I was a software architect at Lotus Development. I wasn't specifically in UI, but we paid attention to it (and had a really good UI lab in which developers would have to watch users off the street trying to use their 'new baby' . It was soundproofed so the users couldn't hear the developers shouting "No! No! Click over there!" as they watched the mirrored screens and through the one-way glass.

We also had an exercise that I found both fun and useful. It went " what could we change to make users less happy and our product less useful?" (turning the UI question on its head). Every time through on a new product, we'd find a few of those actually being implemented - and we ditched them.

On to the Medium UI. As a reader, it seems the reader interface UI people have done that exercise - but are implementing the ones to make readers less happy. Try to use the response editor. both bold and italics only seem to work sporadically. And it you're trying to cut/paste a large block inside that editor it jumps around.

Now they've decided to remove the separate listings for authors/pubs I'm following from the header space - and the 'following' section has never contained all the new posts from the authors/pubs I'm following.

All that said, I LIKE Medium. It's the closest think I've found to the forums we had at Lotus and BBN. Highly intelligent people discussing interesting technical / scientific issues and world events. Some of those folks (not me!) were certifiably genius level.

I've been using 'follow' to effectively curate my own version of Medium - but now the UI folks have shut that off. Thanks guys.

My membership has a number of months to go before renewal. If the UI keeps going this way, I have to wonder what the point of renewing is - other than frustrating myself.

I'm putting this here in the hopes that someone at Medium might take note - and remember that the funds used to pay writers (and keep Medium going) comes out of readers' bank accounts.

Meanwhile, I'm off to check out Substack...