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UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

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Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#21
As a counterpoint, when you change the insides, no one notices: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040525-00/?p=39...

>And with Calc, that’s exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. “Look at Calc, same as it always was.”

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the other way around for me. The product that goes through more redesigns (and inevitably hides or drops features as a result) seems shakier. In comparison, I'm still using foobar2000 and Craigslist 20 years later.

It depends on the product. If it's a site that you're directly making payments on, customers usually want to see something something that looks modern and recently updated. I don't have the wording for the survey question, but the result boiled down to old looking sites/creaky clunky sites are seen as less trustworthy to ecommerce buyers, at least the ones one of my former clients surveyed.

Craigslist is famously old school. But if I go to an online retailer of any scale and the site looks like something out of the late 90s, I'm going to be suspicious that nothing (including security practices) has been updated in the last 20 years.

Other things like non-monetized blogs can stand being retro.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#24
Though there are sometimes good reasons to do so, company brand (logo, typography, name, etc.) refreshes often come across as an employment program for designers. There are legit reasons--e.g. working better on mobile or reflecting that a company doesn't do what it used to do any longer. But I see the sort of redesign where a company subtly adjusted the hue of its logo and I'm like "Why?"

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#25

No, UI redesigns are a waste of time for the user . They are very effective at getting the executives who sponsor them promoted, because they look great in a PowerPoint. The actual customer of an executive is the finance department, because they are the ones who actually control the headcount & budgets that an executive needs, and they are usually not the user. How the product works is often invisible to someone who…

Strongly agree.

No UI is really intuitive enough that there isn't a formal or informal learning and even training cost to it. Then the redesign invariably finds a new way to hide the controls (hamburger menus, ... menus, gosh knows what else).

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#26
post #6

Can anyone here explain why YouTube (namely the mobile interface) goes through a total redesign every 1-2 years? Is it just to earn some unknown manager another promotion? I'm getting really sick of it at this point.

Pretty much that, yep. There's very little productive new ground to grow on if you're working on YouTube. There's existing glaring site problems, but they're on purpose and ideologically driven (shorts, placebo dislike, subscriptions mean nothing) so no one is going to touch them. It's politically safer and more advantageous to mess with the UI and irritate all the users every couple years.

But what about fixing the obvious, common, and annoying bugs in the web version? That doesn't count as an accomplishment?

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#27
> Do we have concrete evidence that what we are doing will provide benefit to the company or users, or just feel that it would be better if the UI was redesigned?

This isn't specific to UI redesigns, or even to software in general. People have been doing things "just because" since before the discovery of fire.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time (2019)

#30
post #26
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much that, yep. There's very little productive new ground to grow on if you're working on YouTube. There's existing glaring site problems, but they're on purpose and ideologically driven (shorts, placebo dislike, subscriptions mean nothing) so no one is going to touch them. It's politically safer and more advantageous to mess with the UI and irritate all the users every couple years.

But what about fixing the obvious, common, and annoying bugs in the web version? That doesn't count as an accomplishment?

the bugs in the web version are intentional to get you to download the app. you should be smart enough to figure this out by now
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