Too narrow, hidden, minimal feedback…
UX design got better and better for many years…but it has definitely been regressing over the past few years, IMO. It’s weaponized minimalism at this point. Because it “looks cool, bro”.
It’s a variant of enshittification.
applying any design language feels wrong. it’s pure manipulation – i remember being forced onto the official twitter app and couldn’t believe there wasn’t a scroll bar. i felt lost; the timeline felt infinite, swallowing
They want you doom scrolling.
It’s one reason I like kbin. I’ll read to page 5 and that’s my limit for a session. Endless scrolling is annoying.
On kbin you have the choice to set it to doom scroll if you want.
Choice is the important thing with something like doom scrolling.
Yeah, it has a very specific meaning, and people are now using it to mean “things becoming shitty”. Just because “shit” is the base word doesn’t mean that’s what the whole word means.
Thank you. I think it was overused even the moment it was used for its intended purpose. It feels really im14andthisisedgy to me.
Yup, and when I used it, I knew someone would bitch about that. It’s funny how people get hung up on their pet peeve more than they do the more serious underlying issues we’re talking about here. It’s the same phenomenon politicians and wealthy elites use to keep us fighting each other over trivial culture war bullshit instead of pulling together to improve our material interests.
I would are that the design industry has gotten better about understanding a user’s core motivations, and how design can solve business problems, but it’s gotten worse at classic interaction design / HCI.
The UX industry is FULL of bootcamp people or former graphic designers who never really studied or were passionate about interaction models.
As with engineering, the demand for UX designers is so high that a lot of mediocre talent can easily get a gig.
Those scenarios you paint definitely exist.
In my decades of work experience, I’ve also seen it play out a few ways. Sometimes the shop creating the software is too cheap to hire a real UX designer, and they make some poor coder do their best with it (and the coder will usually admit they are not good at it and is frustrated with being coerced into it). Sometimes they hire a good UX person, but that person is constantly overridden / micromanaged by some “marketing genius” MBA type with horrible ideas of user behaviors they want to “push” and other behaviors they want to “disincentivize” in the UX.
On a few (rare) projects, I’ve seen it done correctly where the UX designer is considered a vital part of the team and their input is valued and they do a good job and focus on what users actually want and need.
Some businesses still understand that if your customers are happy, everything else tends to go better for your businesses. But in this era of relentless enshittification, more and more businesses are looking at their customers at naughty children and/or suckers to be exploited. I keep hoping for a massive backlash against this trend. But it feels like it has to get even worse before it will get any better. They have conditioned younger customers to just expect shit products, shit service, and shit subscriptions for everything. UX design has gotten caught up in this sea change, unfortunately.
