There is incompetence and there is also malevolence in the encouragement of dark patterns by the revenue side of the business.
“But why can’t you just do it?” Because I recognise the importance of consistent UX and an IA that can actually be followed.
Just like developers, (proper) designers solve problems, an we need to stop asking them for faster bikes.
However, I really wonder how formula 1 teams manage their engineering concepts and driver UI/UX. They do some crazy experimental things, and they have high budgets, but they're often pulling off high-risk ideas on the very edge of feasibility. Every subtle iteration requires driver testing and feedback. I really wonder what processes they use to tie it all together. I suspect that they think about this quite diligently and dare I say even somewhat rigidly. I think it quite likely that the culture that led to the intense and detailed way they look at process for pit-stops and stuff carries over to the rest of their design processes, versioning, and iteration/testing.
Also, turnaround times from idea to final product can be insane at that level. These teams often have to accomplish in days what normally takes months. But they can pull it off by having every step of the design and manufacturing process in house.
The answer should be "because users will hate it and use a competing product that's better designed".
A shame that it isn't actually true any more.
Pushback is valuable until it becomes obstinance.
If we all somehow had their same crystal ball to know for certain that “stupid shower ideas” won’t work because a specific developer thinks they are bad, there wouldn’t be much need for R&D ever again. I suspect this developer doesn’t have one either, or I’d certainly like to buy it.
The only way to avoid getting furious about this is to deeply understand that you can't require people to be properly self-aware, especially because many many people that checks the expert boxes are very incompetent or inadequate, so they when the come up with their half bake ideas, they delegate the other to deliver contrarian proofs. It's exhausting.
There's also an art to how you do it. It's important to build up trust that you won't tell the client something is impossible or really hard just because you don't want to do it. You try to explain to them how much complexity this is going to add, how that will make it harder to add new features in the future, and most importantly offer some alternatives that get them 90% of what they're trying to do. Most clients will appreciate that approach IME, especially if you've already thrilled them a few times.
This is one of the reasons I'm not so worried about Claude taking my job in the immediate future. But I am still extremely worried about the industry as a whole and by extension the future of the middle class.
I think part of the problem is that many engineers don't stick around long enough to build that rapport, which isn't a problem of AI in itself but is certainly exacerbated by it.
For real though, when UX became an actual official discipline wasn't too long before a lot of the arse fell out of graphic design and a load of them moved over. A lot of people from newer generations of UX/UI people are possibly worse, often just rolling out conventions wholesale with little thought. Hiding behind design systems and clutching Figma files like they're pearls.
Contrary to what the author says, actual idioms are more common than ever before. They've just cherry picked older examples. He's talking about an era of software where one of the Windows media player skins was a giant green head (No shade, I loved that guy) the real issue is in the superficial changes and the aforementioned lack of consideration when rolling them out
As someone in the middle of arguing about API design and service boundaries in a complex system with a product manager right now, who has redesigned our full system's architecture and release roadmap himself, I wish it weren't true.
Let's take a credit card form:
- Do I let the user copy and paste values in?
- Do I let them use IE6?
- Do I need to test for the user using an esotoric browser (Brave) with an esoteric password manager (KeePassXC)?
- Do I make it accessible for someone's OpenClaw bot to use it?
- Do I make it inaccessible to a nefarious actor who uses OpenClaw to use it?
I could go on...
Balancing accessibility and usability is hard.[0]
[0] Steve Yegge's platform rant - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
The same applies to fields that expect telephone numbers. They should all accept arbitrary amounts of white-space.
If you don't allow me to paste a card number in I might well not buy from you.
The form programmer had done some super stupid validation that didn't allow me to edit it directly. Every change moves the cursor to the end of the input. More than 16 characters could not be typed.
Any person who codes that PoS should have their software license revoked and never be allowed in the industry again. Far better to use a plain text input than all the effort used to make users lives hell.
- Anyone who recommends disabling paste as a security feature is a fraud
- Doing UA sniffing is always a mistake
- If the user's browser doesn't support `autocomplete="cc-number"` then they're already used to it not working, you don't need to care about it
- You should always make your form as accessible as possible regardless of if the user is a robot or visually impaired
- Making your website intentionally inaccessible may be a federal crime in the USA as the ADA doesn't care what you think about openclaw.
If I use an app and it fucks around with the cursor: instant hatred. It's just so annoying. And if you can't get basic human interaction done well in 2026, what else is messed up in your app?
It gets way more use than I wish it did.
Eh nostalgia/survivorship bias. Not saying that you're wrong about the shift to shoving it out door for a PM, but "nerd who is adamant THEIR layout is the only one" wasn't exactly the heyday of software design either.
I'm still of the opinion most people should get more comfortable with layers and smaller keyboards, but I've also met the linux nerds who swear the world NEEDS insert.