[gedy]

Yeah this is a good reminder that technology rewrites do NOT need to rethink the UI. I've always favored updating the technology first to enable faster incremental UI changes afterwards.

I love my UX friends but they almost universally hop on tech updates to rethink everything, and then it muddies up the customer feedback on the rewrite. Was this a tech bug introduced? Or an annoying UX change? etc.

[asoneth]

When I taught UX graduate students we certainly tried to instill in junior designers that their chief responsibility is to their end-users. And where it doesn't negatively influence their users their secondary responsibility to the business. Coming it at a distant third is their own sensibilities and satisfaction. Putting business needs above your users makes you a black-hat designer peddling dark patterns. Putting personal sensibilities over either makes you a digital artist -- not inherently a bad thing but also not what most companies are looking for.

Frankly many junior developers seem to have missed this lesson as well. I've seen countless rewrites for personal satisfaction or learning rather than concrete end-user or business goals.