by Brian Crowley and Eve Eden
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.
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Publishing Since
10/23/2025
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June 18, 2026
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> 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 between the infinite scroll and a search bar that cannot find a movie you know for a fact exists, discoverability got quietly killed off.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> This week Brian and Eve open the case file on streaming search. The broken autocomplete. The recommendation engines that surface what the platform is contractually obligated to push rather than what you actually want to watch. The titles that vanish overnight when a license lapses. The interface choices that turn a catalog of thousands into a frustrating dead end. And the strangest piece of evidence yet: regular people walking into big box stores and buying preloaded streaming boxes marketed as "legal," quietly opting out of an experience that has become more work than the thing it replaced. When the official product gets frustrating enough, a gray market grows in the gap. They follow the trail to the real question underneath all of it: who benefits when you cannot find what you are looking for, and what does it say about the design when customers would rather gamble on a sketchy box than open the app they already pay for?</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Pull up a chair. The trail is cold, but the motive is not.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Hosted by Brian J. Crowley & Eve Eden / Edited by Kelsey Smith / Intro Animation & Logo Design by Brian J. Crowley / Music by Nicolas Lee / A joint production of EVE | User Experience Design Agency and CrowleyUX | Where Systems Meet Stories / ©2025 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden / <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "mailto:questions@UXmurdermystery.com">questions@UXmurdermystery.com</a> / "Thank you for watching and or listening!"</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> For informational/entertainment purposes only. Views are commentary and speculation, not statements of fact. Discussions of real companies/individuals use publicly available info for critique and education. Not factual assertions about motives or intentions. Creators disclaim liability for damages from reliance on content. Events may be dramatized for illustrative purposes.</p>
June 10, 2026
<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> 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.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Brian and Eve sit down with AI and voice design leader Yaddy Arroyo to open four files on the same victim: accessibility. A streaming giant that locked out the exact audience its hero represented. A usability legend who pronounced accessibility dead and prescribed a robot he could not explain. A self-driving car handing blind riders a freedom the experts swore was impossible. And the view from a parent who lives the gap between the spec and the sidewalk every single day.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Four failures. One killer. By the end you will know exactly who keeps pulling the trigger, and why accessibility never actually failed. People keep failing it, then blaming the corpse.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-pre-wrap">IN THIS EPISODE The Daredevil reversal and the Chicago activist who forced it. Jakob Nielsen's "Accessibility Has Failed" and the community that took it apart. The parent's view from inside the room. And the plot twist on four wheels, where Waymo and Zoox prove that accessibility was never about the technology. It was always about who was in the room.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Netflix adds audio description to Daredevil (TIME): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://time.com/3823916/netflix-daredevil-accessible-blind/">https://time.com/3823916/netflix-daredevil-accessible-blind/</a> After fan pressure, Netflix makes Daredevil accessible (NPR): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/18/400590705/after-fan-pressure-netflix-makes-daredevil-accessible-to-the-blind"> https://www.npr.org/2015/04/18/400590705/after-fan-pressure-netflix-makes-daredevil-accessible-to-the-blind</a> The fight for audio description, Dare2Describe (The Nerds of Color): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2015/04/27/the-fight-for-audio-description-on-netflixs-daredevil/"> https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2015/04/27/the-fight-for-audio-description-on-netflixs-daredevil/</a> Accessibility Has Failed, Try Generative UI (Jakob Nielsen): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/accessibility-generative-ui"> https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/accessibility-generative-ui</a> On Nielsen's generative UI claims (Per Axbom): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://axbom.com/nielsen-generative-ui-failure/">https://axbom.com/nielsen-generative-ui-failure/</a> Jakob Nielsen's problematic claims about accessibility (Hidde de Vries): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://hidde.blog/links/jakob-nielsens-problematic-claims-about-accessibility/"> https://hidde.blog/links/jakob-nielsens-problematic-claims-about-accessibility/</a> NFB and Waymo partnership (Waymo): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://waymo.com/community/articles/national-federation-of-the-blind/"> https://waymo.com/community/articles/national-federation-of-the-blind/</a> Blind Waymo users revel in the joy of riding alone (NYT via The Star): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/05/25/blind-waymo-users-revel-in-the-joy-of-riding-alone"> https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/05/25/blind-waymo-users-revel-in-the-joy-of-riding-alone</a> Waymo's accessibility features (AI Weekly): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://aiweekly.co/alerts/waymo-wins-blind-riders-with-accessibility-features"> https://aiweekly.co/alerts/waymo-wins-blind-riders-with-accessibility-features</a> Zoox, accessibility, and the curb (Evinced): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://www.evinced.com/blog/zoox-accessibility-and-the-curb">https://www.evinced.com/blog/zoox-accessibility-and-the-curb</a> Autonomous taxis and accessibility law (Wheelchair Travel): <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "https://wheelchairtravel.org/autonomous-taxis-not-accessible-state-preemption-laws/"> https://wheelchairtravel.org/autonomous-taxis-not-accessible-state-preemption-laws/</a></p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-pre-wrap">GUEST Yaddy Arroyo, AI and voice design leader, fifteen-plus years in conversational AI, voice interfaces, and accessibility-driven design.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Hosted by Brian J. Crowley & Eve Eden / Edited by Kelsey Smith / Intro Animation & Logo Design by Brian J. Crowley / Music by Nicolas Lee / A joint production of EVE | User Experience Design Agency and CrowleyUX | Where Systems Meet Stories / ©2025 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden / <a class= "underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href= "mailto:questions@UXmurdermystery.com">questions@UXmurdermystery.com</a> / "Thank you for watching and or listening!"</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> For informational/entertainment purposes only. Views are commentary and speculation, not statements of fact. Discussions of real companies/individuals use publicly available info for critique and education. Not factual assertions about motives or intentions. Creators disclaim liability for damages from reliance on content. Events may be dramatized for illustrative purposes.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"> Spotify, ApplePodcasts, UXDesign, Accessibility, A11y, InclusiveDesign, UXMurderMystery, AIEthics, Waymo, JakobNielsen, Daredevil, AudioDescription, DisabilityRights, VoiceDesign, ConversationalAI, AssistiveTechnology, ProductDesign, UXResearch</p>
June 3, 2026
<p>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 actually looks like on a team that wants to win.</p> <p> </p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> ess Lowry expected to be excited about AI. After almost twenty years in UX, service design, and platform orchestration, she figured this was the moment design got to do its best work. Then she walked into the rooms where AI was actually being built and realized something had shifted. The data scientists were there. The researchers were there. The product managers were there. She was not.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> This week, Brian and Eve sit down with Jess to investigate what's actually happening to design in the middle of what she calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The "seat at the table" conversation was already dated when she started in tech in the early 2000s. The story underneath it is bigger, more structural, and far less discussed in public. Smart homes, smart cars, smart cities, and AI agents are being wired together by teams that mostly aren't talking to each other, inside companies siloed by budget line, and shipped fast because building has gotten cheap. What hasn't gotten cheap is critical thinking, long-term planning, and the human-centered eye that catches the things everyone else misses.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> Jess makes a clear case for where design fits in. Not as a slowdown, not as a polish layer, but as the connector that externalizes shared understanding so teams can move quickly without backing themselves into corners. She walks through the Bauhaus and arts and crafts roots of design thinking, the 10x to 100x ROI of catching problems before engineering starts, and what diversity of thinking actually looks like on a team that wants to win.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> Brian shares his Starbucks and ChatGPT experiment, where he got the agent to design a drink optimized to punish baristas, and the three of them work through what it means when governance is just a few keyword filters and the edge cases nobody mapped become the product.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> The conversation also looks forward. Jess wants a web that finally catches up to the Bauhaus, immersive environments that bring sound and light and scent into digital space, and data centers reimagined as paths into nature rather than scars across it. Brian and Eve land on a Star Trek future where AI handles food, energy, and the climate crisis first, and the rest of us get to self-actualize.</p> <p class= "font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"> If you've felt locked out of the rooms where the future is being built, this one's for you. And if you're hiring, deciding, or quietly running the team that's about to ship the next AI feature, Jess has a question for you: how many opportunities to win are you actually creating?</p>
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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.
This podcast updates daily.
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