IMO a good interface should behave like it gives priority to the universe of workflows, that it respects the universality of Universal Machines and doesn't just merely resemble an appliance. Siemens NX, MSOffice/LibreOffice, Adobe CS6 Master Collection, and KDE 3.5 (Konqueror > Dolphin) are all examples off the top of my head of applications which, in varyng amounts, respected this universality principle in UI/UX design. They were fields to put your workflows together on, like ComfyUI is in image generation. Gnome has been the antithesis of this. Any kind of "simplified design" just seems to me like an artist has control and not an engineer-mathematician.
Great UI/UX will foster emergence in habits and workflows, AND AVOID BREAKING MUSCLE MEMORY AT ALMOST ANY COST! Terrible UI/UX will create hard but beautiful chutes to push cattle through and into the money fleecing machine.