Ask HN: How can we stop UX people from changing UIs to get promotions?

6 points by ex-aws-dude 1 day ago

Every product seems to go through constant UI churn that has no benefit to users other than changing around whitespace or refreshing the look.

If you have a full time UX person they _must_ change the UI of your product otherwise there is no way to get promoted.

That is just an unavoidable fact of incentive structures.

As a company how can you avoid that issue?

ahmedehab_01 1 day ago

If you control the company, then you can easily stop this by making the product manager the one who can request a UX change, not the UX team.

If you are an employee, a frontend dev, for example, then you can't change it as much as you want, other than raising it with your superiors; maybe, as an EM, you can have a chat with the director/VP/CTO about it.

Generally, for an employee, it's more work, which is not bad; it means you are safer in your job (if it's Enterprise). Just ask them to use official ways to request a UI change, such as a Linear/Jira ticket.

vedas-dixit 1 day ago

not sure if UX people changing the UI is the problem or companies treating visible change as evidence for promotion & all.

owebmaster 1 day ago

The person responsible for UI/UX changes is the product manager, the designer does what he's told to do. So maybe fire the PM?

carlosjobim 1 day ago

Perhaps user interface should be done by companies of their own, which hire designers and sell their services and expertise to other companies who need a UI. Then they could just serve new clients, instead of having to invent new UIs all the time like an in-house designer.