even if in most places (as you assert) they are doing it consistently and systematically
I didn't assert that; I only took issue with your assertion to the contrary.
Like you, I have seen and workd with many designs that have annoyed me to death. I knew, in contrast to your assertion, that the cause was not that someone had obssesed over the design. Quite the opposite: the designers did not know what the needed to know to ask the right questions to do it right, or to turn the right answers into a design that best supported that.
Last comment from me on this topic, but I found the discussion very interesting.