Plenty of UI designers just follow trends because everyone just copies the current popular things, especially when their competition starts doing it too. They don't really put a ton of thought into it or don't do it as part of a wider cohesive strategy where it makes sense for what they are building.
Really shows the power of UI designers at big organizations like Apple, Google, and Tesla.
That "flat everything" design trend of 10-15 years ago was sooooo annoying. And it was so apparent that extremely little thought about the usability of it was considered once the trend gained momentum.
I remember when Android (don't recall exactly which release) replaced their standard back, home and menu buttons with just a triangle, square and circle. It was so bizarre. I felt like a toddler playing with a "fit the blocks into the different shaped holes" toy.
"Was"? flat UI is still here and it's horrible. It drives me crazy having to guess that a featureless piece of text might be a button because its position in a window vaguely suggests it may be a button and not just a random piece of floating text. So much subtle information is just gone from modern UIs.
Really shows the power of UI designers at big organizations like Apple, Google, and Tesla.