sincerely like to go back to drop down menus, rows of icons, and keyboard shortcuts. 20 years ago I crushed it using those things. Unfortunately the conversation has now shifted so that advocating for that is literally not even option. The conversation is about how much pretty doodads and innovative workflows you are going to subject yourself to. Software used to come with books written in natural human language that documented the entire thing--how you accomplish your tasks. Menus were written in a natural human language. You could read the words. The words told you want the thing did. Things were organized in a hierarchy, grouped by functionality. And help systems also could cross reference. It was searchable. All of that is gone. It's just throwing people in the deep end nowadays. Mrrff! They are all different, and I hate that. Any button has equal chance of saving my document, sending a missile to the moon, or silently deleting it all. And they're all written in iconese! Well, anyway. I guess UX designers have more empathy for users, making them better people, or something. /grumpy