“Systematic design excluding intuition yields pedestrian follow-ons and knock-offs; intuitive design without system yields flawed fancies.”

–The Design of Design: Essays From a Computer Scientist by Frederick P. Brooks

This explains Firefox and Windows 8 and 10, I think — they lack and lacked both intuition and systematicity, combining the worst of both worlds.

In striving for some false simplicity, they achieved neither simplicity nor increased capabilities, instead landing squarely at the left failing edge of the bell curve of incoherence and lack of discoverability.

Anyway, the book is good. Most designers “designing” today should read it.

Design is another field like economics that should just be blown up (metaphorically) and started from scratch. There’s nothing there to save.