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

1 points by ex-aws-dude ↗ HN
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?

8 comments

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vedas-dixit
not sure if UX people changing the UI is the problem or companies treating visible change as evidence for promotion & all.
carlosjobim
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.
ahmedehab_01
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.

owebmaster
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?
andrei_says_
Examples?

Apart from apple glass I can’t think of UX changes not prompted by feature changes.

yogiBear296148
Start handing out demotions for changing UI.

Give bonuses and/or promotions to those who practice UI preservation.