UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time • Hacker News Board

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#141

Post by normalhuman » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

inertiatic wrote: post #19

calinet6 wrote: post #13

> 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…

>People aren't idiots. They don't do this work for no reason. 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.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#142

Post by devbranch » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

I think UI's are the main factor in the average user's perception of quality. While re-designs may be annoying to old users, they're necessary to avoid potential new users thinking the product is outdated. The UI should always look brand new.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#143

Post by christophilus » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #63

kevingadd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most redesigns I've dealt with are the result of someone wanting a promotion, which has nothing to do with whether or not they're an idiot. Many of those people ship bad or half-baked redesigns that waste everyone's time but get them a promotion, because you need achievements to point to in order to get promoted at companies like Google. That aside, your post mostly fails to address the critiques in the OP. Yes, a pl…

It is damn near amazing how fast old Gmail is did you know that you can still use it? It uses like a mb of ram and loads instantly.

How do you use the old Gmail? I hate, hate, hate the new one.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#144

Post by paulryanrogers » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #81

inertiatic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People aren't idiots. They don't do this work for no reason. 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.

> 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. You're contradicting yourself here. If someone with authority is convinced that something is a good idea, then they have a reason for doing it. It might be a misguided reason, but it's not just randomness.

Distinguishing between badly chosen ideas and randomly chosen ones may be impossible if the authority figure provides no context.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#145

Post by AJ007 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #111

inertiatic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People aren't idiots. They don't do this work for no reason. 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.

Job security, designers can only design, so that's what they do. And if there is nothing new to design, they will keep redesigning. Gotta keep up with the trends.

This is true for everyone from janitors to CEOs. The big question is, what jobs are harmless, which cause improvements being “over-worked”, and which have the greatest odds of causing substantial destruction?

UI / UX redesigns should be tested with small amounts of users, with all key metrics measured, and see what happens to those metrics and user retention after a few months. Otherwise, UI redesigns has a chance of causing a lot of destruction both by loss of users and bugs. Fortunately for software this isn’t that difficult to do. Other tasks, less so or impossible.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#146

Post by badfrog » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #75

Jack000 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if your product is a website, the average time on page is 4.6 seconds [1] (a lot of people bounce immediately, lowering the average) the first 10 seconds of ux is extremely important, since it's basically the top of your funnel. [1] https://www.weidert.com/whole_brain_marketing_blog/bid/11696...

Yes, fully agree. However, as people start to actually use the site, I think they care a lot less about a lot of cosmetic things.

> as people start to actually use the site, I think they care a lot less about a lot of cosmetic things

That's definitely true, _if_ they start to actually use the site. You need something to hook them in the first few seconds.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#147

Post by werber » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #13

> 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…

UI !== UX, without the research side it is kinda pointless. I'm not sure if the point of the article was to say that but it's what I read

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#148

Post by PedroBatista » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

birksherty wrote: post #129

speedplane wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's your boss's pet project, then your boss probably has a reason for doing it, even if it isn't a good one.

That reason is often promotion and putting things in the resume.

Well, that’s a pretty good reason, for him.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#149

Post by dhbradshaw » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

Great UI is extremely valuable. The challenge is that one of the qualities of a great UI is that it's stable.

The UI is the interface between your app and the customer. It's like an API. No one arbitrarily changes APIs and expects it to go well. But, perhaps because people are slightly more adaptable than code, UI gets changed without warning or choice all the time. This is a unilateral break in the implicit contract that we make with users. Of course people complain!

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#150

Post by QualityReboot » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #100

mjburgess wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, you could see a person selling their labour as having some right/stake in doing something which interests them. These outcomes are then compromises which give something to the producer, as well as to the customer.

I completely agree. This is exactly why I said, if this happens you didn’t choose the right person for the job. The same person who butchers your UI might be very good for creating print designs that above all need to sell the company CI. For critical redesigns you need a designer who is mostly about analyzing and rethinking the user experience behind it. Better even, split it in two: one entity should only do the an…

I think I agree with you, but how are you supposed to assess designers to choose the right person?

The main difference I've found between bad/good designers is flexibility and willingness to ask for help. There's typically a lot of organizational knowledge about where pain points are. If a designer addresses those, then people are generally happy.

Maybe splitting the job is a good idea, but it seems like you shouldn't need a split if the designer is listening to the whole team.

Also, sometimes the designer is fine, but they've been explicitly told by management what to do, so no designer would have been able to fill the position and do a good job. Even on my failed projects, I really couldn't tell you if it was the management or the designer that caused the resulting design issues.