Shows / UX Murder Mystery
UX Murder Mystery
Where do true crime, business and technology intersect? When another product has been found dead. The cause? UX failure. We investigate what's killing your customer experience. Think true crime, but for failed designs. We dig into the real stories behind UX disasters. LinkedIn's algorithm nightmare. Paywalls that killed communities. Corporate decisions that poison good design. Every case has clues. Every problem has a solution. Coming soon. Got a UX horror story? Send us your evidence.
Episodes
- UX Murder Mystery
Why Is UX Director the Most Miserable Job in Tech? Peter Merholz
Designers once decided what to build. Now they are told what to "draw." Brian and Eve sit down with Peter Merholz, co-founder of Adaptive Path, co-author of…
- UX Murder Mystery
Eddie Bauer: 20 Years of Rewards, Zero Purchase History
Twenty years of rewards. Zero purchase history. Brian takes a parka with a broken zipper to a closing Eddie Bauer store. He has no receipt, but he has a…
- UX Murder Mystery
The AI Got Out: A Correction, a Breakout, and a Government Portal
Well there's egg on our face. In the last episode Brian asserted that the AIs had been contained and it was just a test. That was completely wrong AND we've…
- UX Murder Mystery
Meta Pays $17 Billion, Apple Folds, and an AI Researcher Walks Out
Hook. Hold. Harvest. Hide. That is how state attorneys general described Meta's business model before the company agreed to a reported $17 billion child safety…
- UX Murder Mystery
Stop Selling Change: Why Transformation Keeps Failing (ft. Erin Stadler)
Deloitte invented another word for how organizations should be: changefulness. Erin Stadler read it and laughed out loud. Brian Crowley and Eve Eden…
- UX Murder Mystery
Ghosted by the Machine: Who Really Rejected Your Resume?
Rejected ten minutes after applying. No feedback, no human contact, no explanation. Millions of job seekers know this exact experience, and most of them blame…
- UX Murder Mystery
Not Lovin' It: How the McDonald's App Turned Customers Into the Product
McDonald's built one of the most downloaded food apps in the world, and the customers using it describe a crime scene: orders charged and canceled with no…
- UX Murder Mystery
She Built AI at Google. Now She's Warning Newsrooms.
The news is on the table and AI is holding the murder weapon. Or is it? This week, UX Murder Mystery hosts Brian Crowley and Eve Eden interrogate a witness who…
- UX Murder Mystery
It's a Trap: How Disney's $350M Star Wars Hotel ended after 18 Months
Disney spent $350 million on a Star Wars hotel where guests live inside the story for two days. It closed in 18 months. In this episode, Brian Crowley and Eve…
- UX Murder Mystery
Are we Waymo's Tests?
A driverless Waymo rolls within a few feet of a guns-drawn felony stop in downtown Los Angeles while officers shout directions at a car with no one inside. The…
- UX Murder Mystery
Rejected at 1:50 AM???
Derek Mobley applied to over 100 jobs in seven years. He was rejected every single time — sometimes within the hour, once at 1:50 in the morning. No human ever…
- UX Murder Mystery
If Roblox Won't Protect Kids, They Won't Protect the Business
A five year build. Twelve thousand players. Gone in an afternoon. This week on UX Murder Mystery, we reopen the Roblox case file, and this time the victims are…
- UX Murder Mystery
Craft vs. Code: The Config 2026 Identity Crisis
Config used to be a crime of passion. A room full of people who make the interface, gathered to celebrate the craft. So why did Config 2026 feel less like a…
- UX Murder Mystery
One Line of Code: How TurboTax Killed Free Tax Filing
Free. Free. Free. Free. You saw the ad. What you did not see was the free product they buried so you could not find it. There was a genuinely free way to file…
- UX Murder Mystery
UX Murder Mystery LIVE @Figma Config 2026 Day 2
Join hosts Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden for a live recording of UX Murder Mystery, the show that investigates how good design dies. We take a real product…
- UX Murder Mystery
Why You Can't Find Anything on Streaming Anymore
You pay for five streaming services and still spend forty minutes scrolling before you give up and rewatch something you have seen four times. Somewhere…
- UX Murder Mystery
Blind Spot: Who Keeps Killing Accessible Design?
A hit show about a blind superhero. That a blind person could not follow. That is where this case opens, and it only gets stranger from there. Brian and Eve…
- UX Murder Mystery
Not Allowed in the Room: Design's Missing Seat in the AI Build
Jess Lowry on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, why design keeps getting locked out of the rooms where AI is being built, and what diversity of thinking…
- UX Murder Mystery
OpenAI Sued Three Times In Six Days
Six tech companies. Two weeks. One playbook. Brian and Eve walk through the lawsuits, settlements, and corporate meltdowns piling up across the tech industry…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Field Is the Crime Scene: Reddit's Hardest UX Questions, Answered
Somewhere on Reddit, a designer just spent five hours on a take-home assignment and got a form rejection. The field isn't dying in one place. It's bleeding out…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Driver Did Nothing Wrong
Two automakers. Multiple deaths. One shared cause: interfaces that prioritized looking like the future over keeping people alive in the present. Anton…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Killer Is in the Kickoff Meeting
Founders don't set out to build extraction machines. So how does the product vision get overwritten between seed and Series B? Jessica Murray joins Eve Eden…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Shuffle Was Never Random: How Spotify Rigged Its Own Platform Against Artists and Listeners
Independent artists were told Spotify was a level playing field. It wasn't. While real musicians earn fractions of a cent per stream, Spotify seeded its…
- UX Murder Mystery
Is UX Dead? Answering Reddit's Hardest Questions
Brian Crowley goes solo to answer real questions pulled from r/UXDesign — covering the job market, AI, stakeholders, and what UX even means anymore.
- UX Murder Mystery
They Knew. They Did It Anyway. The Meta Trial Nobody Expected.
The Case of the Double Murder Meta didn't just fail. It failed twice — in completely different directions — and both failures trace back to the same root…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Bullseye Bait and Switch
Target built its brand on a simple promise: expect more, pay less — and for a while, it delivered. Inclusive sizing. Accessible stores. Diverse representation…
- UX Murder Mystery
Fine. Everything Is Fine.
We covered these cases. Nothing is fixed. Some of it is worse. Brian Crowley and Eve Eden check back in on: SONOS Two years later, they just put back a button…
- UX Murder Mystery
Pre-Existing Negligence
On October 1, 2013, the federal government launched Healthcare.gov — the digital front door to the Affordable Care Act, and the most ambitious e-government…
- UX Murder Mystery
When the Music Died: How Sonos Killed Its Own App and Lost Everything
Sonos shipped an unfinished app that broke thousands of speakers, wiped $500M in value, and took down the CEO. Brian Crowley and Eve Eden investigate one of…
- UX Murder Mystery
Who Killed Meetup? Three Owners, Zero UX
A platform born from 9/11 grief to fight American loneliness — sold to WeWork, fire-sold during COVID, and now strip-mined by Bending Spoons. Meetup.com is one…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Case of the Vanishing Humans: Dead Internet Theory
The Case of the Vanishing Humans The internet isn't dead. It's undead—still moving, still generating content, but its soul is gone. In this episode, Brian and…
- UX Murder Mystery
The Loyalty Trap: How Surveillance Pricing Turns Your Rewards App Into a Weapon with Stephanie Nguyen
THE CASE: Surveillance Pricing -- Who's Setting the Price, Who's Being Watched, and Who's Really Paying You scan your loyalty card. You earn your points. You…
- UX Murder Mystery
How iRobot Lost $3.5 BILLION: The Roomba Bankruptcy Explained
How did iRobot go from a $3.5 billion robot vacuum empire to bankruptcy in just 4 years? We investigate the product failures, broken UX, and regulatory…
- UX Murder Mystery
$14 Billion to Bankruptcy: The Wish.com Disaster
$14 Billion to Bankruptcy: The Wish.com Disaster In 2013, Wish.com promised to democratize shopping: designer looks for dirt-cheap prices, delivered straight…
- UX Murder Mystery
$3 Billion to Zero: Who Killed Skylanders?
In 2011, Activision cracked the code that would print money for years: convince kids they needed to buy physical toys to unlock digital characters. Skylanders…
- UX Murder Mystery
When Design Challenges Became Exploitation with Christina Hamlin
The crime scene: A take-home design challenge. The victim: Fair hiring practices. The suspects: Well-meaning companies asking for "just a few hours" of…
- UX Murder Mystery
He Thought He Owed $730K. Robinhood Had No One to Call.
CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses suicide. We cover the death of Alex Kearns in the final segment (starting at 31:33). Crisis resources are listed below…
- UX Murder Mystery
Movie Theaters: What We Love & Why They're Struggling
After some heavy episodes, Eve and Brian lighten things up with a fun conversation about their love of movies and movie theaters—and why the industry is in…
- UX Murder Mystery
From Layoffs to Launching a Podcast: Our Origin Story
Ten episodes in, it's time we properly introduce ourselves. In this milestone episode, Eve and Brian step away from investigating product murders to share…
- UX Murder Mystery
LinkedIn Job Search Failure: Why AI Screening Blocks Qualified Candidates
LinkedIn's AI screening tools are blocking qualified candidates from jobs they're perfect for. We investigate how automated recruiting broke the job market—and…
- UX Murder Mystery
UX Job Market Crisis: Layoffs, AWS Failures, and Why Tech Workers Need Unions
The UX job market isn't just "tough"—it's forcing designers to leave the country, abandon expensive cities, and consider completely different careers. Brian…
- UX Murder Mystery
Microsoft Clippy: Why AI Assistant UX Failed
Clippy never died. It just evolved into the intrusive AI assistants plaguing us today. In this episode, Brian and Eve investigate why tech companies keep…
- UX Murder Mystery
UX Leadership Crisis: Why Design Directors Are Failing Their Teams
On today's episode: Eve and Brian as the questions: Should UX practitioners need licenses? Is UX Leadership failing designers, writers and researchers? Are…
- UX Murder Mystery
Google Glass & Apple Vision Pro: Why AR Headset UX Keeps Failing Users
This week, Eve and Brian talk about the biggest UX scam in tech right now, wearable 'innovation' that no one asked for. From Apple Vision Pro's $3,500 ski-mask…
- UX Murder Mystery
Dating App UX Failures: Why Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and Match Design for Addiction Not Love
This week Eve and Brian talk about some 🌶️🌶️🌶️. What happens when dating apps evolve backwards how did covid change the game? In this episode of UX Murder…
- UX Murder Mystery
Roblox Child Safety Crisis: How UX Design Enabled Predator Grooming
What happens when a game made for kids becomes a playground for predators? Eve and Brian break down Roblox's biggest UX crime — failed moderation — and how…
UX Murder MysteryLinkedIn UX Failures: How Bad Design Drives Users Away From Professional Networking
Brian and Eve talk about how LinkedIn was once a useful product and now it's lost it way gaining all the worst noise and anxiety of social media with very…
UX Murder MysteryUX Industry Crisis: Why Designers Are Losing Influence in Product Development
UX designers are being marginalized in product development. We investigate why design roles are shrinking, how AI is being blamed, and what's really happening…