Often they recruit kids with graphic arts backgrounds, hand them some fancy post-it notes and a YouTube video of how Zipcar did a journey map, and set them loose.
UX usually focuses on the critical path for the top-5 tasks. So turning on the car radio makes sense, but changing the radio station didn’t make the cut, so some rando engineer guy stuffed it in a menu.
When it’s done well with a great team and time it’s magic. It’s easiest to see when Apple gets software right, like Keynote - the functions of making a presentation are immediately obvious to an elementary school student. But even then, once you leave the happy path, woe to you - modifying a template is a dark art to most people.
Or you could use Apple's iTunes as an example of how to build one of the world's worst and most user-hostile interfaces, but one that every iPhone user must deal with unless they let Apple have complete access to all their information via iCloud.
I'm convinced most people really don't like iCloud, but since the alternative is iTunes, they basically have no choice...
UX usually focuses on the critical path for the top-5 tasks. So turning on the car radio makes sense, but changing the radio station didn’t make the cut, so some rando engineer guy stuffed it in a menu.
When it’s done well with a great team and time it’s magic. It’s easiest to see when Apple gets software right, like Keynote - the functions of making a presentation are immediately obvious to an elementary school student. But even then, once you leave the happy path, woe to you - modifying a template is a dark art to most people.