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One problem I see of "usability professionals" here and elsewhere is how arguments go little beyond:

1. "you are not the users" - certainly when talking about many apps like a file explorer any user is a user - not all users.

2. "Disheartened by tech community dismissal of basic human cognition" and "decades of research" without actually citing and ideally elaborating on research that many times is targetting very narrow scopes.

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1. Users have plenty of individual characteristics. If even ordinarily capable user’s can’t deduce what button does what, forget people with disbilities. It’s obvious you need to usability test this stuff. Gnome has neglected their basic duties.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/

2. Human-Computer Interaction is a scientific field within Computer Science, and this is stuff from any 101 course. Do we really need to cite belief in gravity each time just because self-appointed ”developers” haven’t done the work of learning the basics?

Start here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

...and here is my missing point 3. "Citing Norman heuristics like gospel"

The citations you asked for are on those pages. If you can actually dispute them, I’d be more than willing to hear about it.

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