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It's really amusing how bad Amazon is at writing and designing UI. For a company of their size and scope it's practically unforgivable. But they always get away

It's really amusing how bad Amazon is at writing and designing UI. For a company of their size and scope it's practically unforgivable. But they always get away with it.

smt88 2y ago
You say they "get away with it," but it makes more sense to conclude that UI design has a lot lower ROI than we assume it does as users.
- wilg 2y ago
  Or that design instincts are backwards
- wavemode 2y ago
  You can't conclude that. At best, you can conclude that outdated product design doesn't always ruin a business (clearly). But you can't conclude the inverse (that investing in modern product design doesn't ever help a business).
  - handfuloflight 2y ago
    That's a great point. Further, there are many sizeable businesses built on top of AWS where they deliver the abstractions with compression that earns them their margin. Case in point: tell me, from the point of view of the user, how many steps it takes to deploy a NextJS/React ecosystem website with Vercel and with AWS, start to finish.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
    I think they have plenty of competition in the cloud computing space. It seems fair to say that their strategy of de-prioritizing UI/UX in favor of getting features out the door more quickly and cheaply has benefitted them. However, I don't think it's fair to say that this trade-off always wins out. Rather, they've carved out their own ecological niche and, for now, they're exploiting it well.
- nekoashide 2y ago
  Oh I'm sure, the ACM UI was impossible to use for years to find certificates, they improved it, but, it will never have the same level of functionality that the API gives you and that's the bread and butter.
  - dandrew5 2y ago
    Imagine a native desktop app that let you build a UI with very basic elements, à la Visual Basic, and behind each of those elements is an associated AWS CLI command. Such that "aws s3 ls" attached to a list element would render an account's buckets. The AWS APIs are so expansive, a product like this could offer a complete replacement for the default web console and maybe even charge for it. Does anyone know if such a solution exists? Perhaps some more generic "shell-to-ui" application? If not, I'm interested in building one if anybody would like to contribute.
- int_19h 2y ago
  It makes more sense to conclude that if you have market dominance, you can get away with a lot, especially since we see this time and again in other matters, not just UI.
Bilal_io 2y ago
That happens when you ask SWE to design. To fix this, Amazon will need to do extensive UX research and incrementally make changes until the UI doesn't look the same and is more usable. Because users hate sudden change.
MudAndGears 2y ago
Everyone I know who's worked at Amazon says Jeff Bezos has his hand in everything to the detriment of product design. I've heard multiple accounts of him seeing a WIP and asking for changes that compromise the product's MVP.
- queuebert 2y ago
  Is this why the everything besides the front page still looks like someone's first website from 1998?
- genghisjahn 2y ago
  "Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company." https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319bd4dd368 https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319... I read that post every couple of years or so.
  - foundry27 2y ago
    Why was this being downvoted? It’s first-party evidence that substantiates the claims of the parent comment, and adds interesting historical context from major industry players
acdha 2y ago
What do you think is comparable but better? I think you’re really seeing that they have a large organization with a lot of people working on different complex products, which makes major changes much harder to coordinate, and their market skews technical and prioritizes functionality higher than design so there isn’t a huge amount of pressure.
jgalt212 2y ago
It's similarly amazing how long the YouTube home page takes to load, but it's a top 5 destination no matter how bad its Lighthouse Score is.
outworlder 2y ago
> It's really amusing how bad Amazon is at writing and designing UI. For most of AWS offerings, it literally doesn't matter and logging in to AWS Console is a break glass thing. Case in point: this very article. It uses boto3 to interface with AWS.
- trallnag 2y ago
  At the same time, AWS has tons of services that are explicitly designed for usage through the console. For example, many features of CloudWatch
  - oblio 2y ago
    Those are probably implemented by interns.

It's really amusing how bad Amazon is at writing and designing UI. For a company of their size and scope it's practically unforgivable. But they always get away with it.

smt88 2y ago

You say they "get away with it," but it makes more sense to conclude that UI design has a lot lower ROI than we assume it does as users.

wilg 2y ago
Or that design instincts are backwards
wavemode 2y ago
You can't conclude that. At best, you can conclude that outdated product design doesn't always ruin a business (clearly). But you can't conclude the inverse (that investing in modern product design doesn't ever help a business).
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  That's a great point. Further, there are many sizeable businesses built on top of AWS where they deliver the abstractions with compression that earns them their margin. Case in point: tell me, from the point of view of the user, how many steps it takes to deploy a NextJS/React ecosystem website with Vercel and with AWS, start to finish.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago
  I think they have plenty of competition in the cloud computing space. It seems fair to say that their strategy of de-prioritizing UI/UX in favor of getting features out the door more quickly and cheaply has benefitted them. However, I don't think it's fair to say that this trade-off always wins out. Rather, they've carved out their own ecological niche and, for now, they're exploiting it well.
nekoashide 2y ago
Oh I'm sure, the ACM UI was impossible to use for years to find certificates, they improved it, but, it will never have the same level of functionality that the API gives you and that's the bread and butter.
- dandrew5 2y ago
  Imagine a native desktop app that let you build a UI with very basic elements, à la Visual Basic, and behind each of those elements is an associated AWS CLI command. Such that "aws s3 ls" attached to a list element would render an account's buckets. The AWS APIs are so expansive, a product like this could offer a complete replacement for the default web console and maybe even charge for it. Does anyone know if such a solution exists? Perhaps some more generic "shell-to-ui" application? If not, I'm interested in building one if anybody would like to contribute.
int_19h 2y ago
It makes more sense to conclude that if you have market dominance, you can get away with a lot, especially since we see this time and again in other matters, not just UI.

Bilal_io 2y ago

That happens when you ask SWE to design. To fix this, Amazon will need to do extensive UX research and incrementally make changes until the UI doesn't look the same and is more usable. Because users hate sudden change.

MudAndGears 2y ago

Everyone I know who's worked at Amazon says Jeff Bezos has his hand in everything to the detriment of product design. I've heard multiple accounts of him seeing a WIP and asking for changes that compromise the product's MVP.

queuebert 2y ago
Is this why the everything besides the front page still looks like someone's first website from 1998?
genghisjahn 2y ago
"Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company." https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319bd4dd368 https://gist.github.com/kislayverma/d48b84db1ac5d737715e8319... I read that post every couple of years or so.
- foundry27 2y ago
  Why was this being downvoted? It’s first-party evidence that substantiates the claims of the parent comment, and adds interesting historical context from major industry players

acdha 2y ago

What do you think is comparable but better? I think you’re really seeing that they have a large organization with a lot of people working on different complex products, which makes major changes much harder to coordinate, and their market skews technical and prioritizes functionality higher than design so there isn’t a huge amount of pressure.

jgalt212 2y ago

It's similarly amazing how long the YouTube home page takes to load, but it's a top 5 destination no matter how bad its Lighthouse Score is.

outworlder 2y ago

> It's really amusing how bad Amazon is at writing and designing UI. For most of AWS offerings, it literally doesn't matter and logging in to AWS Console is a break glass thing. Case in point: this very article. It uses boto3 to interface with AWS.

trallnag 2y ago
At the same time, AWS has tons of services that are explicitly designed for usage through the console. For example, many features of CloudWatch
- oblio 2y ago
  Those are probably implemented by interns.