[esjeon]

I'm slightly afraid of all the negativity here, but still kinda agree with the sentiment.

However, I still want to note that there are many cases where smart people simply don't have enough time to handle all the stupidity in their products. Often times, it's just little issues like communication cost and politics. But, also often, one should care about the revenue of one's own company or clients', which slows down changes a lot. Even a simple feature can take weeks and months to roll out.

In short, even without stupid people, life sucks. :\

[intergalplan]

Oh, yeah, world-imposed restrictions are a factor. Problems aren't all because people are idiots. I, pointedly, don't exclude myself from the "people are idiots" judgement, either. But I think it's also true that the Super-Serious Real World's not half as competent, or capable, or polished, as one might hope. That organization that seems impossibly amazing? They're not, actually. Look closer and they produce bafflingly-bad crap more often than not. The institution with The Reputation? It's because they sometimes get things mostly right, and are good at networking and/or marketing, but if you got a look at how "the sausage is made" you'd be absolutely shocked. The Authority on The Thing? OMG you don't want to know.

Which is horrifying or liberating, depending on one's perspective.

[pm90]

The smartest people can build utterly useless crap if the teams they work on don’t prioritize UX. I think of it as “emergent stupidity”; individually they will optimize for and build the best components but if they aren’t well put together the UX is horrible and the product sucks sucks sucks.

On the contrary, users will be ok with suboptimal components if the overall UX is good.

[ungamedplayer]

> On the contrary, users will be ok with suboptimal components if the overall UX is good.

Until they -absolutely- need quality components, then no matter good the UI/UX is, you're out of luck.