Question
What is the worst-designed product you use, that others consider well-designed?
Inspired by this tweet:
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Founding editor, Capiche
Dropbox
It's not terrible—but it's not as simple as it used to be, and simple is what made Dropbox win. It's increasingly confusing which files are shared with whom, and the web interface makes even finding or downloading files take a few more clicks than it seems it should.
Mailchimp
Couldn't agree more! The tool is overcomplicated and personally I find both the UX and the UI to be a bit clunky for such a well-known and used product.
I don't hate it per se, but it does always surprise me how much I have to click around to find simple things, such as a list of all subscribers (Audience, then View Contacts ... but I always have to hunt for that latter button). And the formerly "fun" branding with the Freddie monkey is gone now too.
Founder/CEO, Capiche
AWS
I don't actually know if AWS is considered well-designed, but any time I need to use their actual interfaces, I get SUPER frustrated.
Most of my frustration with AWS comes from their security policies and IAMs - there is always some sort of security policy or extra setting blocking some connection. And I'm supposed to know how it works, since I passed their exam and am an AWS Certified developer. If their certified devs are having problems it says a lot about their design.
@gerstenzang on Twitter agrees, over AWS' billing: "I get an email weekly saying they'll suspend my account for an unpaid $0.40. I once spent 30 minutes trying to figure out to how to pay and now just don't bother. Please suspend my account."
Interesting, looks like a Netlify alternative. Feels like an emerging space for more user-friendly cloud hosting tools.
Superhuman
I liked this reply to another person on Twitter who had mentioned Superhuman as being the worst-designed product:
"I’ve always felt productivity tools have some novelty up front that may be effective for time savings but as they reach critical masses they produce diminishing returns and sometimes even create more work"
Creative Cloud
It's not even close. Decades ago, Adobe was pioneering software for the Mac. Now, their apps are so full of cruft and so slow that I waste hours considering other alternatives. The thing is, there's nothing that can replace everything Adobe can do.
I am happy to pay this bill every month, but I hate that their software runs as slow as it does. I'm dying for them to take advantage of underlying macOS frameworks and optimizations that could make them the kings of the hill again, but I am beginning to doubt we will ever see that day.
Agreed. There's so much potential—and yet their products get only the smallest of incremental updates it seems.
And when there have been full rewrites, as with Lightroom, they take so much away most people end up staying with the "classic" version.
Was hopeful there would be a major rewrite of much of their software in light of the new iPad version of Photoshop—but it appears not, for now at least.
Chrome DevTools
If I do it right (or wrong?), I can have several search fields on the screen, and none of them will find what I'm looking for. Also, all of the snap states are too crowded to be useful, so I have to pop it out onto another monitor.
The element selector tool also feels very hit-and-miss. I've found Firefox' inspect element better at that.
Zendesk
Don't know if anyone consider Zendesk well designed or not, but I consider it terrible. Couple of years ago they redesigned the interface, but instead of rethinking the ux for modern days, they just applied a skin to their old dashboard. Very disappointing.
Everyone has a unique software stack to get work done—curious which tools you use together to stay productive?
Top Answers
Inspired by this tweet:
https://twitter.com/gerstenzang/status/1222187909417181184
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