Most “good UI” isn’t good at all. It’s just whatever we’ve been trained to tolerate.

Case in point: for years, anything with too much text was mocked as “bad UX.” Then ChatGPT came along, gave you a blinking cursor and a box—and suddenly walls of text are the peak of interface design. Nothing changed except what people got used to.

Or take macOS. People trip over themselves to praise Apple’s “clean” UI. But what’s actually clean about it? Why does closing every window not quit the app? That’s not intuitive. It’s just something Mac users were conditioned into defending. If Windows did the same thing, there’d be YouTube essays about it.

Same goes for games. The arrow keys used to be the standard for movement. Now, if your game doesn’t use WASD, you’ll get roasted on Steam. Not because WASD is inherently better—it’s just what everyone expects.

The dirty truth is this: UI isn’t about usability. It’s about conformity. Interfaces don’t necessarily become “good” when they solve problems—they become good when people stop complaining.