Engineers would tend to want to optimize a thing for efficiency at that thing's ostensible purpose. Which means there's good engineering (the result is efficient) and bad engineering, if everything is framed within that engineering mindset. But that's not the only mindset. An allegory: A traffic engineer wants to time the traffic lights for maximum traffic throughput. It's the "right answer." Just like a music search feature with a goal of straightforwardly finding shit is the right answer. But lo and behold, the mayor and/or the local merchants don't want people to just drive easily past their businesses, they want you to have a good look, and plenty of time to consider whether to go in and shop there. So the mayor has the engineer time the lights to create a longer delay, makes him do bad engineering, to try and herd mindless, hapless consumer-meat into the store. The design is still optimized though, it's just a different parameter being optimized.