I don't want to sound harsh but nobody needs 500 designers or 500 developers (or - pick your favorites) forever unless they have some real work to do that grows the business. The problem is that managers never let go soldiers from their army (let me use this metaphor) because they have to fight other managers to climb the company ladder. This is probably detrimental to the company but it's not what would they care about and it's ok. At best it's a symbiotic relationship in which they can jump host.
With UI/Design it isn't as bad as with software development in general, but in both cases you need ongoing work or your product gets outdated. Things get deprecated. A website that worked fine many years ago might now not be fine. Many people use phones and the UI might not fit anymore. It might not use SSL so the browser will show ugly warnings or might even stop working completely. Security fixes need to be applied or the website gets hacked. The underlying webserver / platform gets outdated and the provider stops supporting it eventually - or just makes it more expensive. I could go on.
Do you need 500 developers for that? Well, that depends on the size. Maybe, maybe not. But your post gives this vibe of "build it and be done with it" and with software that just doesn't work, even if the business is not growing at all.
>With UI/Design it isn't as bad as with software development in general, but in both cases you need ongoing work or your product gets outdated. Things get deprecated. A website that worked fine many years ago might now not be fine.
What? I usually see the opposite: it's the super-hip updates that break all the interoperability and standards compliance the site had. My usability add-ons more reliably work on old sites than on the hot new framework that doesn't consistently indicate clickable links or allow you to open views in a new tab.
>Many people use phones and the UI might not fit anymore.
The designs that try to overthink whether I'm on a phone? Those end up being worse e.g. the fixed floating headers/footers that take 60% of the screen in landscape mode when the desktop version was actually usable. (With portrait not being much better.)
> What? I usually see the opposite: it's the super-hip updates that break all the interoperability and standards compliance the site had. My usability add-ons more reliably work on old sites than on the hot new framework that doesn't consistently indicate clickable links or allow you to open views in a new tab.
Not saying anything against that, nor that my example happens often. It should just illustrate a concrete and easy to undertsand example, not necessarily what happens most often.
> The designs that try to overthink whether I'm on a phone?
There were and still are websites like "optimized for IE 800x600". Those might have worked for the majority of their visitors when they were created and maybe that was good enough at the time, even though we both agree that technically it was never great. But it does not work for the majority anymore today and hence might now be considered to need improvements.
Again, maybe not what happens to the majority of websites, but everyone understands the example as a case of "was good enough before, stopped being so because the world moved on".
Either way, it sounds like you're saying sites have all these designers to keep the product from being outdated. If, in practice, they're being made worse, that would strike against claim that all these designers are a benefit and in favor of the claim that they're mostly wasted spending.
I don't think it sounds like it. I agree that many redesigns (maybe even the majority) make things worse for users. It's just that this is a totally different point that does not conflict with "websites, including design, can get outdated over time and then needs someone to fix it to retain the original value".
Omg yes! Thank you for saying this. I cannot agree more. Designs "built for mobile" are the absolute WORST to use on mobile! They break the most basic functionality.
It's not the technologists. It's the market. Humans are well, um, human. Quirky, unpredictable, fickle, etc. A UI / UX that tests well with a dozen or two people might flop once the market gets to it.
And then of course, expectations evolve. It's less churn and simply life and humanity.
I know, we have to run to stay where we are. Nevertheless maintenance is usually less resource intensive than building. It's possible that the new features a company has to add plus maintenance of the existing ones require an ever increasing staff, but not for every single company.
I hate greenfield work until it gets in front of users. By that time it's maintenance...as are new features. I love maintenance because you have a working application (which is the goal) and changes are (or should be) in response to user feedback. "Features" that are derived from internal dialog usually sicken me because they are usually user hostile. Anything that isn't user focused and accessible boils my soul. Churn for user manipulation, and developer induced complexity really piss me off.
My favorite is when we build a decent application and then marketing brings the UX to it's gnees with 27 tracking cookies.
