I wanted to vent and write a post about issues in Android L's UX around phone numbers (among other things) but then I sort of realized how to sum it up: There are a lot of user interfaces these days -- not solely picking on Android, believe me / all too unfortunately -- where the nuance is in all the wrong places. There is tricky stuff like animation or customized 'non-standard' look and feel all over the place, but the end result is to actively make the user experience worse.

Consider the volume controls. They are a train wreck on all devices. But one thing in particular will serve as a case in point for what I'm trying to get at: When I'm on speakerphone, the volume apparently cannot go down to zero. But there's no visible indication of that restriction in the volume bar UI. Also missing is any way for me to know how close I am to the button press that would actually mute, were I allowed to mute.

So there are 2 subtle things that could be nuances incorporated into the UI, and thus the whole UX, around this that are completely and utterly missing. Instead I guess people spent their time worrying about animations zooming around, I dunno. (The one thing I can never, ever, at all, remotely fathom about all these things: did they literally never ever use the thing themselves? Completely mind boggling. (In certain cases I am pretty sure they literally do not, e.g. the work-outsourced 401k vendor web site oh lord the blood the blood!))