In my frank opinion, many designers hold a position of subjective judgement and thrive on the power that comes with that. This is like a developer making arbitrary decisions about a product because they like the technical implementation better.

Data, and actual user preference, should always be the key decider. Not some arbitrary rule-decider.

Furthermore, in my experience the data doesn't necessarily mean what it's believed to mean, with the favored explanation for the data being assumed to be the correct explanation. (e.g. "We want more engagement. This data shows users are staying on this page longer, that's a measure of engagement." It may instead be a measure of your users getting confused, lost, etc.) My point here is that an earnest attempt to be data driven doesn't eliminate the matter of bias. Being cognizant of possible bias when evaluating the data is important, otherwise you'll have a false sense of confidence.

What you can get feedback for is how eye popping or outrageous (no F keys!) your suggestions are. People in the office will react, and they are the ones who will decide what actually gets shipped.

On another topic, putting someone's job into quotes just isn't a good look for any argument. If you have to straw man to get your point across, it might not be that great.

Data doesn't need to be "track everything the user does and do A/B testing", it can come from many sources: user behavior studies done in the past, cognitive psychology, experience gained from mentors, etc.

Would you make the same "they do it every day so they must be right" argument for engineers? Product managers? Stock brokers before data-driven trading? Doctors before the rise of modern medicine?

Those designer might actually be very good one's but they might have different goals. Their design might be all about eye pleasing hoping that mos potential customers will glance at it, like it and buy it. Ergonomics might not be their concern at all.

There are other UX designers though, making GUI for pilots, nuclear station operators etc. etc. They have somewhat different goals. I feel that my brain digests what they do way better then the stuff coming from a first group

I come from a different background where I learned to value reaching the goal in most clear and shortest way

On the other hand, since (insert obligatory joke about $1000 monitor stands), losing customers is no longer their worry.

Actually, would this be so bad?

Faster horses? YESSSSS !!! ;)

I’m with you. Speaking personally, I think he is wrong. My definition of true beauty is both appearance and design. Something that is pretty to look at but not very ergonomic is ultimately not truly beautiful, in my mind. For something to be truly beautiful, it must be both sexy looking and ergonomic (and high quality, etc.). When something cute looking has usability problems, it starts to annoy me, it begins to look cheap and not well thought out, and ironically ultimately ends up looking rather ugly. Once I see bad design, it affects how I feel about the looks.

Stuff around my house has ended up in this category. Throw pillows on the bed look great when the bed is made, but they’re not for sleep and they’re always in the way. Ugly. Cute glass jars in the kitchen that I can’t quite fit my hand into because they were made elliptical instead of round to have a low profile and be cute... they seemed like a good idea in the store, but it only takes trying to use them a few times before they really don’t look cute anymore.

I bet that beauty wouldn't have trumped usability (in terms of Apple's preference and an elite buyer's purchase decision) if it also wasn't positioned and marketed as an aspirational / cool product.

There's a lot of people that just want to own it because it's the goto for aspirational / luxury electronics.

That aside, I always buy only Apple because other products just deteriorate in terms of performance at an unbelievable rate. Have owned windows and android products and after using them for like a year, it's hard to believe that it's the same shiny machine that you thought would be a good buy.

I use Windows and somehow my laptops and desktops do not deteriorate. Works like a charm. Same goes to my Linux setups. I do not use Android much beyond plain phone calls so can not really judge that one.

That can not possibly come from a UI designer. Usability is always first, and it’s possible to make it look good while maintaining a11y/usability properties.

• Contrast is bad and hard on the eyes. The less contrast the better.

• Decorative fonts with font-weight: 300 are better than ordinary normal weight fonts designed for readability.

• It's better to have a small font with a lot of extra line-height instead of just making the font bigger.

There are a lot of UI designers that missed that memo.

He’s not. If I can’t use a product, it doesn’t matter how beautiful it is.

Apple used to do it...

That is just... Why is this person a designer if they don’t want to design? They should have become a painter or a musician.

Not trying to insult here. Just general observation

They really don't think about it at all except for when they need to get specific tasks done that the product does well. They are max zoomed out.

I necessarily am zoomed in to the entire product, from every lowly line of code all the way up to the aggregate product. I am max zoomed in.

This leads to a sense of alienation when I observe the relationship between my users and my product. Sometimes it's simpler to think that I actually don't know my own product, so different is the perspective.

Really it's a matter of how much the product occupies in my mind versus theirs; they are using it opportunistically and would prefer to spend as little time as possible thinking about it. Which I suppose is a good argument against over-engineering; for a mass market product, core features beyond the third will only be used by the developers.

Anyhow, all that is to say I can understand your comment, and I often think that I'm lucky the emacs developers or GvR don't look over my shoulder when I use their software because they would give their cats Nobel prizes. :)

Sorry, still an insult.

But ok. So your users have the intelligence of a cat and are generally really helpless with your software. Then the obvious way forward is to include non-discoverable features, hard-to-read text and extra-confusing mouse gestures...?

Sorry I believe it is not because I did say "when it comes to software". I freely admit to being an imbecile in Quantum Chromodynamics. Same goes with my users. Many of them are actually lawyers, dentists and other rather well off people. I am sure they're intelligent in many fields. But for many of them the software is not their cup of tea. That's just life and I do not see too many Leonardo Da Vincis walking around.

"Offering them hard to read text will help" - well I appreciate your sarcasm but allow me configurable option to ignore it ;)