UX Murder Mystery

Target built its brand on a simple promise: expect more, pay less — and for a while, it delivered. Inclusive sizing. Accessible stores. Diverse representation. It was a masterclass in mass customization — the idea that good UX could scale across every kind of customer.

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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 they never should have re...

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 initiative in American history. By the end of Day 1, the site had crashed. By the end of the week, only six people had successfully enrolled. By the end of the audit: $1.7 billion spent, 60 contra...

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 the biggest UX failures ever.

You spend thousands on premium speakers. They work beautifully for years. Then one...

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 of the most heartbreaking UX murders we've ever investigated. In this episode, Brian Crowley and Eve Eden follow the evidence through three ownership changes in seven years, a broken RSVP system that's been ignored for over a decade, dark-pattern subscriptions that users can...

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 Eve investigate the authentication crisis killing trust online. The victim? Authentic human interaction. The suspects? Platforms that prioritized engagement over verification, marketers who weaponized AI at scale, and now—AI agents themselves. THE SMOKING GUN: On January 29, ...

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 think you're getting rewarded. But what if the more loyal you become, the higher prices you're paying?

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 decisions that killed an American icon.The company that invented the robot vacuum market and sold 50 million Roombas just filed for bankruptcy. Now a Chinese manufacturer owns all their IP, home mapping data, and customer information.In this episode of UX Murder Mystery, hosts Brian...

$14 Billion to Bankruptcy: The Wish.com Disaster In 2013, Wish.com promised to democratize shopping: designer looks for dirt-cheap prices, delivered straight to your door. By 2018, they were pulling in $1.9 billion in revenue. Their 2020 IPO valued the company at $14 billion, and they were spending millions on Super Bowl ads positioning themselves as the future of e-commerce. Three years later, they filed for bankruptcy. In this ep...

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 pioneered the "toys-to-life" genre, generating over $3 billion in its first three years and creating a new category that Disney, LEGO, and Nintendo would rush to copy. Then it all vanished. In this episode, hosts Brian Crowley and Eve Eden investigate the spectacular rise and...

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 strategic work. In this episode of UX Murder Mystery, hosts Brian Crowley and Eve Eden investigate how design challenges and whiteboard exercises went from legitimate evaluation tools to weapons of exploitation—with Christina Hamlin as our expert witness. Christina is a senior desig...

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. If you're struggling with thoughts of suicide: Call 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) Text "HELLO" to 741741 (Crisis Text Line) You're not alone. Help is available 24/7. --- THE CRIME: When "democratizing finance" became gambling in disguise Robinhood promised to bring Wall St...

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 deep trouble.

We discuss what makes the theatrical experience magical, how individual UX improvements accidentall...

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 their own origin stories—how they got into UX, how they met teaching at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the career roller coasters they've survived along the way. We get candid about getting laid off, building resilience, and why your job title should never become your entir...