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

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#31

Post by wvenable » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:28 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…

What's the difference between a re-design and constant refinement of a design?

I believe in making products aesthetically pleasing. I spend a lot of time ensuring my products look good because I know that this is the first impression of any product. I'm constantly improving the design of my products in subtle (and sometimes not subtle) ways.

Full redesigns are the design equivalent of full software rewrites. They suffer from all the same issues: second system affect, loss of functionality, loss of knowledge, etc. And like software re-writes, sometimes they are necessary but often they are not.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#32

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:28 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…

[deleted]

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#33

Post by djohnston » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

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.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#34

Post by pfranz » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #28

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…

"users perceive your product to be more usable if it's aesthetically pleasing." Of course, in the first 10 seconds or few minutes, but I suspect strongly this effect fades over time. Most UI redesigns are bad because they focus on the wrong things and throw out a lot of good things, or change for the sake of change.

At a previous job I would see the process of films getting made. After a year of keeping the same joke they'd swap it out with a less funny joke. It's not because the new joke is better, the old joke got tired to them and the new joke was fresh.

I see the same thing happen all over the place--branding and UI are very common victims.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#35

Post by gjs278 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:37 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…

I bet you have ruined several designs that were perfectly fine

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#36

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

debaserab2 wrote: post #27

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.

I don’t think that really qualifies as a redesign on the scale the article describes. It sounds like the author is describing a total UI overhaul, not simply modifying one element on one page of the design.

The way I read the article, it said that none of this stuff was worth doing -- just get it barely usable and then stop making changes. But it clearly is worth doing based on A/B testing and real, measured results. When millions of people are using your site, even micro-optimizations are worth doing.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#37

Post by jrochkind1 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

something has changed with the HN ranking algorithm lately, no? this is not an interesting article.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#38

Post by kevingadd » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:45 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…

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 pleasing UI tends to feel better to use, but most of these pretty redesigns throw away important other traits an old design had, or just simply lack them. It's hard to positively compare (for example) New Gmail with Old Gmail when they managed to make it slower and break the reply button, for example.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#39

Post by dbg31415 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

What are you basing your assertion off of?

Because I've got mountains of A/B tests that validate the UX improvements.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#40

Post by capex » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:57 AM UTC

Redesigns are not just about a fresh look and feel. Features get added, some get removed. New user cohorts join in. Improvements in devices enable new capabilities. Changes in system software enable new ways of interaction. Of course, over time, a redesign becomes necessary.