Filed under: #funny, #bigtech, #ux

See below the table for an explanation.

Topic	Title	Intended audience
Common sense 101	Why you shouldn't annoy power users (for no good reason.)	A certain ad delivery company with an attached search engine that keeps getting worse.
UX	Have your cake and eat it too How to please all your customers at once – Combining sensible defaults with the forgotten art of making your software configurable.	Anyone working with UX at more or less any modern software company.
Amazing insights / UX:	Most customers aren't braindead Your customers might not be as smart as you but most of them aren't braindead – and other amazing facts from the field.	UX-ers, SysAdmins and programmers.
Common sense 101	The business case for not destroying your own software Continue to have the best product – by not nerfing your almost-perfect product.	Anyone working with UX at more or less any modern software company.
Common sense 101	Get off the GDPR hook A guide to not storing data you don't need to serve your users – a practical guide to not getting fined by EU while also getting rid of dumb disclaimers that won't help you anyway when regulators get fed up.	Everyone who has a GDPR popup with default opt in to one (or more likely more than 100 different trackers).
Amazing insights	Why you often cannot sell the same product twice Why customers who have already bought a dishwasher won't buy a new one however much you advertise for them the rest of the month (and other great secrets from marketing 101).	Most adtech companies and ad buyers.
Common sense 101	A business case for not insulting your users The long-term benefits of serving ads that actually provides value – or why you'd want to sell some ads to other companies than scammy dating sites even if they are currently the easiest ones to fleece by showing expensive ads to customers who aren't interested at all.	Ad-tech companies, and that big one with the attached search engine in particular.

This was born out of my frustration earlier this year that tech products seems to be moving backwards and have been so for a decade.

I'd summarize it in three points, all being just my opinions:

• Somewhere along the lines ux went from the good idea that

many of the products we create aren't as easy to use as they should be

to the bad idea that

users are stupid and must be prevented from going off the script or customizing anything.

• At some point a lot of people decided that it was OK to “move fast and break things”.

• Ads, that for a limited time was a somewhat understandable solution to monetize free content went from bad (hit the monkey-scams for those who are old enough to remember) to kind-of-ok (adwords, plain text ads with a single link, no moving parts, no sound) to the current mess.

  • the current mess includes the hundred or so trackers (I haven't counted, but I have looked through the lists a few times and I suspect I might just as well underestimate rather than exaggerate here.)

Based on this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19263653