Thank you for articulating what's been on my mind for quite a while now.

"With that choice, project goals became increasingly centered around company needs rather than user needs. Our language changed to better communicate with stakeholders. Words like "polish” and “value” gave way to “adoption” or “engagement” or “platform cohesion.” It’s laughably easy to rationalize that these things are good for users too."

I’m trying to understand how anyone managed to convince us that becoming more senior meant caring about users less.

I think it all stems from biases in human psychology, such as being agreeable and easy to work with will get you further with product dev stakeholders than being perceived as hard to work with and a bottleneck for product development to ship on time.

Working at a for profit company where shareholders/investors and executive leadership have perverse interests (C.R.E.A.M), your paycheck rests on the fact that you can prove your value in generating more revenue than if they did not hire you.

Designers who are more senior can go toe to toe with MBA goons and explain in their business school speak (e.g. adoption, engagement, retention, etc) cause this speaks to the business' return on investment on a per project basis and largely justifies keeping a designer "resource" on payroll along with mitigating liability (i.e. accessibility CYA type stuff) otherwise your design work would have just been outsourced to the lowest bidder. Seniors need to be able to speak in terms of vision/ roadmap/strategy and that requires business acumen and playing the political silo'd corp game. They risk their seat at the table if they can't balance user needs with business metrics being tracked by the powers that be.

Green/junior designers cant speak the language of business or just lack visibility/allies in the political aspects of big silo'd orgs to make their case for design vision or strategy. They are focused on leveling up and designing with their rose colored glasses until they've paid their dues and learn how to play the political game in their company and justify their worth to the decision makers paying their salary... so you can leave your soul sucking corp gig promptly at 5pm and get on with your life... cause your job as a designer is actually making some 1% shareholders filthy rich unless you start your own company.

/ramblerant

TL:DR at the end of the day, a business is in business to make money and your livelihood depends on proving you can do this through ensuring an easy to use, thoughtfully designed product which allows more people to use the product and ultimately generates more $$profits$$ for shareholders. The users never mattered and we are just lining the pockets of the 1% shareholders/executives. Maybe AI will make us irrelevant in the coming year when developers are replaced by machine learning and we are replaced by computer generated style guides and pattern libraries?

I need a drink, also if anyone knows of any fulfilling design work I'm listening, seriously burnt out of the enterprise corp game. Any veteran designers please chime in and tell me it gets better, haven't even started a family yet.

Hey everyone. I promised you a few articles, so here's the second.

This one's a bit more serious, and puts into words something I've been feeling for a while now about our place in the industry and what we've become.

I'd love to hear what you think!

P.S. the article was getting really long so I had to cut a lot out, but I'll be sending it out this weekend to my newsletter, if you're interested.

So, yes, this article was way more thoughtful and interesting than 99% of the clickbait marketing slogs I've read on here, so much that I'm curious as to whether Github would have a problem with this.

I agree with parts of this, but others just seem like standard sales and customer retention tactics, especially in some of the examples. They aren't dark patterns, they're not loot boxes (which, honestly, are much more evil than the examples given). The examples given are extremely mild ways to steer user behavior to serve the business. Of course we should make efforts to hang on to customers and to get them to purchase! That's the whole point!

Designers and developers too often look at the business side of a company as the evil empire. This is often not the case. Building a business is enormously difficult even in good times. We can serve the user while also serving the business, they're not mutually exclusive. This isn't a zero sum game.

There are definitely businesses that have the equation messed up, and the negotiation between serving user needs vs business is out of wack. But man, this doesn't even feel close to the mark. Look at Oracle bilking Oregon out of half a billion for their health care exchange. Look at the Skinner boxes that many modern games have become.

Don't show me a little notice from AirBnB that tries to get me to commit to the place I'm already interested in but maybe on the fence about. If anything, I appreciate their nudge.

It's funny. I've been working on my portfolio site (haven't we all?) and noticed myself shift. Not only am I writing about the products we built, but my writing has a huge focus on what our resources were limited to, and how we achieved a desired outcome with those limited resources.

Not only that; I actively love achieving as much as possible, with as few resources as I can.

My opinion; a good designer (UI, UX, wathever) translates and attempts to meet the desires of everyone that touches the product. From CEO, to employee, to end user.

We're kinda peacekeepers on a battlefield nowadays :)

Good writeup, as always, Joel.

Fascinating article, really well written. I suppose the ideal is a balance of both needs. I feel like until there is a proper objective metric on feelings, this will never be settled.

People coming up with product ideas without representation from design is an indication you're not in the right discussions. That's what a design manager/director is supposed to do—build those relationships and showcase the metrics and principles being met.

I like this article BTW. Lots of good thought in here on challenges designers will face as they gain experience.

As a Corporate Entrepreneur/Designer this is so true. But I still believe that you cannot succeed with creating a product that solves the users needs without looking at all parts of the "feasible viable desirable" triangle. Doing that without being the baddies is just a matter of effort - and of course being part of the decision making part of the organisation.

But if you're looking at the greater picture doesn't it also have to do a lot with our current economic system where success is defined with monetary gains over positive human impact created or social progress?

The examples of bad design you give are too small to have impact for change. How do these designs impact the individual in a way that impedes them?

I will agree that AirBnb puts irrational fear into users like many hotel booking websites. Don't get me started on linkedin, they are underhanded.

When we make small changes to the design that impact the user in a big way, it's because its a action they constantly engage in. The facebook example helps users from making a rare, and possibly rash decision too quickly. They could be destroying years of accumulated personal data. Etsy's just humorous. I don't think the facebook and etsy example should be included as crimes against humanity.