Dratted hipster UX designers stole my corporate app

Reg Appeal Design director Christie Lenneville tells a story that may be familiar to Reg readers. A design expert was called in to modernise some XP-era enterprise software used by call centre staff: their control panel.

She wrote: "The design incorporated white space in all of the usual places – around headers, content blocks, and in table rows. The breathing room was glorious. It lasted one month before the company was forced to retire it."

The design was very modern, but forced the users to hunt and scroll for information. It's a common complaint that users never tell designers what the business application ever really does, and users complain that designers never watch what they do.

So who's right? There's only one way to settle it: in the comments below.

If you have a tale of a hipster makeover, or an un-improvable legacy interface designed a thousand years ago by a goblin, we want to hear from you. We would like pictures of either (you can email your snaps to the author here) very much indeed, although discretion is advised.

After several Friday beers, we will digest the results and publish our expensive recommendations to your management. ®