“... selected that app for parking without once thinking about the user experience.”
I have worked in the tech arena all my adult years. I could write a book on how many times that we have had to ask about a machine’s work flow or a computer program that is totally not intuitive. Every time when we ask if the author/engineer ever actually used the device or program in question the answer many times times is “uhmmm - no.”
I was in the power industry for 30 years during which time the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident happened. The research institute I worked for did a huge amount of work understanding the root causes of the accident. The biggest failure was poor “human factors engineering” — the operators couldn’t figure out what was happening in the reactor because of poor presentation of data to the operators.
It’s the same in software as you point out. The people who design these things don’t use them and don’t convene enough panels to get user input.
It’s the same on telephone systems. Most of them play “music” that makes me want to take ice picks to my eardrums. The electronic crap “music,” fake keyboard sounds, interruptions every 30 seconds to tell you “your call is important to us,” and the inability to get a human on the line drives me insane. Don’t any of those people actually ask customer what their phone experience was like?
Apple is smart — they give you the option of three music genres AND an option to listen in blissful silence.