Perfect UX is impossible
Updated. And filed under #ux
Updated again today 2020-04-25.
This will be a short one. Promise.
I sometimes rant about ux. You can find some written ones here, and I hope to add more because there's a lot to cover IMO.
That said, I think UX is harder than one might expect:
We just simplified the whole Desktop Environment Experience!
Fine, this will be great for onboarding new users but you just made it a lot harder to use for all existing users.
In addition it seems you made a few changes that needlessly broke existing workflows, and you didn't put in any kind way to configure it.
In the public transport app we now use two minutes between the arrival of one and the departure of next transport. This way we will stop suggesting useless alternatives where you won't catch the second leg!
Fine, but what about disabled people, and what if the first leg is delayed?
We have now increased it to 12 minutes to cover this. We have calculated that this should solve the problem in 98% of the cases.
Fine, but now most people will get a sub optimal schedule.
While I care about disabled users a lot this change means that the alternative that would get me home a lot earlier tonight won't show up because a minority of the users won't be able to get from platform 1 to platform 4 in 11 minutes.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point: whether your technical solution is good depends on who your users are, if they have previous experience with your application, if they have any disabilities and I'd even say it depends on if the users choice of transport is delayed or not.
All this before we have even start talking about preferences...!
When I work in the field I see quite a lot of statements thrown around, and I have certainly been guilty myself as well (although these are not mine):
vim is the perfect tool for programming
Ask certain kinds of Vim user though and you'll be told in no uncertain terms that Vims ux is close to perfect.
On the other hand I know Vim well enough to know it is not perfect for me (although I'll miss it if it isn't installed.)
Mac has better ux than Windows
Mac has a different ux than Windows. For some it is better, for some it is worse. I've tried it for three years and went from enthusiastic to disappointed, and I usually get along with most operating systems, including CLIs an most desktop environments.
I could add more examples here, but I promised to myself to be short, and also at this point I think I have proven my headline: Creating the perfect UX is impossible because the perfect UX is different between user groups and even between users.
With this giant hint to both myself and my readers about one idea I'll probably present as a possible solution, I'll leave this here and try to get back at some later point with some more practical advice on what can be done.