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UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

debugandrelease.blogspot.com

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Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#281

Post by sh87 »

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…

As a user I have not come across any good 'visual' redesign. On the contrary, it annoys me. Immensely; when the fking redesign replaces my known problems for unknown ones.

As an example, as contractors, we fill up timesheets very often. Our company decided to move to another 'aesthetically pleasing' platform which to me as a user is same as a redesign. Now the click - tab - 8 - tab - space - cmd+w ritual is taken away. It now goes like this : load page - login - click link - click a drop down - wait for it to timeout (dont even ask me why) - click again and wait for the dropdown to populate and close itself - click again - select - click - 8 - click save - find the mini'x' - click - select another dropdown - click submit (no, space no longer works on this form).

This new platform has more options, more whitespace, more corporate colors. Agreed. No colors, whitespace your redesign could add will soothe the agony of poor usability.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#282

Post by userbinator »

mnm1 wrote: post #280
userbinator wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the ones you named are websites, and user stylesheets are a thing, so if you're sufficiently incensed by a site you're forced to use, you can apply your own CSS to fix what can be fixed relatively easily; increasing contrast, changing colours, and adding borders/delimiting lines is what I most often use it for. Chances are you're not the only one hating the changes, so sharing your CSS with coworkers (or even the…

CSS will bring back the missing buttons? It'll magically show the information that was there before? What is this CSS you speak of? The user experience can't be fixed by CSS. Maybe I can hide that annoying menu, true. Then I can't do any of the common activities within it. I'm not sure you understand what user experience is or the limitations of CSS.

I did imply not everything could be fixed by CSS, but it is very useful for adjusting font sizes, spacing, and colours to something more sane.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#283

Post by mnm1 »

userbinator wrote: post #282
mnm1 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS will bring back the missing buttons? It'll magically show the information that was there before? What is this CSS you speak of? The user experience can't be fixed by CSS. Maybe I can hide that annoying menu, true. Then I can't do any of the common activities within it. I'm not sure you understand what user experience is or the limitations of CSS.

I did imply not everything could be fixed by CSS, but it is very useful for adjusting font sizes, spacing, and colours to something more sane.

None of those things are actual UX problems.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#284

Post by nathan_long »

preommr wrote: post #18

What some people will think: "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…

Yes. And redesigns are specifically the issue.

Q: What gesture should be used for answering a call on a touchscreen phone: tapping a button, or swiping?

A: I don't know, but once you've picked one and users have learned it, don't suddenly change it without explanation and make your users panic because they can't answer calls.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#285

Post by nathan_long »

userbinator wrote: post #5

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…

Great point.

If feature X stops working because a back end developer broke the code, that's treated as a bug.

If feature X can't be used because a UX developer obscured it, that should be treated as a bug, too.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#286

Post by Aegaeus10111 »

Bad design choices are a waste of time. Good ones are necessary. from an article about TOR as a great example:

Tor needs a lot of users to create anonymity, if Tor was hard to use new users wouldn't adopt it so quickly. Because new users won't adopt it, Tor becomes less anonymous. By this reasoning it is easy to see that usability isn't just a design choice of Tor but a security requirement to make Tor more secure. https://skerritt.blog/how-does-tor-really-work/

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#287

Post by ddoolin »

underwater wrote: post #67
ddoolin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps I can't agree with you on...but Gmail and Facebook, certainly.

If Facebook shipped this [1] tomorrow, you don't think people would be up in arms? 1: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSNUb...

Perhaps, but I was just talking about myself. I definitely prefer that UI (maybe stylistically updated but not as far arrangement/placement and what's available).

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#288

Post by mvkel »

A lot of the debate in this thread seems to be conflating UI redesigns with UX redesigns.

A pure UI redesign inherently should not change the overall user experience. So yes, one could argue it _is_ a waste of time, because it has no impact on the user's experience of the product.

UI is superficial, by design (heh).

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#289

Post by mannykannot »

Aegaeus10111 wrote: post #277
mannykannot wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad UI design might cripple a good search capability, but UI design cannot fix a weak one.

True. But you might as well say the same about an umbrella not keeping mosquitoes away. UI design doesn't involve BE design in any way. So?

So you are saying UI is not involved in the most important measure of quality of a retail site - that is the point, and the answer to your "so?" (though, personally, I would not make the distinction as stark as you have, here.)

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#290

Post by bobblywobbles »

ivanhoe wrote: post #208

Redesign is not just about visuals. If you change a few gradients/hues and add/remove rounded corners depending on the latest web fashion, then definitely you're wasting time and money - unfortunately, that's very common patter with companies, specially larger brands. However improving usability of the UI based on some actual metrics and research is definitely never a waste of time. In my experience absolutely every…

I'm in favor of UX upgrades as you say, but not total redesigns. Incremental improvements are best in my opinion.
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