That's a company that isn't going to survive and I'd probably jump ship if they were leaving the product's success to chance and on the whim product decision making. They are in for a rude awakening when competitors leverage full time UX professionals that so the user research to maintain competitive advantage. I agree you shouldn't be brazenly shaming superiors but take a step back and make the data speak for itself.
My question is: Didn't anyone at some point say "Hey, this UX sucks. I'd be embarrased to ship this."?
I know from experience how certain people can be completely unconcerned with quality, only qorking for a salary without any pride of their craft. But a whole company like that? It blows my mind.
Have they? The base of your argument is a classic appeal to authority. They're "very proud, considerate, intentional" designers so they must be right and everybody else wrong.
Where's the data? Aren't unhappy users valid enough data to demonstrate a downgrade in user experience?
"not worthy of an attempt to sink them as a company"
It's competition. Someone makes something people like better and they win, you lose. If at the same time you helped them with intentionally poor UX, well there may be some negative sentiment about that which your competition will undoubtedly capitalize on. That's it though, EE chose their strategy, it failed and failed hard. I don't get what about that is hard to understand?
I don't have a strong opinion, but also think that mine would be irrelevant anyways -- isn't what matters most here the research they have undoubtedly done to understand how the UI affects their various customers and their needs?
The certainty people often have as to UI design is amusing in light of how successful this line of products has been, as if their small and selfish opinion (or mine!) could somehow be more correct than the millions these guys have invested in getting this right. And not to the problem they or I _personally_ have, but to the problem of shipping a product used by probably billions of people across hundreds of cultures.
I have no doubt that if you (or I!) were in charge of design, guided only by our personal opinions, the product would have completely failed.
Do you think that those design decisions are not backed by data demonstrating better engagement levels versus other interface layouts? I'm not saying that their interface is perfect, but I don't see how you can make sweeping claims about their data science capabilities based on your one data point of disliking their interface.
Well said. Worst UX I've ever seen, with the most ardent corporate fanbase.*
* Proviso: Said corporate fanbasers have many times said to me how it's so configurable etc, after spending weeks in the trenches fixing trivial nonsense.
Look at Amazon.com. Same deal. Nobody wants to be the person that redesigns the UI and sees sales drop off by 0.001%. I think they're afraid to touch what made them #1, even if it's objectively terrible.
Smells of bad UX/design process - some senior "wants" this particular solution, despite their users showing direct feedback that it doesn't work for their needs.
Yes, that’s awful. It’s corporate gaslighting — the new page is user-hostile in nearly every way imaginable, but it helps product managers manipulate user attention to meet our quarterly KPIs, so we’ll happily lie to your face to get you to switch.
This team did it to themselves. “R” has little to do with it.
They worked on the technical bits that they liked, created a terrible UX that sounds user-hostile, and then shocked-pikachu discovered that their jobs got cut in half.
The decision to whisk UX duties to a team miles away was moronic, of course. But that was a reaction to the bad acts this team did - to their customers, to the business, and to themselves.
I think neural plasticity is better allocated to the niche specific ideas they're working with than to re-learn the UX/UI some Product Manager looking for a bonus or raise or whatever, thought a good idea.
I've had to disable the new bubbles download from chrome in so many places already, even my fucking dentist couldn't produce a recipe because they couldn't find the new UI.
professionals like their tools to be reliable and not at the whims of capital greedy corps.
> a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search
I think their #1 problem is their product managers trying to do "something" to add said something to their resume and making the product horrible to use in the process
Examples include:
- Grid view tab switcher in Chrome Android
- Removing dislike count on YouTube
Friend, they are using data and research to improve their UI.
Thinking that "other products didnt do it well so you shouldn't try" is extremely unproductive.
It's also not productive to argue for a vastly more difficult and different area, like their data model, during a topic of refreshing UI..
I have a personal punishment policy for any obvious violation of UX/UI - they will permanently and irrevokably lose me as a customer. Even if they fix it, I won't budge. Leadership needs to use their own products and if they allow this to go to production, I wonder what they're doing behind the scenes. Small battles that I pick, but by god it is so satisfying.
That's a wonderful excuse, but it still is mismanagement, shitty product design, and disrespectful to your customers.
EDIT to all the downvoters: if your customers, like the poster above, feel cheated, you suck at product design and management. That's it. If you don't see the problem with that, please don't design products.
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