My coffee maker just makes coffee
&gt; People tend to place all of that blame on top-level management or developers within a company. They do deserve the blame - but not all of it. Designers cause a lot of these issues all on their own and it&#x27;s easy to understand why.<p>Not to get defensive — I am a designer — but there are two things missing from the conversation when you lay blame at the feet of designers.<p>First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition.<p>If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells.<p>Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells.<p>The author is totally right that companies often ship software that’s too complex, or solves too many problems and does so poorly. This is mostly because the design&#x2F;engineering team (a) takes directions from Corporate rather than from users, (b) Corporate wants more features so the product stacks up vs. the competition.