There is this disturbing trend of mixing the service/product and the interface and calling it "the experience". This is good for marketing maybe (of UX designers probably), but when designing a product, you're actually making the problem incredibly difficult. You're merging different problems into one, then trying to find silver bullets. Hence, everyone reinvents the UI for a "unique" UX. But that's the exact thing users do not want, and that makes everything harder for everybody.

The UI needs to disappear. No one should even "see" it. The perfect interface is still an invisible one. If you go with this principle, then once the UI task is done, we've eliminated UI from UX. Your first task is to eliminate UI from the UX problem.

What is left is the product/service in it's finest, purest, most concise form. And now, as this is adjusted, the UI may need adjustment. But this is the proper order of business.

Take the missing audio jack. Everybody notices it. Hence, this is an obvious UX failure. The designer's "opinion" or "gut" is not more accurate or more important than the user. UX is not about forcing experience. And the UI itself is about non-experience. Just follow this principle, and the best UX will follow.

Of course, even the data driven UX designers won't put the audio jack back despite the "unhappiness". And that is what is most disturbing for me, at least. It seems these UX designers have no principles. I sense arrogance and apathy. But this makes sense if you consider a UI that wants to be noticed as being self important, and a UI that is data driven to lack any personal or emotional touch.

No single user is a general statistic. Basing design on statistics is not design; it's giving up on designing; it's anti-design.

Anyway, I know HN is hardly the place to push POVs but I will keep trying.