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Users hate change

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Re: Users hate change

#91

Post by wycy »

zzzcpan wrote: post #80
wycy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do hate change, regardless of how much better that change is. I don't think I've ever seen a UI redesign over which users didn't get into a massive uproar. I certainly saw the massive uproar any time FB introduced a UI change. Sure, some UI redesigns are just plain bad and users are justified in hating them. The twitter redesign does appear to be clunky/bad as you noted. The new Reddit seems to be another case…

> regardless of how much better it is. No, the simple truth is it's not better if users hate it. It means it failed to account for existing users and their use cases.

With that rationale you literally can't change anything ever. Version 1.0 ever after.

It is better if it ultimately just takes time for them to like it. The same people who initially hated it will most likely grow to like it. When we migrated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 last year, my boss was extremely upset--but he was just as upset a decade ago having to upgrade to Windows 7 in the first place.

Users come around eventually.

Re: Users hate change

#92

Post by bibyte »

I think there shouldn't be change in a software project just for the sake of change. It should be okay to just maintain a project without changing major parts of it. Unfortunately there are some projects that just go the opposite way. Major UI changes every few months just for the sake of it. As for myself I am not opposed to changes, but only when it's meaningful.

Re: Users hate change

#93

Post by compiler-guy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #58
redbeard0x0a wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best analogy of finished software I have heard is this: > Software is done, like mowing the lawn is done. We live in an imperfect world, if we want to keep ourselves safe and prevent bad actors out of our data/technology. Updates are a part of the process. You don't mow your lawn once, it has to be maintained. Which is the same as software. This is something that we would be all better for if we could teach this…

That's conflating maintenance with change. There are really two distinct types of updates - one that's patching up security holes and ensures the software keeps running on modern systems; the other adds and removes features. They ought to be distinct. The lawn analogy is not apt, because software left alone does not change at all. It's one of the most stable things in the universe. The environment changes, slowly, an…

Even adding features is fine (and to a lesser extent, removing them), as long as you don't change the workflow users depend on.

Re: Users hate change

#94

Post by PeterisP »

Insanity wrote: post #78
yoz-y wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription model is actually way better if you don't want to end up with feature bloat. Because you actually get money from users even if you only ever fix bugs and improve performance. If you freeze your features you will soon arrive at a point where everybody who wanted your software bought it and then the revenue stops.

Unless you have competitors and they offer (niche) features that you suddenly want as well.

Once you get to the point where pretty much every new feature serves just a niche, plugins are the solution.

If need one of a hundred niche features, it's great to have software that has it, and it's also really great to have softare that doesn't have the other 99 features; it's better from usability perspective if they don't get automatically added for me.

Re: Users hate change

#95

Post by camgunz »

wycy wrote: post #74
johnday wrote: post #33

It's interesting to compare the user responses to updates by Facebook and Twitter respectively. Facebook's UI has changed significantly over the last 15 or so years. Features have appeared and disappeared, boxes have been arranged and rearranged. But there's rarely a big fuss beyond it getting a little slower each time (roughly commensurate with consumer hardware speedup, in fact). People don't really notice and they…

People do hate change, regardless of how much better that change is. I don't think I've ever seen a UI redesign over which users didn't get into a massive uproar. I certainly saw the massive uproar any time FB introduced a UI change. Sure, some UI redesigns are just plain bad and users are justified in hating them. The twitter redesign does appear to be clunky/bad as you noted. The new Reddit seems to be another case…

I liked Windows 7 so much more than Windows Vista I probably can't express it. Same when Firefox moved to a slimmer UI. Anecdata, of course, but "users will unfailingly hate ever major redesign without fail regardless of how much better it is" seems impossible to substantiate.

Re: Users hate change

#96

Post by star-trek-fleet »

flohofwoe wrote: post #5

My pet theory is that every software product has a "peak version". Before that peak version, the product is not yet in a complete state, and it is fairly obvious, both for the developer and user, what features are missing. Once the peak version is reached, new features are not added because they improve the product, but to justify selling the product again to existing customers, and to 'keep the team busy'. Instead o…

That's basically the ROI curve of software.

Beginning: Slow and almost no return. Slow being a lot of intellectual effort to lay the foundation. No return being the foundation does not do anything useful, yet.

Middle: Fast and linear return. Building on a sound foundation allow adding feature that is simple and with high quality; and the return is linear to the effort.

End-of-life: Slow and almost no return. Bloated software eventually is dragged down by historical burden (tech debt, legacy features, etc.). Massive effort is needed to add feature, and the return is almost painful to stand.

A lot of recent software took the approach of forced update to extend the middle life. Like the chrome today is considerably different thing than its beginning. Py3 tries to demolish its historical legacy, and embrace new foundations.

Re: Users hate change

#97

Post by aeorgnoieang »

Rainymood wrote: post #10

I love how the author shouts from the rooftops the following >This argument is both incredibly entitled and terribly egocentric (...) While this whole post reeks with entitlement and egocentrism - but from his perspective, so that is OK! To me, it feels like the author is incapable of empathising with a larger user base than himself and only thinks about his benefit and how the changes affect him and how he uses the…

Yes, and customers do very much vote with their wallets, even when the costs of switching exceed the benefits of switching!

What kind of bike, or most other physical products, get updates or upgrades for free whether one wants them or not? Certainly physical products with software and networking can, but people are often upset when that happens anyways. I'm pretty sure almost all bikes are not in fact automatically updated or upgraded after they're purchased. And that's essentially a 'feature' now in comparison to a lot of software purchases.

Re: Users hate change

#98

Post by ptero »

I take a view in between of the quoted article and the video it criticizes. There are costs to changes. The key, to me, whether those changes are outweighed by functionality improvement, as on average perceived by users. There will always be folks who do not like the change, but if the majority of the users like new functionality (maybe after a bit of griping), or most strong advocates among users love it, this is probably a change for the better.

Unfortunately, many software changes are done without bringing the benefit for the users (e.g., "we are switching to framework/model X, so UX is now different; deal with it"). Those changes are pretty hard to justify. Not always impossible (e.g., you may have reached the limits of older design and have to spend a lot on devops, etc.), but hard and for those cases the company should bend over backwards to minimize pain for users. My 2c.

Re: Users hate change

#99

Post by aeorgnoieang »

jhallenworld wrote: post #73

Developers also hate change, unless it's their own change.

Of course it depends on the nature of the specific change. I'm sure lots of developers really appreciate bug fixes, especially for bugs they've encountered, let alone developed workarounds or patches.

But there's a reason (really, lots of reasons) why it's a great idea to pin one's third-party dependencies. Change is, at least, costly; at beast trivially so (but never literally nothing).

Re: Users hate change

#100

Post by johnday »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55
johnday wrote: post #33

It's interesting to compare the user responses to updates by Facebook and Twitter respectively. Facebook's UI has changed significantly over the last 15 or so years. Features have appeared and disappeared, boxes have been arranged and rearranged. But there's rarely a big fuss beyond it getting a little slower each time (roughly commensurate with consumer hardware speedup, in fact). People don't really notice and they…

> Facebook's UI has changed significantly over the last 15 or so years. Features have appeared and disappeared, boxes have been arranged and rearranged. But there's rarely a big fuss beyond it getting a little slower each time (roughly commensurate with consumer hardware speedup, in fact). People don't really notice and they don't really care. Are you using the same Facebook as I do? Every time they rearranged more t…

I guess that's a side effect of the siloing that goes on on Facebook. I certainly heard nothing major about it, and orders of magnitude less than the same/similar people about the Twitter redesigns.
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