Zoom may be at version 5.4 but its user interface is at version 0.6.

I wonder how many (not whether) computer science User Interface Design courses are using Zoom as an object lesson of what not to do.

Let's have the controls and windows move all around and change shape when switching to/from sharing screen (especially on a system with multiple monitors).

Let's keep users guessing about which settings are adjustable at runtime, as pre-meeting settings within the client, or as properties of the host's online profile.

Let's make the Breakout Room list not be in alphabetical order, and not searchable, so you have to scan 200 names to find the person you want.

Let's make co-hosts unable to manage breakout rooms. Let's make it not possible to deassign someone from a breakout room.

Let's make breakout rooms with meter-thick walls: Entering and leaving forces a reset of the states of muting, sharing, etc. Awkward communication across room walls (e.g., no god-like audio broadcast to all breakout rooms).

Let's give no way to remember alternative logins.

Let's not let a co-host raise their hands.

Some of these should be trivial to fix unless they are built over deep architectural commitments, in which case the silliness is in the latter.

It is just so *awkward*. One gets the sense they are are putting all their $$$ into the back end, and virtually nothing into the front end. Their designers must be few or they don't use Zoom themselves.

My guess is that the company considers its success as affirmation that they're doing it right, not that they have achieved the blessed frequency dominance that makes them unassailable regardless of quality (as IBM/DOS had in the 80s). We have no choice...

Sorry. Don't enjoy ranting, but I just picture the pile of cash they're sitting on now, and think of the stress of 2020 already pushing us to our cognitive limits.