Why is the AWS console UX so bad?

Question

The AWS console UX is atrocious. I don't even think this is a polarized topic; I've yet to hear anyone opine otherwise. For a company and platform as large as Amazon/AWS, I would think that there would clearly be a positive ROI to investing in quality UX.Case in point, I switched to the new Route 53 UI a few weeks ago. After using it frequently, I've concluded that it's worse in virtually every measure. There's less clarity, efficiency, and overall feels more cumbersome.Do AWS product managers just believe their UX is sufficient or even good? Do they want to discourage console usage in favor of API configuration via Cloudformation? Are they simply optimizing for something else?I'm genuinely curious. What is it?

jimmyvalmer · Accepted Answer

1. AWS has invested untold man-hours addressing feedback to arrive at their current solution. The number of people you "hear from" whose sentiment is unanimously negative is far smaller than AWS's fleet of focus groups.2. Any UX that point-and-clickifies configuration-as-code is going to suck on some level, and garner hate from technical people.

TwelveNights · Answer

Not an answer, but there's something about large companies updating their UI/UX that always makes it worse. Same goes with Jira. If there were any specific reasons to doing these re-styles, I'd love to know too.