Being Slow to Criticise
There&#x27;s a difference between being slow to criticize and completely withholding criticism. I agree that software is written by smart people, working under constraints.<p>But so what? If it sucks, it sucks, and we should call it out as such! How will we ever improve anything if we can&#x27;t highlight what&#x27;s wrong with the current solution?<p>My go-to example in this regard is the Microsoft Office ribbon. I remember, when the ribbon was introduced, I saw a presentation from a Microsoft employee (I can&#x27;t remember if he was a developer or a product manager) going over the extensive testing that Microsoft did with focus groups to &quot;prove&quot; that the new UI was superior to the previous menu-based one. I remembered being both very impressed with the ostensible rigor of the process, and disappointed with the result. All that work, all that testing to delude themselves into believing that a UI where elements moved around, and weren&#x27;t in predictable locations was going to be something that users (especially experienced users) would prefer.<p>And sure enough, even to this day, I still see users (both new and experienced) struggling with the ribbon. It sucks! And the fact that I <i>know</i> a lot of very smart people worked on it doesn&#x27;t change that fact. In fact, it makes it worse. It would be one thing if such a horrid design were the result of a haphazard design process, implemented by incompetents. But it&#x27;s not. It&#x27;s the result of a lot of very smart people Goodharting themselves into believing that they&#x27;ve found the one weird trick to make their software both powerful and easy to use.<p>I strongly believe, that, if in the early days of the ribbon, someone had stood up and said, &quot;This sucks!&quot; things might have gone in a different direction.