Having spent the large bulk of my career in software development I can tell you that they haven't. Most of those decisions are made by PMs, and they are often not particularly technical people.
Those must be the same morons who completely redesign user interfaces for popular programs when literally NO ONE was asking for such changes, leading to a worldwide population of experienced users having to re-learn their daily tools. Microsoft Office, I'm thinking of you (in terms not suitable for a family website).
Assuming you’re talking about the Ribbon, I think it’s important to point out that it absolutely was not a situation of a change “no one was asking for”. At the time, Microsoft had been getting complaints for years and years about “bloat” in the Office menu-and-toolbars interface, combined with countless feature requests for features
it already had but users struggled to find, as well as huge amounts of user telemetry and usability testing demonstrating real difficulties with the interface. The Ribbon was a bold, ambitious attempt to redesign the interface from the ground up for the complex applications the Office programs had become, not the comparatively tiny, basic programs they were when the menus-and-toolbars interfaces were first applied to them for the Mac. (Office for Mac actually predates Office for Windows!)
The Ribbon is a fascinating case study, in that it was created with a huge amount of care given to sound UX methodology, with tons of thought behind it, and massive amounts of usability testing. And yet lots of users hate it. For example, most commands require fewer clicks in the Ribbon UI than the old menus and toolbars, yet to many people they feel like they take more clicks. (I know I sometimes get that feeling.)
I also know, from attempting to discuss the Ribbon with users who hate it, that there is a visceral component to the hate, because most are unable to even articulate why they dislike it beyond “it’s different”. I had one coworker who was frothing at the mouth because I didn’t agree with him unconditionally about it being anything but an unmitigated disaster. The fact that I didn’t hate it (even though I slightly preferred the old interface) was enough to send him into near rage.
![Shocked :o](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/shocked.gif)
There was no arguing that it was anything other than “stupidity” — no room for even the possibility that it could be a really solid effort that just didn’t pan out.
That was back in 2009-2013 and I haven’t seen him in many years. I wonder how he feels about the tablet versions of Office, which have only the most abbreviated of toolbars, with many commands available only by search box…
(To anyone who misses the menus in Office: buy a Mac. While Office for Mac does use the Ribbon, it still has all the menus!)