This routinely happens where I work. To the extent that our UI is this random mishmash of paradigms depending on who was in the room when the decision was made. If I had a nickel for every time I said "if the mechanical hardware does (blank) we should let the user know so they know not to start the rest of the process" only to get blank stares or laughter from the senior engineers, I would retire. "We'll take care of it with training" is a common refrain, as if training can be remembered with perfect clarity at all times.

"We'll take care of it with training" is a common refrain, as if training can be remembered with perfect clarity at all times.

Something I brought up at my IT Support job yesterday regarding the crazy idea I had to actually document some processes and rules we have. Flow charts and tables and such. Having a reference you can use at any time is much more efficient than expecting everyone to remember literally thousands of facts they're told once in two weeks of training.

Part of that, I think, is a presentation problem. And I'm admittedly coming from a small sample size of designers I've worked with.

When I've been given PSDs in the past, either for review or for implementation, there's never been any documentation with any of the reasoning behind any of it. And when I've asked follow-up questions about why something was done the way it was, I've typically been met with either defensiveness or "that's how it is, now go and build it"

A lot of people that do have a lot of experience with design treat design decisions as subjective and arbitrary. Design is often taught as an arts subject, with woefully little science content. The rise of UX as a distinct discipline reflects this lack of scientific thinking in the mainstream design community.

I agree and I think that art and design students would benefit from classes on (or exposure to) the human visual system and neuroscience/cognitive psychology. A lot of the intuition behind subjective decisions in the arts can be further understood/explored/refined through the relevant science. For anyone interested in this topic I highly recommend the book "Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing" by Margaret Livingstone.

You don't need any science to know to make an action with very serious consequences : hard to invoke (e.g. must click through three confirmation forms that all require some real-time thought to complete correctly) and clear in purpose (e.g. displays in large blinking text : "This is an action for which you'll be fired if you are doing it in error".

There had to have been quite the cavalcade of idiots behind the making of this system.

I read that there was a conformation screen the employee clicked through the confirmation screen.

People blindly click through confirmation screens all the time.

Yeah, not only that but, in my experience at least, the design of the person who is most opinionated and jerkish is the one which gets implemented.