You’ve probably sat in a car with a touchscreen and thought, Who the hell designed this? But before you answer, let me show you two designs that will make you feel pure delight—and pure rage.
First, the delight. In July 2025, McDonald’s Canada released a series of outdoor ads called “Cowboy Closeups.” They took their classic products—fries, Big Mac, vanilla cone—and turned them into Western icons. A jacket fringe that looks exactly like a pile of fries. A hatband that mirrors the Big Mac’s layers. A white shirt’s pleats that match the swirl of a soft serve.
When brand influence is strong enough, less is more.
No slogans, no CGI, no clutter. Just a simple visual hook that makes you smile and crave a burger. That ad cost peanuts to produce, but it spread like wildfire—because it respected the audience’s intelligence.
Now the rage.
Meet Jiyue, a Chinese electric car company born in 2021. Backed by Baidu (China’s Google) and Geely (a manufacturing giant), it had all the ingredients for success. Baidu designed the software; Geely built the hardware. What could go wrong?
Everything. Jiyue’s first model, the 01, came with a steering wheel that looked like a video game controller—cut in half, no top rim. And to shift gears? You had to reach up to a touchscreen on the center console and drag a finger across the display.
“That’s not a car. That’s a joke,” you’re thinking. And you’d be right.
Design that ignores human behavior isn’t innovation—it’s negligence.
Jiyue’s half steering wheel is a Formula 1 design, but F1 cars have a 1:1 steering ratio—you never need to cross your hands. A normal car needs 2.5 to 3 full turns to go from lock to lock. If you ever need to make a sharp turn, your hand will grab air where the top rim should be. In an emergency, that millisecond of fumbling could kill you.
And the screen shifter? Imagine merging onto a highway, one hand on the wheel, and you need to find a tiny virtual icon to switch from Reverse to Drive. Your arm lifts, your eyes leave the road, your patience snaps. It’s the classic engineering tragedy: novelty for novelty’s sake.
Even Baidu’s billionaire founder, Robin Li, saw the problem. During a test drive, he asked the CEO, Xia Yiping, “Without a turn-signal stalk, how do you signal early enough to warn other drivers?” Xia’s response? A laugh and: “Isn’t it cool? That’s how we designed it.”
When the CEO thinks “cool” matters more than “safe,” the company is already dead.
Jiyue is now bankrupt. But here’s the twist you didn’t see coming.
Internal whistleblowers revealed that Xia and his inner circle weren’t just designing stupid features—they were embezzling money. They forced suppliers to sign inflated contracts, pocketing the difference. The company had a $1 billion hole in its accounts before it ever delivered a car to customers. The “innovative” design wasn’t a mistake; it was a cover-up. Each ridiculous decision—no door handles, no physical buttons, the half-wheel—was a deliberate distraction, a way to claim they were building a “revolutionary” product while the executives were busy looting the company.
Baidu, which had already poured billions into the project, pulled the plug. As one insider said, “Lei Jun spent $8 billion to build Xiaomi’s car. How did you spend $12 billion and have nothing to show for it? We can all do the math.”
This is the lesson that most business leaders refuse to learn: Design is never just aesthetics. It’s a mirror of your incentives.
McDonald’s ad worked because their only incentive was to make people smile and buy food. Jiyue’s car failed because their real incentive was to enrich executives, not to serve drivers. The two companies had the same goal—create a “wow” experience—but one understood that “wow” must come from empathy, not from ego.
You’ve felt this in your own life. The app that adds a hidden gesture for no reason. The hotel room where the light switches are in the closet. The website that hides the “subscribe” button behind a 3D animation. Every one of those design choices says the same thing: We care more about looking clever than helping you.
So the next time you encounter a “brilliant” new design—in a product, a service, or a decision—ask yourself one question: Is this solving a real problem, or is it feeding someone’s bank account?
The answer will tell you whether you’re looking at the next McDonald’s ad, or the next $1 billion funeral.
FAQ
Q: Isn't it unfair to blame the CEO for design failures that were also approved by investors?
A: Investors share blame, but the CEO is the gatekeeper. If a leader prioritizes 'cool' over safety and finances, it's a failure of leadership, not just bad taste.
Q: What can a normal company do to avoid falling into the Jiyue trap?
A: Run every design decision through a simple test: 'Would this still feel good if we knew the user's hands were greasy and they were driving in rain?' If the answer is no, kill the feature.
Q: But many 'bad' designs like the iPhone's lack of headphone jack still became successful. Why does Jiyue fail where Apple succeeded?
A: Apple removed a headphone jack and replaced it with better wireless audio and waterproofing. Jiyue removed door handles and replaced them with nothing. The key is whether the trade-off actually improves the user's life—or only the designer's resume.