This, to me, seems like an example of a larger trend... GitHub is guilty too

Designers aiming to impress their peers over basic UX principles. They all need to go back and (re)read "Don't Make Me Think"

That's just how it is these days, designers that don't use the product making decisions for those that do.

The whole blog post is written as though a major engineering effort has taken place, which a) might have happened, but that would be odd from what is shown in the screenshots, or b) hasn't happened, but is the sort of major transformational change that UX consultancies churn 'em out to speak about. And, as you say, almost all of seem almost entirely focused on UI design.