I am deeply disappointed with the new user interface design on Appian. The changes introduced have cluttered the visual space and made navigation more cumbersome, detracting from the efficient and streamlined experience we previously had. Please consider reverting to the previous UI, which was more efficient and straightforward.
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I also generally hate "magic" knowledge needed to navigate "modern" websites. "Magic" knowledge is as simple as an icon's meaning, or as complex as where to move a mouse to force a hover-over to appear that contains icons that do things. 25.2's change is a bit disorienting at first, and definitely a step in the wrong direction (IMO). I think it's a small impact UX-wise - we'll get used to it.
What's frustrating about the 25.2 developer experience is now there's even more clicks to get to my default state of editing an interface - Expression Mode + Preview. Why is this how I edit interfaces? Interfaces usually start with data design (not UI design), which is faster to deal with from the expression mode. On top of that, every reference to an interface rule from a rule dependent or record field points to a line in the interface expression. And while the 'editing' mode is useful sometimes, while unit testing the extra rectangles that appear on the UI by default are really distracting most of the time. So it's just easier to edit interfaces in Expression Mode + Preview for me.
I'm still not sure why Appian can't at least let developers set their preferences for the defaults of these two interface editor states. In a prior role at a partner, I was told that the company submitted a formal feature request for this, but that was many years ago. The feature seems like a win-win for folks who want to maintain low-code experience, and for developers like me who have to deal with complexity the majority of the time.
I see eye to eye with you