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Users hate change

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Re: Users hate change

#261

Post by Spivak »

nofunsir wrote: post #168
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.

"everybody who wanted your software bought it and then the revenue stops." That's... how it should work. You don't get to hook into their wallets for time and all eternity. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. everybody who wanted your bought it and then the revenue stops. ... and then you go do something else! That is the prec…

Sure but then the well dries up for software maintenance and you end up with a slowly degrading product as the environment in which it runs slowly shifts around it.

Then you have to secure a new vendor when it eventually breaks completely which is basically the same as buying yearly versions. Or you pay a subscription/maintenance contract so that the software keeps being maintained.

The problem with software maintenance is that it isn't a 'full company' job so you have devs sitting around who might as well add features for large clients since it makes them happy and you keep getting that sweet ARR.

Re: Users hate change

#262

Post by brokensegue »

ryandrake wrote: post #139
svnpenn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of it is tards like Mark Otto: https://github.com/mdo that make changes without regard of how useful or disruptive they are: https://twitter.com/mdo/status/830138373230653440

Wow, that Twitter thread was horrible. Users: “this UI change is terrible, please provide a way to opt out!” Designer: “You’re all wrong. I’m an artist and I say it’s better. Get over it!” Literally the trashiest response a developer can have to honest end user feedback. All ego. May I never have to work with this guy.

honestly it reads mostly fine to me. people are overreacting to a trivial change.

Re: Users hate change

#263

Post by anaphor »

sizzle wrote: post #256
_pghu wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you’re being downvoted because your post comes across as another smug designer/product person saying “I know better than you, you uneducated philistine”, with a side of “you just haven’t seen it done right and your personal experience is wrong.” I’m sure Reddit’s abortion of a redesign has went through hundreds of rounds of UX testing and has been signed off on by the masters of the field, but it’s still sl…

The author's post came off the same way you've described (to my ears), while targeting design without any concrete examples so it's all conjecture as far as I'm concerned. Designers and developers should work closely together, I depend on them for their technical feasibility/performance subject matter expertise. "Reddit redesign [...] it’s still slow, unnecessary, and buggy." I agree Reddit's redesign is a mess and i…

How do you know they didn't?

Re: Users hate change

#264

Post by sjy »

NowThenGoodBad wrote: post #114
PeterisP wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just like Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, Microsoft backpedalled between 2011 and 2016 versions (those are for Mac) and removed a significant amount of functionality. Files closed with the application no longer reopen, UI elements are gone, and, worse yet, you can't completely customize all of the possible keyboard shortcuts any more, you can't even find access to them. To my understanding, this was for 2 reasons (ex…

Lost functionality in Office 2016 has been driving me crazy, too. It seems that most of the problems are derived from the 2016 apps implementing app sandboxing (which Apple requires for distribution through the Mac App Store). The 2011 apps are unsandboxed, but I'm not sure how much longer it will be before Apple turns off the compatibility mode for legacy apps.

Re: Users hate change

#265

Post by stock_toaster »

cm2187 wrote: post #245
holy_city wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly? Because no software is free from bugs and there will always be a need for support. The difference between single sale and subscription can be life or death for a company, its products, and its support. But if you don't feel that a subscription to a service adds value, please don't buy it and voice your concern to the developers. Especially if they're a small shop. That said, subscriptions can be canceled. F…

I think software is one of the only industries where customers are charged for defects in the product.

I think it is also one of the rare industries where the price of the good is so vastly under-priced (often zero!) for the value it provides -- especially if you use the "sell once, update forever" model people claim to desire. Few people would want to pay for it that way though, I would assume.

Especially considering that so many people get extremely high quality software for free (open source, free software, apple style "comes with hardware purchase", etc) these days.

Re: Users hate change

#266

Post by sjy »

sah2ed wrote: post #194
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not at all true of the Adobe stuff. The real work in Photoshop or Illustrator still happens on the Mac.

But it is only a matter of time. Once webassembly achieves near feature parity with the native versions, you bet Adobe will switch users to the webassembly version. From Adobe's perspective, it offers a lot of benefits: - they don't have maintain build farms or pay a CDN to host GBs of binaries of native installers (for different OSes); - users will always be on the latest (read: most secure) version since there is n…

If the user has to download the whole webassembly binary at the beginning of every session, it seems unlikely that Adobe would save money on CDNs.

Re: Users hate change

#267

Post by m463 »

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…

> new features

..."add value"

My theory is MVP is what they ship, then it's about the monetizing.

Re: Users hate change

#268

Post by hinkley »

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #51
_nalply wrote: post #17

My wife has handicaps (deaf and cerebral palsy). She gets nervous and mistrustful if something has changed. She hates updates and asked me why the companies can't let the software alone. She has a point. Updates and nagging dialogs have a cost which is higher for non-IT people. Imagine your old neighbor being confused if he should allow that update or not and being stressed about because these update requests don't s…

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…

Former boss: software is done when nobody is willing to work on it anymore.

Re: Users hate change

#269

Post by zxcmx »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #243
ken wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that revenue stream ends before the "fix bugs and improve performance" step. People buy based on screenshots/demos/trials/reviews, and those don't expose the deep bugs you run into 3 months later when doing real work. Shovels break, light bulbs burn out. Then you go buy another one, and there's a good chance it's better than the earlier one. The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality, and people kee…

> The manufacturer keeps working to improve the quality Call me cynical, but I think it's naive to make this claim. Manufacturers don't optimize quality, they optimize profits. Even if there's sufficient competition, manufacturers don't race upwards to improve quality, they race downwards to reduce the cost and undercut the competition. You can see this in kitchen appliances. People complain about how they don't last…

Information asymmetry is also a problem. The $50 blender might be trading on a beloved brand name... but with the metal gears replaced by plastic and glue in place of the fasteners. How can the average person tell?

What you really want to read is reviews from 3 years in the future but you can’t. So you buy the $30 blender because it’s too hard to assess whether the $50 one is worth it.

I really liked the hn article the other day on assessing garment quality. The first step in stemming the tide of garbage is being informed.

In the software world SaaS tends to optimise for growth and customer retention, which is probably better aligned to meet people’s needs than optimising for first sale.

Re: Users hate change

#270

Post by jasonlotito »

The author completely ignores the part where the customers want the changes. This entire post is incredibly entitled and terribly egocentric, as well as being wrong-headed on several counts.
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