People in high paid position certainly want "has taste" and "knows what looks good" to be part of their self image. Many fails in design and architecture happen for that reason alone.
I then ended up programming and working in film sound, because very few people in both fields tell you what to do when they have no idea what's going on.
I'm guessing code peer-reviews aren't a think at your org.
Ironically forgetting that visual minimalism produced by hiding things isn’t really minimalism.
It would be like me throwing all my things in the garage and advertising my house as Spartan. No, it’s not, it’s a mess. The mess is just hidden until I need to do something.
If we want to give awards for this my vote would go to Apple. I find their products to be horrific when it comes to completely undiscoverable features. iOS is bad on its own but the Apple TV is a total train wreck. I couldn't get rid of that thing with its awful interface and remote fast enough.
Can we go to Windows 3.11 design please?
And sometimes it's great, because you get to focus on the content, and sometimes it's not, because you lose control. It's something that should be optional or configurable. It's great to have shortcuts for the most common commands (like space for pause in youtube), and I guess it would make a lot of sense if video conferencing tools also had such a shortcut for mute/unmute.
But again, give people more control over their UI. There are too many applications that mess this up one way or another.
Just make it visible. It's supposed to be a tool, function over form.
Global hotkey would be nicer, I think.
Having to find the exact spot to hover your mouse is a bad UX
This is true. I find Android UI so offensive that if I did not have iOS as an alternate I probably would carry a dumb phone and live like a monk. I can’t stand the miles of white space and brightly coloured tiny UI controls.
Evokes such a visceral reaction in me that even I am startled at times haha