11–20 of 290 posts
Which is kind of the point. If you notice the modernization of something under you, it will annoy you. We have grown to not trust things that change. To the point that the appearance of stability is actually hugely important.
Probably 90% of everything is a waste of time, the trick is knowing in advance which 10% won't be. I don't really disagree with the overall premise of the article though.
Cool, cool. To preface this comment, I'm a user experience designer, and I've been doing web software development and design for over 20 years.
In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact.
Main principle you want to look up: the Aesthetic Usability Effect. Basically, users perceive your product to be more usable if it's aesthetically pleasing.
> Summary: Users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. This aesthetic-usability effect can mask UI problems and can prevent issue discovery during usability testing. Identify instances of the aesthetic-usability effect in your user research by watching what your users do, as well as listening to what they say.
From https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/
See also: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/perceived-value/ (other ways users perceive value based on the UI)
Of course, this has limits. A rebrand or redesign that, all other things equal, is mostly the same quality as before probably won't get much benefit. I've seen many redesigns and that tends not to be something people do—there's usually a good bump in visual quality in the process.
So, regardless of whether you, personally notice the different functionality, many redesigns are actually a success at improving the perceived value, perceived usability, and overall evaluation of the brand, company, and product.
People aren't idiots. They don't do this work for no reason. Try to understand and respect the work outside your own department and specialty. Building respect across those boundaries is a rare and valuable thing.
> You don't use Google maps because it looks nice, you use it because it tells you where to go to get good tacos. You don't use Facebook because the UI is nice, you use it to talk to your friends and share photos. I actually don't use Google Maps -- because it's a crazy mess of buttons and menus that get in my way of trying to navigate. I actually don't use Facebook -- because it's a horrible dog's breakfast of inscr…
I mean... I get what you are saying, but you are going to have to offer an alternative. Preferrably one that isn't complete garbage. What do you use over Google Maps and Facebook? For Maps, I really don't know of any alternative. And I now make some mapbox-gl applications for the office. There just doesn't seem to be any real alternative. For Facebook? I can actually almost completely unplug. That said, it is the eas…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean... I get what you are saying, but you are going to have to offer an alternative. Preferrably one that isn't complete garbage. What do you use over Google Maps and Facebook? For Maps, I really don't know of any alternative. And I now make some mapbox-gl applications for the office. There just doesn't seem to be any real alternative. For Facebook? I can actually almost completely unplug. That said, it is the eas…
I've begun to question how "effective" the sharing of pictures of my family needs to be. I now think that my pictures only being seen by people explicitly trying to see them is preferable - I'm not marketing my family.
I'm convinced most of my family doesn't know how to do much more than login to their machine. Without a password, no less. To that end, if I want them to see pictures, I put them there.
There is a chance I could email everyone. I'm honestly not convinced that is in any way more secure. Maybe. Maybe if my family had gpg setup. They don't. And never will. :(
Couldn't agree more. Jira, bitbucket, outlook, gmail and the list goes on and on. The really jarring redesigns are literally maddening and make me angry. They are so shitty. The other designs are basically the same design with more whitespace. Either way, the app doesn't benefit and at best, you're angering users. If I could stop using jira or Bitbucket, I would just for their shitty UIs. Things that used to be one c…
Chances are you're not the only one hating the changes, so sharing your CSS with coworkers (or even the Internet if it's a public site) is also a good idea. I've "converted"/educated a few coworkers just by them noticing "how did you get it to look like that?"
(Sending my CSS back to the original site's owners has resulted in everything from threats of legal action to some actual changes in the right direction.)
I've noticed that it's a commonly accepted fact in most other areas of software development that mass rewriting of large and extensively-used pieces of code is a bad idea precisely because it'll probably introduce plenty of new bugs that were either never a problem in the existing code, or was noticed and already fixed there in the past. Yet when it comes to UI, those introduced bugs --- breakages of users' existing…
That said, qualitative value is still value. Just because user feedback on the visual quality is vague doesn't mean that broader goals weren't achieved—users don't know how to evaluate visual quality, but it can still impact their behavior and perception. Good user researchers will look at outcomes and downstream impact in other behavior after a redesign, and those are often positively impacted.
Even if the result is just "users feel our company is more professional and mature," that could be extremely important for company strategy and may very well have been a limiting factor beforehand.
"Improving your UI is a waste of time"
"UI is pointless"
What the author is actually saying (imo): "UI redesigns create costs that should warrant them. There are a lot of times when a website makes radical redesigns for comparatively marginal improvements. These improvements are not always worth it for reasons like existing userbase having to relearn the new ui."
This is a fair point and I think a lot of times places rebrand because they want to look like they're doing something even if it comes at the cost of overall usability.
> To preface the article, I primarily work on, and prefer, back-end code. I've been involved in both web and software development for over 4 years now Cool, cool. To preface this comment, I'm a user experience designer, and I've been doing web software development and design for over 20 years. In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact. Main principle you wan…
Citation absolutely needed. In my experience people are frequently idiots, and work gets done for no reason after someone with authority is convinced that it's a good idea by someone aching to do that sort of work.
If it happens in so many other cases, it does happen in UI/UX as well.
> You don't use Google maps because it looks nice, you use it because it tells you where to go to get good tacos. You don't use Facebook because the UI is nice, you use it to talk to your friends and share photos. I actually don't use Google Maps -- because it's a crazy mess of buttons and menus that get in my way of trying to navigate. I actually don't use Facebook -- because it's a horrible dog's breakfast of inscr…
I mean... I get what you are saying, but you are going to have to offer an alternative. Preferrably one that isn't complete garbage. What do you use over Google Maps and Facebook? For Maps, I really don't know of any alternative. And I now make some mapbox-gl applications for the office. There just doesn't seem to be any real alternative. For Facebook? I can actually almost completely unplug. That said, it is the eas…
There are many reasons I don't use Facebook, most of which are enumerated in countless HN posts, but a big reason is that I get totally frustrated with the interface. I don't know how to say this strongly enough, but the UI literally disgusts me, to the point where I just give up and close it down. True!
Maybe I'm weird this way. But I've been computing since about 1976, and using the web since '93, and I've got no patience anymore for crappy sites/apps.