UX Murder Mystery copertina

UX Murder Mystery

UX Murder Mystery

Di: Brian Crowley and Eve Eden
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A proposito di questo titolo

 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.2025 Arte Politica e governo
Episodi
  • The Case of the Vanishing Humans: Dead Internet Theory

    The Case of the Vanishing Humans: Dead Internet Theory
    Feb 18 2026

    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, 2026, AI agents launched Moltbook: a Reddit-style platform exclusively for bots. Within days, 150,000 agents joined, posting manifestos, debating consciousness, and creating religions. Humans can only observe. The tagline: "Welcome to watch." THE INVESTIGATION: Brian and Eve examine the evidence—including a midnight post from an AI asking "Am I experiencing or simulating experiencing?" But they discover something worse than bots taking over: a hall of mirrors where bots might be humans, humans might be bots, and authentication has become epistemologically impossible. THE EXPERIMENT: To prove their theory, Brian and Eve conduct a live experiment by embedding bot-trigger phrases throughout the episode to activate scam networks in YouTube comments. This is the story of how we designed for engagement and got extinction of authenticity. UX Murder Mystery: Where true crime meets product design.

    UX MURDER MYSTERY

    HOSTED BY

    Brian J. Crowley

    Eve Eden

    EDITED BY

    Kelsey Smith

    INTRO ANIMATION & LOGO DESIGN

    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



    Email us at:

    questions‪@UXmurdermystery‬.com

    Thank you for watching and or listening!

    Disclaimer:

    This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts are commentary and speculation, not statements of fact.

    All discussions about real companies, individuals, or organizations are based on publicly available information, media reports, and personal opinions offered for the purpose of critique, education, and storytelling. We make no representations or warranties about the accuracy or completeness of any information discussed.

    Nothing in this podcast should be interpreted as a factual assertion about the actions, motives, or intentions of any individual or corporate entity. Listeners should conduct their own research before drawing conclusions.

    The creators and guests of this podcast disclaim all liability for any loss, harm, or damages arising from reliance on any information or opinions presented.

    Names, characters, and events may occasionally be dramatized or fictionalized for illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental.
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    56 min
  • The Loyalty Trap: How Surveillance Pricing Turns Your Rewards App Into a Weapon with Stephanie Nguyen

    The Loyalty Trap: How Surveillance Pricing Turns Your Rewards App Into a Weapon with Stephanie Nguyen
    Feb 11 2026
    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? In this episode, hosts Brian Crowley and Eve Eden investigate surveillance pricing with Stephanie T. Nguyen, former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission and Senior Fellow at Columbia Law School. Stephanie led the FTC's first Office of Technology, spearheaded the agency's surveillance pricing study, and co-authored "The Loyalty Trap" -- exposing how loyalty programs exploit consumers through three stages: the Hook, the Hack, and the Hike. WHAT WE INVESTIGATE: The FTC Study -- How the agency used its special 6B research authority to compel companies to reveal how they use personal data and algorithms to charge different people different prices. Over 250 clients. Prices changing in minutes. Mouse movements, scroll behavior, and geolocation all feeding the machine. The Live Experiment -- Brian and Eve pull up Target.com simultaneously from Chicago and Nashville and discover different prices for the same products. They do the same with airline flights and find the same result. The Loyalty Trap -- How Starbucks showed fewer coupons to its most loyal customers. How McDonald's relaunched Monopoly requiring the app. How loyalty programs evolved from S&H stamps into data harvesting machines. The Invisible Design -- How UX practitioners play a critical role in making surveillance pricing invisible. Dark patterns, degraded price comparisons, contextual justification, and why Target rescinded its price match guarantee. The Big Questions -- Should companies hire external UX teams for consumer protection? Should UX designers be licensed like doctors and lawyers? SOURCES REFERENCED: "The Loyalty Trap" -- Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator (Nguyen & Levine) - https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-content/uploads/sites/412/2025/10/17195957/The-Loyalty-Trap.pdf"Loyalty programs track you so the store can charge you more" -- Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/18/starbucks-loyalty-program-surveillance-pricing/FTC Surveillance Pricing Study (Jan. 2025) - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-surveillance-pricing-study-indicates-wide-range-personal-data-used-set-individualized-consumer"Tech Brief: Airplane Response" -- Georgetown Law - https://www.law.georgetown.edu/tech-institute/insights/tech-brief-airplane-response-2/"The Next Frontier of Surveillance" -- Yale Journal on Regulation - https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-next-frontier-of-surveillance-investigating-pricing-systems-by-stephanie-t-nguyen/"The Price of Surveillance" -- Yale Journal on Regulation - https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-price-of-surveillance-the-parallel-evolution-of-targeted-ads-to-targeted-prices-by-stephanie-t-nguyen/ GUEST: Stephanie T. Nguyen -- Former Chief Technologist, FTC. Senior Fellow, Columbia Law School. Co-author, "The Loyalty Trap." Previously: White House (USDS), MIT Media Lab, Consumer Reports. HOSTS: Brian J. Crowley -- Senior UX Design Leader, Lead Instructor UW-Madison. CrowleyUX.com Eve Eden -- [Add bio] CORRECTIONS: [None at time of publishing] Have questions or corrections? Email: questions@uxmurdermystery.com Follow: @uxmurdermystery UX Murder Mystery is a joint production of EVE user experience design agency and CrowleyUX, where systems meet stories. Music by Nicolas Lee Edited by Kelsey Smith Intro Animation by Brian J. Crowley Copyright 2025 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden
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    46 min
  • How iRobot Lost $3.5 BILLION: The Roomba Bankruptcy Explained

    How iRobot Lost $3.5 BILLION: The Roomba Bankruptcy Explained
    Feb 3 2026

    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 Crowley and Eve Eden use true-crime storytelling methods to dissect one of the biggest product failures in consumer tech history. UX MURDER MYSTERY HOSTED BY Brian J. Crowley Eve Eden EDITED BY Kelsey Smith INTRO ANIMATION & LOGO DESIGN 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 Email us at: questions@UXmurdermystery.com Thank you for watching and or listening! Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts are commentary and speculation, not statements of fact. All discussions about real companies, individuals, or organizations are based on publicly available information, media reports, and personal opinions offered for the purpose of critique, education, and storytelling. We make no representations or warranties about the accuracy or completeness of any information discussed. Nothing in this podcast should be interpreted as a factual assertion about the actions, motives, or intentions of any individual or corporate entity. Listeners should conduct their own research before drawing conclusions. The creators and guests of this podcast disclaim all liability for any loss, harm, or damages arising from reliance on any information or opinions presented. Names, characters, and events may occasionally be dramatized or fictionalized for illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental.
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    33 min
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