Why Software Developers Suck at UX

For example: The engineering needed to have the user select, crop, adjust, and upload a photo is not easy. But getting that functional is just half the challenge. Knowing how to make the UX be easy is another domain of thinking. That's why we have different people doing different jobs.

4. Not everything needs to be a minimalistic sleek Webapp. All of this depends on who your target audience is and on which level they want to deal with the problem. A minimalistic UI isn't automatically more or less powerful than a complex one if it combines well with other tools. To make every part combine well with the other parts to get out more than the sum of the parts is worth it, but find the right degree of minimalism vs complexity.

5. Make sure you waste the cognitive energy of people by having them figure out the same things over and over again. Rhe work of programmers multiplies: if you make one tiny thing a little bit nicer, it might make a hundred moments on a thousand days for a thousand people nicer. Same goes for making things that suck. So things should be obvious — if they are not (e.g. because the underlying problems are hardcore) make sure your software reduces the cognitive energy needed to solve that hard problem. Never claim that a hard problem is simple unless you really managed to simplify it.

So I was talking about this with a friend, and I believe that there is an inclusivity to UX that most engineers don't seem to care about or have the patience for. A technological Darwinian mindset where if you don't get it, then you don't get it.

The UX designer holds everyone's hand as they run. The Engineer is the person in front telling you to keep up.

If we want to talk in broad terms about "experience", then a movie is an "experience"--entertainment. The redness of the red in the Coke logo is an "experience"--branding. Designing either of those things are naturally very creative tasks. But computers are interactive tools that need to be usable by people and those first two things just muddy the waters when trying to get humans to be able to use and master software, IMHO.

I'm an engineer and mostly I want to use software to accomplish tasks. I don't want it to entertain me or infect me with marketing. I would sincerely like to go back to drop down menus, rows of icons, and keyboard shortcuts. 20 years ago I crushed it using those things. Unfortunately the conversation has now shifted so that advocating for that is literally not even option. The conversation is about how much pretty doodads and innovative workflows you are going to subject yourself to. Software used to come with books written in natural human language that documented the entire thing--how you accomplish your tasks. Menus were written in a natural human language. You could read the words. The words told you want the thing did. Things were organized in a hierarchy, grouped by functionality. And help systems also could cross reference. It was searchable. All of that is gone. It's just throwing people in the deep end nowadays. Mrrff! They are all different, and I hate that. Any button has equal chance of saving my document, sending a missile to the moon, or silently deleting it all. And they're all written in iconese!

Well, anyway. I guess UX designers have more empathy for users, making them better people, or something.

/grumpy

After battling with UX issues in the OP for a long time, I intuitively knew that there were 2 different meanings of that word (one very loaded and generic, another one way more specific and targeted), but I wasn't able to articulate the definition of the second one in my head (in a way that would make sense if I tried explaining it to another person) no matter how hard I tried.

Your definition nails it perfectly and fits in a single short and simple sentence that is easily understandable by pretty much anyone AND without losing any nuance or making the definition more vague. Really appreciate you posting it here.