I have a less charitable view, when it comes to business. It's not about the misunderstanding of what the web is. It's about misalignment of values.
Most of website design today is not done with the interest of the user in mind, no matter what the popular UX posts will say. The companies only care about users insomuch as it leads them to closing a sale. Which means trying to give away as little value as possible for as much money as possible in return.
You can see it in contemporary design trends, and you can see it in the language used. Say, for example, "user engagement". Translated to plain English, it means making sure the user doesn't get what he came for too quickly. He'd then leave. You need to distract him with random stuff so that he stays "engaged" with your page.
Most of the JS on the web is either gratuitous or simply user-hostile. It hampers productivity, it destroys readability, and it does it on purpose.
And yeah, I'm fine with some of that; that's how dealing with businesses look like. I just wish people were honest about what they're doing. And then maybe little less user-hostile too.
Most of website design today is not done with the interest of the user in mind, no matter what the popular UX posts will say. The companies only care about users insomuch as it leads them to closing a sale. Which means trying to give away as little value as possible for as much money as possible in return.
You can see it in contemporary design trends, and you can see it in the language used. Say, for example, "user engagement". Translated to plain English, it means making sure the user doesn't get what he came for too quickly. He'd then leave. You need to distract him with random stuff so that he stays "engaged" with your page.
Most of the JS on the web is either gratuitous or simply user-hostile. It hampers productivity, it destroys readability, and it does it on purpose.
And yeah, I'm fine with some of that; that's how dealing with businesses look like. I just wish people were honest about what they're doing. And then maybe little less user-hostile too.