and it wasn't even the best design or the most practical one, not even the one that actually could be implemented that "won". it was the one the designer managed to defend to a room of peers who were just glad it wasn't their turn.
In my day we didn't need "/grill-me", we would hire a 24 year old designer, loosely describe the feature, ask them to imagine the user interface and draw it for us, then come to a shared understanding by roasting the shit out of the designs in an hours long humiliation ritual