UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

> In reality, your conjecture turns out to be largely untrue. Visual design quality does have an impact.

Did you read the article? The author specifically says, "Before all of the UI designers that read this go out and riot and champion against me for saying UI redesigns are a waste of time, let me say that I do value design. I think at the bare minimum, a product or website needs to be usable, and if you possess a good eye and steady hand, you should feel compelled to create something that looks pleasing."

He then goes on to say, "Just stop redesigning the UI all the time. UI redesigns, in my opinion, are a waste of time 95% of the time. Let me explain further."

That's not so contentious IMO. Redesigns can be too frequent and the purported purpose of redesigns is typically nebulous, and can be driven more by politics than any of the objective metrics that you describe.

> 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.

Of course they have reasons. That doesn't make those reasons objectively correct. Maybe you should try to understand and respect the point the article is trying to convey, that perhaps the pendulum on UI redesign has swung a little too far one way.

The OP article is criticism-lite, but the topic is never more important with multi-platform phone, tablet, and web development. I believe we're post App-Gold-Rush era. You're not so excited anymore to run off and join a startup and leave a good paying job at a steady corporate gig. In that setting who's going to rock the boat? Who's going to stand up and question, Is this really the right direction? Everyone is getting paid.

Currently my own whipping post example is the smart phone app, Transit [1]. A redesign last fall hobbled several key features,

- transit line on-time status only shows when there is a problem, but it's reassuring to see the status has updated and is OK.

- map scrolling is key for wayfinding, now only half of the screen real estate is scrollable before you accidentally cancel your line selection, and exit the screen.

These fracking UI changes are worse than useless, and just the few that come to mind. What they should have done was tackle real issues,

- Chaining transfers--How long is the wait for my next connection at a future destination? Currently, the future destination shows the connection clock from _now_, and now when I get there. I can think of at least 3 reasons why this is important.

- In a loop line, you can't see the next bus when you're at the start/end. During commute times on the busiest lines delays have a ripple effect. The schedule is blown. How long is the wait? Can I do something else while I wait?

I was an avid evangelist for Transit. Now, I just wish a competitor would hit the scene and bury that turd.

[1]: https://transitapp.com/

If you are a moderator of a reasonably popular subreddit, you can find out by checking the traffic statistics which breaks out old vs new! For example, for my little link-sharing subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/) : https://imgur.com/a/sUcEQeQ

You can see a large fraction of the users have taken the time to optout, perhaps as much as a third (!) of those who can. Considering how passive most users are, this tells me that the new & expensive Reddit design is indeed loathed.

Do you think they prioritized the newest users/prospects versus power users?

> That doesn't make those reasons objectively correct.

You don't even need to appeal to some 'objective correct' standard. You can just look more basically at "what is the purpose?" Usually, it's "increase sales". So... determine baseline metrics, perhaps implement some testing to see what changes have what effect, and then push forward a larger redesign effort if the tests moved towards the goal/purpose.

Perhaps the goal is 'reduce number of clicks'. Is that really important? Or is it 'reduce user frustration'? How will you measure that?

"Reduce page load time" - should be pretty easy to measure, but will it have an impact on other things (sales, support, etc)?

People may have 'good reasons' for a redesign. Without a measurable goal, they're a waste of time, imo, and I've often seen them do more harm than good (measurable harm, like reduced sales, customer drop off, etc). But hey - those front page pictures looked really nice in the photoshop mockups sent over...