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

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#261

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:55 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #24

I think the article misses the point that many design modifications are micro-optimizations. The entire goal is that the user doesn't notice (cognitively) but is modified in their behavior none the less. These sorts of micro-optimizations frequently made Travelocity hundreds of thousands of dollars when I was their A/B test developer. Adding a phone number to one page added an estimated $3 million in revenue.

Like I pointed out, I am all in favor of micro-optimizations, it is complete UI redesigns that have no merit or basis to derive their change upon that I'm against.

Adding a phone number is good, yes if it adds $3 million dollars, go ahead and do it!

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#262

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

rahulchhabra07 wrote: post #2

Completely disagree with the OP. I have enough scar tissue to believe bad UI or even the one that's not pleasing or inspiring receives lot lower engagement from users than having a clean, snappy and beautiful UI. The OP's claims can be easily disproved by contradiction. If UI improvements didn't make a difference, A/B testing on designs wouldn't have resulted in massive improvements. Making design more accessible, an…

UI improvements are good, and fixes when the UI is lacking is encouraged. What I am championing against is redesigns, total redesigns. I feel that improvements should be made in incremental changes.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#263

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 4:59 AM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #33

this reads like someone who hasn't done a lot of front end work, which to his credit, he admits upfront. design should be like all other forms of code development: iterative and agile.

I try not to stir trouble and be honest as I write :)

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#264

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

vipulved wrote: post #180

If you think that design/redesign is a waste of time, a good exercise would be to try and understand why fashion constantly evolves, ie why you no longer see people in bellbottoms and corsets.

I value design, like I pointed out earlier. What I find lacking in value are total redesigns where there isn't concrete reasons why the redesign should take place. For what basis is the redesign on? It "feels" better?

I'd be more comfortable with a more complete reason.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#265

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:02 AM UTC

tuxracer wrote: post #221

Kept waiting to see where the data would come in and it never did. This is entirely data-free conjecture. This is the engineering equivalent of an article calling out a particular medicine as being ineffective purely on the basis of "I feel like it doesn't do anything so people should stop taking it".

It is completely my opinion yes, and since I primarily work (and enjoy back-end work), this is a view from the other side of the office.

I do feel there are valid points but no, I didn't collect any data on this post.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#266

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

omosubi wrote: post #53

It's funny he used the BMO website redesign as an example because I find that to be one of the best redesigns I have seen in a while, both from a UI and UX perspective. Their old one was absolutely awful

I did not like how I had to re-learn where everything was! :(

Your brain is more nimble than mine, cheers to you! :)

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#267

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

alexandernst wrote: post #128

I backend guy talking about frontend.

It helps at the very least to learn another's perspective. Again I'm not calling out front-end designers, nor do I feel their work is not valuable.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#268

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:18 AM 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…

You sparked a lot of comments in this post.

Thank you for explaining these concepts to me, I have not heard of the aesthetic usability effect. I will read into this as I am curious what it is now.

To be clear, I do value design. I think design is important and I write that out in the article that I value design. What I struggle to value are redesigns, that is, complete redesigns of a UI - instead preferring incremental updates of the UX that is necessary to use the product or application.

Thank you for the work that you've done, as I'm sure you have had a great impact on the customers you've directly and indirectly served. Continue to do design, because if it were up to me, nothing would look good at all.

Cheers.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#269

Post by bobblywobbles » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

gnagatomo wrote: post #259

mgkimsal wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I can't say I've worked on data at that scale, but the 'every commit is a time bomb' - had that feeling on things. What has bugged me in the past (and why I don't like being just a 'coder') is that... hey - people in my position have a perspective few others have. Sometimes we can see things that others can't, and generally we're smart enough to understand the business impact. If you're being asked to implement…

>you can see how a business is being impacted by things that you can see Strongly agree. The biggest barrier between devs and refactors with zero interface impact is AGILE mentality of always aiming to deliver value to the end user with every deploy. Business people just don't understand how much of an impact crappy implementations and error handling does have on the end user. We see 5~6% error rate, which represents…

And then you end up with brittle applications to support. Not fun for devs. Not happy times with management.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#270

Post by speedplane » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

hopler wrote: post #165

speedplane wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind functional UI updates (e.g., adding a search bar, when previously you had to scroll). But design changes are made simply for design purposes by big-tech companies are frustrating because when they do an update, it puts pressure on everyone else to follow their design to avoid looking out of date. For example, just a few months ago, Google used square rectangles for the search bar, and advocated "cards" w…

Round rects are better. Apple established that 30 years ago. Sharp corners are a fad that Microsoft(!) started with Windows Phone/10 just to be different from Apple (their chronic problem of trying to compete by doing randomly different things) and the Googlee going for it with cards, before they realized rounded rects are preferred for a reason. (And cards, what an innovation, copying the original desktop applicatio…

> Round rects are better. Apple established that 30 years ago.

They did? Their iPhones went from rounded corners, to sharp corners, back to rounded corners again. Apple design is impressive, but I don't see any timeless consistency.