Let me set the scene.
It’s 2019, and I’ve joined a company where I’m tasked to meet with potential customers to demonstrate what a new design-focused tool can do. Specifically, how it can help them move from design to development faster than they thought possible. While preparing for those meetings, I needed design files from these companies, so I started asking for them. I wanted to prove our workflow using their actual designs.
Thankfully, they sent files. Over the years, this turned into something I never planned for: a collection of real working files from automotive, medical, industrial automation, IoT, and aerospace & defense. Not portfolio pieces. The messy ones. The kind designers usually don't show anyone.
I have seen things.
Incredible things and genuinely horrifying things. Pea-sized buttons on safety-critical screens. A so-called design system that turned out to be just a shared font and a PowerPoint template. On the flip side, interfaces so beautiful that I felt real emotion looking at a Figma file at 8am on a Tuesday.
It’s also worth noting that nearly all the designs referenced here were created without the help of generative AI, mainly because it wasn’t available like it is today. They weren’t prompted into existence or assembled from patterns scraped across the internet. They were designed. Thoughtfully. Crafted by people working through real constraints, tradeoffs, and decisions that don’t come with a “regenerate” button.
This is my attempt to make sense of it all. Pour yourself something. Let’s talk about what’s really going on out there.
To make these patterns easier to compare, I looked at each interface through a consistent set of lenses. I also needed a rating system for each category, so I used High, Medium, Low, and None (for instances where the design didn’t include that feature). Think of it as a field guide to best practices for user interface design, grounded in what real teams actually shipped.
In the end, I looked at 44 UX/UI designs across five industries. Below is a portion of the industry chart for industrial user interfaces (customer names are not disclosed for obvious reasons).
As you can see, each interface was evaluated across 16 design lenses (layout, interactions, visuals, etc.) and rated based on the legend above. I wasn’t solely focused on quality but aimed to reveal where teams and designers invest their time, where they simplify, and how real-world constraints shape the final outcome.
Here’s a part of the evaluation matrix for assessing UX/UI best practices. 16 different UI criteria (from Header Bar through Camera Feed) assessed across multiple user interface examples. Names of the customers are, of course, omitted for good reasons.
Automotive UIs have gone fully off the rails, in the best possible way, and I am here for it. A decade or so ago, the screen in the middle of the dash only needed enough space for GPS and a button to skip to the next song. My 2012 Jeep Wrangler proves that! Now, we have these pillar-to-pillar all-in-one displays, ambient lighting systems synced to your playlist, 3D terrain rendering, and ADAS interfaces that look like they belong in a fighter jet.
Automotive UI design requires attention management. The most effective prioritize brief interactions that don't compete with the task of driving.
The designs I've reviewed span a wide range from minimal, stripped-down interfaces to rich, branded experiences featuring photorealistic 3D models, transitions, and full brand theming. You might disagree, but I believe automotive UI design should have one rule above all else: don't make it harder for the driver. They're already managing a lot on the road. The ones that landed understood this; those that fell apart seemed to forget about it.
Medical UI lives under a specific pressure; get it wrong, and someone might die. It's understandable that medical UI typically plays it safe. Conservative color schemes. Minimal noise, minimal distraction.
What's less understandable is when safe becomes utterly confusing. I've seen medical interfaces so stripped of visual hierarchy that it could take a doctor or nurse minutes to find a button, when they only have seconds to spare. That is not very safe, IMO.
Medical device user interface design operates under life-or-death pressure, where clarity isn't just good design, but a safety requirement (you can try Qt's Oxyscan interactive demo here).
The best medical UIs I collected nail the primary need: calm, clear, and immediately readable. Beauty through functionality, not flashy decor. The worst ones make me genuinely uneasy about ever being on the other side of them.
Semantic color matters more than brand color: The psychology behind semantic color in interfaces is well documented, and ignoring it in safety-critical contexts isn’t a style choice; it’s a liability. Red means danger. Green means okay. Using red as an accent color because it's "on brand" creates false alarms. The strongest medical interfaces respected the existing color language.
Visual hierarchy is a safety feature: Interfaces stripped of hierarchy aren't “minimalist”, they're dangerous. When a medical professional has seconds to find a button, every pixel of spacing and every font weight difference matters.
Inconsistent spacing reveals organizational problems: Spacing decisions that don't match screen to screen or hierarchy that shifts. These aren't just aesthetic issues; they're signs that multiple people touched the interface without a shared system.
Design systems are nearly nonexistent: In the many examples that were shared with me, there were almost no integrated design systems. Theming was rare. A few shared tokens if you were lucky. Medical device user interface design deserves more rigor when it comes to design consistency, as it can directly affect patient outcomes.
Safe doesn't mean good: Conservative color palettes and minimal distraction make sense in medical contexts. However, playing it safe seems like it has become an excuse for never making decisions at all, resulting in confusing, hard-to-use interfaces.
Defense interfaces look like they were designed in 2003, and they probably were, for good reason. They work. They pass the safety standards checklist. There's something I genuinely respect about that, even when it looks like it belongs in a Cold War submarine drama.
When you swing to the modern aerospace side, suddenly you're looking at some of the most sophisticated, intentional, technically refined UI work I've encountered anywhere. Full design systems. The same ADAS-level refinement I mentioned in automotive, but turned up to 11.
In aerospace system design, multi-screen command interfaces emphasize structured layouts and restrained visuals, prioritizing signal clarity over visual expression in mission-critical environments.
The quality gap is industry-defining: The difference between the best and worst interfaces in aerospace & defense is wider than any other industry. When it's good, it's the most sophisticated UI work I've seen. When it's bad, it's barely functional.
Design systems are directly associated with quality: Aerospace interfaces with full design systems, tokens, and component libraries scored high across every metric. The defense interfaces without systems scored low across the board.
Legacy can be a strength or an anchor: Defense UI that looks like it's from 2003 isn't always a problem, if it works and passes safety standards. When it doesn't get modernized, though, it becomes an anchor holding back usability.
Technical refinement shows immediately: The strongest aerospace interfaces had ADAS-level polish, camera feed integration, and meticulous attention to composition and color harmony. It's clear when precision is a core value versus an afterthought. The best aerospace system design work I’ve seen treats every pixel as mission-critical.
The gap reveals organizational priorities: That massive quality gap tells you everything about whether design had a seat at the table or got handed the project after all the real decisions were made.
Industrial and manufacturing interfaces carry decades of HMI legacy gauges, status indicators, list views, and a color palette with shades of grey that only exist on factory floors. For a long time, that was fine. These designs were built for operators who knew them cold. Familiarity was the highly sought-after “feature”.
Something's shifting, though. There's a real wave of teams bringing actual design thinking into this space, and when it lands, it's genuinely exciting to see. The interfaces are still dense and functional, but they finally feel like someone considered the person using them.
There's a new wave of industrial UI that's bringing design thinking into a space anchored in familiarity. Check out the Factory Pulse demo, built with Qt.
When it doesn't land, it looks almost like a new UI skin stretched over a 15-year-old product, somehow making the whole experience worse. Better looking, harder to use. Which, in an industrial context, doesn’t align with the persona you are designing for: the operator.
Color harmony indicates a lack of communication: Blue, yellow, and maroon on the same screen isn't a design choice; it's evidence that developers worked in separate branches without talking. The strongest interfaces made deliberate, consistent color decisions across every screen.
Information density needs hierarchy: Industrial interfaces are inherently data-heavy. The problem isn't showing lots of information. It's showing it with no visual hierarchy. When everything looks equally important, nothing is.
Design systems are missing: Almost no deliberate, documented systems. A few local components, if you're lucky. The lack of design systems indicates why color harmony and composition problems are so widespread. Most of these interfaces appeared to have never even started the conversation about design system maturity.
Familiarity is valuable, but not a must-have: Operators value familiarity, but that doesn't mean the interface should look unchanged for 15 years. The best updates preserved familiar patterns while improving usability. Good industrial UI respects the operator’s mental model while still raising the bar.
The fix isn't complicated: Build a system, write it down, and say no when someone wants to add another color. Most of these interfaces appeared to have never had that conversation.
IoT is basically a catch-all for anything with a screen that talks to another screen, which means the design quality range is enormous. We're talking “genuinely inspired” on one end and “my 7-year-old made this last weekend” on the other. No offense, Abby. You are perfect.
Smart home apps. Monitoring dashboards. Consumer wearables. They're all technically IoT, and they have almost nothing else in common. The best ones are mobile-first, visually compelling, and surprisingly delightful in ways you don't expect. The worst ones feel like someone exported a spreadsheet, added a dark mode, and called it quits for the day.
In IoT, more than anywhere else, the UI is basically the receipt.
IoT User Experiences are either intentionally designed (clear, cohesive, and invisible) or fragmented systems that expose every seam. Check out the Smart Home project, built with Qt.
The quality range is almost as wide as in aerospace: From genuinely inspired to barely functional, IoT has an extreme quality variation. There's no middle ground. User interfaces either have intentional design or they don't.
Design systems create understanding: Entries with strong design systems stood out immediately, not because they were flashy, but because everything felt like it belonged together. Entries without systems showed their inconsistency just as fast.
Mobile-first thinking pays off: The strongest IoT interfaces were mobile-first, visually compelling, and often surprisingly delightful. They understood that the phone is the primary interface, not an afterthought.
The UI reveals company priorities instantly: In IoT, more than anywhere else, the UI is the receipt. You can tell immediately whether design had a seat at the table or got cc'd on the email after launch.
Consumer expectations are rising: Users compare IoT apps to their banking app, their ride-sharing app, their social media. The bar for “acceptable” UI is constantly rising as consumer software gets more polished. IoT user experience is now being judged against the best apps on the planet, whether you like it or not.
After reviewing 44 design files across five industries, the pattern becomes clear. The gap between the work that landed and the work that fell apart isn't really about the design team's skillset. It's a priority gap.
The teams producing the strongest work aren't necessarily smarter or more creative. They just decided that design mattered early enough to build the infrastructure around it (the systems, the standards, the culture of saying no to things that don't fit).
Every so-called “bad” interface I collected had designers behind it. Every confusing medical screen, every industrial dashboard with three random accent colors, every IoT app that looked like an exported spreadsheet: someone designed those. The difference isn't talent. It's whether design had the organizational support to do it right.
I keep mentioning design systems in this analysis because they're the clearest signal of organizational commitment. When a company builds a design system, they're saying: “We value consistency enough to maintain it. We'll push back on random color additions. We'll enforce standards even when it slows down shipping.”
That commitment shows up immediately in the final user experience. The interfaces with design systems felt cohesive, intentional, and trustworthy. The ones without systems showed every scar of compromise, every rushed decision, every moment when someone said, “We'll fix it later,” and never did.
If you're building any kind of interface (automotive, medical, industrial, aerospace, IoT, whatever), the question isn't “Do we have talented designers?” The question is: “Does design have the organizational support it needs to say no, to build design systems, and to maintain standards over time?”
After seven years of archiving design files, that's the pattern that holds across every industry. The best work doesn't come from the most talented individuals. It comes from teams that decided design mattered and built the foundation to prove it. That’s what UX/UI best practices actually look like in the wild, and it has nothing to do with following a checklist of best practices for user interface design. It’s about organizational will.