> Power users need the app to be efficient. Naive outsiders fret too much over æsthetics and the potential usability for newbies. In turn change does not work out for the better.
This is exactly the sort of naive guess the designer made in the first place. It was not known what power users wanted, clearly, and users of different products will have different needs. It assumes power users are the users the company wants to appeal to: Maybe they’re trying to make life easier for new users. There’s no “lesson about power users” here. There’s a “lesson to understand your users and your business needs.” I am a power user of all sorts of software that I sorely wish had a less cluttered and “more white space” or “more aesthetic” experience. This designer may not have been wrong in their choices in that situation despite designing for software with “power users.”
Design is a set of tools. You have to know what you’re trying to do before you start saying stuff like “screwdrivers are for newbs — when making things for power users only user chainsaws!”