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Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

dcurt.is

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Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#121

Post by ignostic »

steven2012 wrote: post #79

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easier to use. After it went live, though, this decreased the number of ad clicks by a significant number, and the people in charge hurriedly reverted all the changes back, since they needed to make their revenue numbers in order to make their bonus. When you are s…

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard. Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said,

> "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will actually lead to long-term benefits–or do you scrap the new design and start over?"

Would the simplified, modern design have led Yahoo into a new era of profitability? Maybe. Or maybe they'd just have a nicer site that made less money for a year.

Our team made a site that made less per visitor, but we felt like it was a better-looking and more useful site. We decided to stick with it and work out the kinks, but ~6 months went by without reaching our old sites' benchmark. There was a ton of pressure on me to make it work or admit defeat and revert. I nearly gave in as the stress built, but eventually revenue surpassed the old site. I later learned that I was almost fired over it.

My story has a happy ending, but just barely. I have sympathy for the people making these decisions.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#123

Post by hipaulshi »

which, like the FB employee said, is exactly, what a data-driven company should do to maximize profit. However, Dustin has a good point. CEO needs to make that very risky call if he vouched for the better design. The customer may or may not come. Short term loss is inevitable. One would need strong belief, again, needs to be backed by data, to make that call.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#124

Post by jklp »

sharkweek wrote: post #45
elwell wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about "known-how". Many people downloaded Instagram because it was cool and precisely because it wasn't Facebook.

I think you're definitely right that a non-arbitrary number of people fit that description, but I think most are likely similar to me in that I downloaded Instagram because my friends were on Instagram - If Facebook had created a photo sharing/editing app this good directly into their news feed, I kind of assume it would have been a hit. Who knows though...

They tried to, with Facebook Camera - https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/facebook-camera/id525898024?...

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#126

Post by benihana »

epistasis wrote: post #66
akamaka wrote: post #29

Nice theory, but I think Dustin's conclusions are wrong. I got to use this alternative design on my second Facebook account that I used for app development, while my personal account didn't have it enabled. I really disliked like the new sidebar design. The concept was similar to what GMail has done lately, with text links replaced by only graphical icons. I found it really difficult to remember what each icon linked…

>text links replaced by only graphical icons This is a terribly pernicious trend in all sorts of software, not just GMail. I really hope that the fad dies out soon, because it's preventing me form effectively using software that otherwise may have been great.

>I really hope that the fad dies out soon

I wouldn't hold my breath. I think a lot of the reasons we're moving to icons instead of text is because sometime in the next ten years, the majority of all internet traffic will originate on phones, and phones don't have nearly as much real estate to devote to labels as desktop screens do.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#127

Post by dsjoerg »

The core of Dustin's argument is that Facebook may not have been patient enough; they should have trusted in their beautiful new design and waited long enough for the benefits to bear fruit.

However, it's a cheap argument to make, because the Hard Thing is to decide how many months of crappy numbers are you going to withstand before you admit that your Beautiful New Design in fact isn't any good?

Six months? Two years?

And it's not just revenue you look at. How's overall engagement? Sharing rates? Communication? Discovery?

The article is a shallow snipe; the real issues here are hard, interesting, and unexplored by this piece.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#128

Post by techtalsky »

debt wrote: post #83
Kluny wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like they realize that reading English is kind of tough, so they give you a whole new language to learn, which doesn't help at all.

I think it's done to more easily deal with internationalization. Instead of making the design fit the translated text, just remove the text altogether and stick with just the icons.

Well "mystery mean navigation" refers to something specifically where there's little chance of understanding what the icons refer to without rolling over them, much like "mystery meat" in your fridge that you can't remember what it is without opening the tupperware.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#129

Post by loceng »

"We only optimize. We do what goes up." Deciding what you want to facilitate going up comes down to governance. If you want to give the user a shittier experience in order to earn more profits, then you can do that. But you leave yourself open to someone providing the better experience and losing them altogether.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#130

Post by scep12 »

benihana wrote: post #126
epistasis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>text links replaced by only graphical icons This is a terribly pernicious trend in all sorts of software, not just GMail. I really hope that the fad dies out soon, because it's preventing me form effectively using software that otherwise may have been great.

> I really hope that the fad dies out soon I wouldn't hold my breath. I think a lot of the reasons we're moving to icons instead of text is because sometime in the next ten years, the majority of all internet traffic will originate on phones, and phones don't have nearly as much real estate to devote to labels as desktop screens do.

Using icons over text gets you some nice wins when it comes to i18n as well. I.e. you're fitting an icon, not variable width text.
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