For some reason UI taste influencers have outsized influence within companies. IMO it's because they have the ear of execs who react viscerally to eye candy - as we all do - but lack understanding of basic usability principles.

As an exec sitting there frustrated by the slow pace of software development, at least you can always yell at the UI guy and demand changes that your gut tells you "look cool", and you can be an active, though uninformed particpant in sessions with design mockups.

Car UIs are a great case in point. People have been yelling for years at the poor usability of touchscreens in cars as opposed to discrete buttons/controls. Yet the enshittification of car UIs continues unchecked. My ioniq 5 has multiple touch panels and buttons, yet something as simple as directing air flow to the dash vents requires me to prod at a tiny touch area and look at a separate tiny display area well away from the touch control to see what I managed to select. It is 10 times worse than an old school rotary dial that I could operate instantly by touch alone. My workaround now is to prod the control, wait for 5 seconds to see if I feel air start flowing, and if not, prod the control and wait again.

Peak usability of most computer UIs was back in the 90s when simple (to use) but deep and powerful hierarchical menus were uniformly placed at the top of the page, and right clicking on objects in the UI opened context-sensitive popup hierarchical menus.

For cars it was in the 2000s before touch screens.