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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I think another thing that affects this is staff churn.

It's common for PMs and product designers to move company after about 3 years.

Many of the apps I use have been around for more than a decade now.

That means I've likely been using them for significantly longer than the people who are making design decisions about them!

Changes that are "obviously bad" to me - based on my very specific patterns of using the app over a ten year period - may not be at all intuitively bad to the team working on it.

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This is right on the money. Everyone wants to do new and interesting work on a product, which naturally means changing things even if it isn't really an improvement. No one is going to put "maintained system that wasn't broken" on their resume.

One thing that has likely exacerbated this issue in recent years is "data-driven" product design. While I'm fanatical about evidence-based decision making, so many of these products are designed around a vague concept of "engagement" which is all about getting users to interact with the app as much as possible. While this is the natural end state for ad-driven companies, I find it very frustrating that a subscription-based service like Spotify feels the need to take as much control away from the user as possible.

Engagement metrics apply well beyond ad companies. Basically any product used by many users interacting with a UI is eligible.

I personally believe many of these metrics are negative indicators of UX quality. Session length, pages viewed, number of clicks could very well mean that users aren't finding / getting what they want from your app.

But applications are tools to do a job. When I use a hammer I hit a nail, job done. Hammer can be laid down.

I don't need my hammer to be frustrating to use, a nail-hitting-service subscription model, have social chat options... etc. You get the idea.

Like the idea of a good butler, the best tool is one that removes a concern for the user, and doesn't take any more attention after that.

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