UX Murder Mystery

Brian Crowley and Eve Eden
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Design
  • Updated Weekly

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.

  1. 1d ago

    Ghosted by the Machine: Who Really Rejected Your Resume?

    Rejected ten minutes after applying. No feedback, no human contact, no explanation. Millions of job seekers know this exact experience, and most of them blame the same suspect: the AI. But is that who actually did it? In this episode, Brian Crowley and Eve Eden bring in an expert witness from inside the system: Max Gerdes, Executive Director of Staffing Solutions at Motion Recruitment, who has spent more than a decade recruiting UX, UI, product, and technology talent. Max walks through what really happens after the apply button, where automated rules end and AI begins, and why an instant rejection usually isn't what candidates think it is. The investigation moves through the Mobley v. Workday lawsuit, where a candidate alleges he was rejected from more than 100 jobs by employers using AI screening tools, the false negative problem where companies measure hiring speed but not the qualified people their systems throw away, and the accountability vacuum where nobody in the chain can fully explain a consequential rejection. Then the case widens to the platforms: Indeed and Glassdoor consolidating under one owner, hundreds of millions of candidate profiles under one roof, and Eve's own poll data suggesting the job board era may already be over. The episode closes with the defense's case: what automation has genuinely made better, and which decisions should never leave human hands. Links: World Economic Forum on AI in candidate screening: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/ai-hiring-human-touch-recruitment/ RPJ Law on the June 2026 Mobley v. Workday ruling: https://rpjlaw.com/recent-developments-in-mobley-v-workday-california-court-allows-key-ai-hiring-bias-claims-to-move-forward/ TechCrunch on the Indeed and Glassdoor integration and layoffs: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/indeed-glassdoor-to-lay-off-1300-staff/ Harvard Business Review on how AI assessment changes candidate behavior: https://hbr.org/2025/07/how-ai-assessment-tools-affect-job-candidates-behavior Motion Recruitment: https://motionrecruitment.com 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 ©2026 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden questions@UXmurdermystery.com Thank you for watching and or listening! 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.

  2. 1d ago ·  Bonus

    You Might Also Like: The Oprah Podcast

    Introducing Sons Are Struggling. Here’s What They Need from Us with Psychologist Dr. Shefali from The Oprah Podcast. Follow the show: The Oprah Podcast BUY THE BOOKS! Raising Conscious Sons https://amzn.to/4qHNVAk Raising Conscious Daughters https://amzn.to/4ydGaEU Oprah speaks with New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Shefali for a powerful two-part conversation about her new books, Raising Conscious Sons: Cultivating Purpose, Connection, and Inner Power in a Chaotic World and Raising Conscious Daughters: Building Confidence, Courage, and Inner Power in an Anxious World. Drawing on decades of clinical experience and her groundbreaking work on conscious parenting, Dr. Shefali explores the urgent challenges facing children today and offers a new vision for raising the next generation with emotional security, confidence and compassion. In part one, Oprah and Dr. Shefali discuss Raising Conscious Sons and the conflicting messages boys receive in today’s world: from the pressure to be tough, the expectation to suppress vulnerability to messages around identity and male sexuality. Shaped by a digital world she explains how we are experiencing a parental and cultural emergency. She believes we are in a crisis where our sons are losing the essential ingredients of what make a healthy boyhood: wellness, movement, tribe, adventure, risk, connection and sovereignty. Dr. Shefali reveals what sons want most from their fathers and mothers and how parents can help their sons build a deeper connection to their emotions and discover their own sense of purpose. Oprah and Dr. Shefali are joined by three mothers who share their questions about raising sons. 00:00:00 Welcome Dr. Shefali, author of “Raising Conscious Sons”  00:04:30 - The concept of conscious parenting  00:06:45 - Parents wakeup call  00:09:45 - The isolation of boyhood  00:13:00 - We are moving away from a shared reality  00:18:30 - Movement helps regulate boys 00:24:00 - What sons want most from their fathers 00:27:00 - What moms can do for their sons  00:34:00 - Teaching boys to express feelings  00:36:40 - Raising boys with empathy 00:39:30 - Talking to sons about sex  00:41:40 - Understand what your kid is exposed to online  Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast:  https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to team@podroll.fm.

    You Might Also Like: The Oprah Podcast

  3. Aug 27

    Not Lovin' It: How the McDonald's App Turned Customers Into the Product

    McDonald's built one of the most downloaded food apps in the world, and the customers using it describe a crime scene: orders charged and canceled with no refund path, deals that vanish at the register, rewards that fail to scan in front of a line of strangers, and a privacy policy that says the company may profile their psychological trends and behavior. In this zoomed in episode, Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden investigate how an app can be a business triumph and a customer experience disaster at the same time? Links: WFTV Action 9 investigation on canceled orders and refunds: https://www.wftv.com/news/local/not-lovin-it-mcdonalds-customers-have-mobile-app-complaints/Y3ASQYX6XNDDFPCTS56U6S3YZA/ Tasting Table on the disappearing app deals: https://www.tastingtable.com/2099096/problem-mcdonalds-mobile-app-according-to-customers/ BigGo News on app surveillance and two tier pricing: https://biggo.com/news/202510090122_McDonalds_App_Privacy_Concerns Daily Meal on what the app knows about you: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1455292/mcdonalds-app-tracks-activity/ McDonald's Privacy Statement: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/privacy.html McDonald's app page with the August 2026 terms update: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/download-app.html 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 ©2026 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden questions@UXmurdermystery.com Thank you for watching and or listening! 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.

  4. Aug 13

    She Built AI at Google. Now She's Warning Newsrooms.

    The news is on the table and AI is holding the murder weapon. Or is it? This week, UX Murder Mystery hosts Brian Crowley and Eve Eden interrogate a witness who has worked both sides of the story: Ovetta Sampson, founder of Right AI, former Director of UX for Google's Core Machine Learning, and a onetime police-beat reporter who learned early to second source everything, including her own mother. Together they examine the evidence: the "AI is inevitable" narrative the major outlets keep pushing, the bias that gets baked in before anyone touches a keyboard, the graduates booing tech executives at commencement, and the artists fighting back by poisoning the training data itself. Ovetta runs her Human Engagement Risks framework over the modern newsroom, offers real advice for small outlets with no ethics team, and explains what it takes to build AI with equity as a load-bearing value instead of a press release. Then comes the verdict: is the tech industry, as it stands today, good for democracy? CONNECT WITH OVETTA: Ovetta Sampson: https://www.ovetta-sampson.com/ Right AI: https://www.rightainow.com/ Designing with AI Training: https://www.rightainow.com/designing-with-ai Designing for AI Training (cohort starts Sept. 9): https://www.rightainow.com/designing-for-ai How Risky Is Your AI Design? Free MindfulAI™ Risk Assessment Tool: https://www.ovetta-sampson.com/mindfulai-diagnostic-tool Open for Speaking Events: https://www.ovetta-sampson.com/book-ovetta REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE: AISHA: https://aisha.ai/ Coded Bias (PBS Independent Lens): https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/coded-bias/ CREDITS: 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 ©2026 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden questions@UXmurdermystery.com Thank you for watching and or listening! 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.

  5. Aug 6

    It's a Trap: How Disney's $350M Star Wars Hotel ended after 18 Months

    Disney spent $350 million on a Star Wars hotel where guests live inside the story for two days. It closed in 18 months. In this episode, Brian Crowley and Eve Eden investigate the Galactic Starcruiser with two guests who actually stayed aboard and loved every minute: Katie Swindler, author of Life & Death Design, and Jacob Swindler, environmental and experiential design leader. Together they dig into the mystery at the heart of the case: how does an experience with record guest satisfaction die this fast? From the $6,000 price wall and the app that held the whole story together, to Jenny Nicholson's viral teardown and the business math that never worked, this is a story about what happens when great design meets a doomed model. Katie and Jacob also share how the lessons of the Starcruiser are shaping Badgerton, their own immersive retreat on 107 acres of Wisconsin prairie. Links: Badgerton: https://badgerton.com/ Badgerton blog: https://badgerton.substack.com Life and Death Design by Katie Swindler: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/life-and-death-design/ Katie Swindler: http://www.katieswindler.com Jenny Nicholson, "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4 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 ©2026 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden questions@UXmurdermystery.com Thank you for watching and or listening! 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.

  6. Jul 30

    Are we Waymo's Tests?

    A driverless Waymo rolls within a few feet of a guns-drawn felony stop in downtown Los Angeles while officers shout directions at a car with no one inside. The company says the whole encounter lasted about 15 seconds. Months later in San Francisco, passengers film themselves pleading with their robotaxi as it drives directly over lit fireworks on the Fourth of July, while a bystander waves at the car to stop. Nobody is hurt in either case. But these are not isolated moments: a robotaxi cutting through a DUI checkpoint with nobody to ticket, 50 vehicles pranked down a dead-end street, dead-battery Waymos towed out of holiday gridlock tell a bigger story. In this episode, Brian and Eve dig into the latest state of Waymo: over 100 million driverless miles, zero reported fatalities, a rapid expansion into new cities and freeways, and a growing pile of edge cases the system was never designed to meet. What happens when the service works exactly as designed and still fails the moment? Who is accountable when there is no driver? And Eve asks the question every rider should be sitting with: are we the tests? 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.

  7. Jul 24

    Rejected at 1:50 AM???

    Derek Mobley applied to over 100 jobs in seven years. He was rejected every single time — sometimes within the hour, once at 1:50 in the morning. No human ever read his application. Now his lawsuit against Workday — the software vendor, not the employers — could redefine who's accountable when an algorithm decides who gets to work. This week, Brian and Eve are joined by Jess Lowry, host of the Deprecated Human podcast, whose own research tracks the job opportunities that vanish inside AI hiring pipelines. Together they dig into the three-alarm fire at the company that literally sells "human capital management": the first-of-its-kind AI discrimination case (Mobley v. Workday), the Salesforce-linked data breach that spawned a wave of class actions, and 2,100 layoffs at a company posting record profits — all while the AI at the center of it all is still screening candidates today. What happens when the system managing humans stops seeing them? Let's investigate. Guest: Jess Lowry — Deprecated Human podcast Listen to Deprecated Human: https://open.spotify.com/show/7n3qeYf0aNNOF8Rvh3Kkcb 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.

  8. Jul 16

    If Roblox Won't Protect Kids, They Won't Protect the Business

    A five year build. Twelve thousand players. Gone in an afternoon. This week on UX Murder Mystery, we reopen the Roblox case file, and this time the victims are not just kids. They are the developers who built the platform's billion dollar economy. Back in Episode 3, we put Roblox on trial for a design culture that treated child safety as a cost center. The verdict then: platform design is safety design. This week, Roblox proves that promise runs in only one direction, and the developers are next. Hackers have moved on from stealing rare items to stealing entire games. Using fake job offers and malware, they hijack developer accounts and walk away with the games, the groups, and the Robux revenue. Then comes the real crime scene: a recovery process so broken that a 15 year old fought support for over a month with nothing to show for it, while stolen games were restored only after a journalist emailed for comment. Brian and Eve break down where the UX actually failed: the missing chain of custody that cannot tell theft from a sale, the burden of proof dumped onto the victim with the least power, and a support system whose only working escalation path is "be newsworthy." We close on the money behind the framing and the wall of lawsuits now surrounding the platform, from a federal MDL to a securities class action triggered by the very safety features the child safety cases demanded. Same defendant. Same design culture. New body count. Further reading: 404 Media, "Hackers Are Hijacking Entire Roblox Games Now" (Joseph Cox) https://www.404media.co/hackers-are-hijacking-entire-roblox-games-now/ BleepingComputer, on the 610,000 account theft ring arrests https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-arrested-for-hijacking-and-selling-610-000-roblox-accounts/ 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 / ©2026 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden / questions@UXmurdermystery.com / "Thank you for watching and or listening!" 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.

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5
out of 5
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Brian Crowley and Eve Eden
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    44
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    UX Murder Mystery