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UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

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Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#61

Post by ddoolin »

cknoxrun wrote: post #58
underwater wrote: post #55

> ... no one is raving about how a redesign makes the application any better. Let's invert that then. Go and grab a ten year old copy of Gmail, Google maps or Facebook from the Wayback machine and tell users that's what they are going to get. All of a sudden they will be really appreciative of those incremental design changes.

Those three choices are interesting because I would absolutely take the designs of those sites from 10 years ago over the current ones.

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

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#62

Post by woogiewonka »

ilovecaching wrote: post #54

It does seem like most of the UI books I read (I'm UI tone deaf) seem to suggest that I should always assume my users are 10x stupider than I think they are. I think "Don't make me think" had a lot of that. Then there are articles about how flat design is awful and we should all stick to what users already know and make sure that when they see a button they know it's a button and stuff. This seems counter to my exper…

Ironic that you mention material design and DO as prime examples of good UI when any UX designer who has to deal with the blunders of those two things will tell you that both are examples of horrible UX/UI.

I call this me-ism. Because I think it's good, it must be good. Because the company I like is doing it, it must be doing it right. What most people who gripe about design & UI do not seem to understand is that those decisions were made for a reason - usually to bring some sort of value to the table not for the sake of making things look clean and fresh.

Another comment here shows some ignorance too by saying that "I was lead to believe that its best to assume users are dumb, but my experience is on the contrary". This comment completely misses the point that users of one app/website will behave differently from users of another app/website and what works for one may not work for the other. At the end of the day there is a business being ran and money being made - the design decisions they make typically impacts their bottom line (for the better) or the design would have been reverted.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#63

Post by michaelmrose »

kevingadd wrote: post #38
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 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.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#64

Post by Haga »

Ui redesigns usually throw away user experience. Users who do not recognize your software and its workflow anymore can easily converted to another more traditional product. So a ui redesign is a gift for competitors.

But sometimes, there is no real ui, just a slum of drop down options where all the options are crammed into - alphabetical or sorted by a bad Fridays mood.

Those that will tell you that these uis are okay, are usually power users who do not use the ui but hotkeys. Usually those powerusers do not use other products but recommend their own mess. (blender/gimp)

This is what ui designers are here for, if you're a developer, you are not there audience and most of the time you might even be a bad influence, due to your lack of knowledge on the ui conventions of the rest of the world.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#65

Post by ProxCoques »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #56
sonnyblarney wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> Of course, in the first 10 seconds or few minutes, but I suspect strongly this effect fades over time. This is part of the general phenomenon of looking for your keys under the lamppost. It's easy to do an experiment that tests how people feel about your new design after looking at it for a minute and a half. Want to compare how people feel about the old and new designs after six months of getting used to them? Tha…

You are confusing aesthetics with usability. Useful tests are not designed to find out how people feel about a design, but whether those people can complete task(s) they need to do with the design. The latter is usually apparent within an hour, and most of the problems surface once you have tested about 5-6 people.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#66

Post by yoz-y »

My main objection would be to the 95% number which was pulled out of nowhere. Redesigns for a redesigns case are bad (Dropbox), sometimes they are done not-so-well but for very good reasons (Slack) and sometimes they are pretty much necessary to keep people in (Apple Watch UI between 1.0 and 3.0).

> People use applications because of their purpose, not because it is pleasing to the eye.

Maaybe? But people will definitely avoid your application if it is too ugly. Many Mac users will generally avoid applications that are not well integrated in the OS. Personally I spent quite some time finding alternatives to applications that were very useful that I did not find pleasing to the eye (Audacity, PS3 Media Server, GIMP). If you need to work with something a lot, you absolutely prefer for it to be pleasing to look at.

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#67

Post by underwater »

ddoolin wrote: post #61
cknoxrun wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those three choices are interesting because I would absolutely take the designs of those sites from 10 years ago over the current ones.

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...

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#68

Post by Jack000 »

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.

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...

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#69

Post by mesaframe »

taeric wrote: post #10
jslabovitz wrote: post #8

> You don't use Google maps because it looks nice, you use it because it tells you where to go to get good tacos. You don't use Facebook because the UI is nice, you use it to talk to your friends and share photos. I actually don't use Google Maps -- because it's a crazy mess of buttons and menus that get in my way of trying to navigate. I actually don't use Facebook -- because it's a horrible dog's breakfast of inscr…

I mean... I get what you are saying, but you are going to have to offer an alternative. Preferrably one that isn't complete garbage. What do you use over Google Maps and Facebook? For Maps, I really don't know of any alternative. And I now make some mapbox-gl applications for the office. There just doesn't seem to be any real alternative. For Facebook? I can actually almost completely unplug. That said, it is the eas…

For Maps "Here Maps" is a great alternative IMO

Re: UI redesigns are mostly a waste of time

#70

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

wvenable wrote: post #31
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 su…

Redesigns tend to happen because someone in management decides they want to remake the UI in a way that appeals to them, whether or not it makes sense to anyone else.

The MS ribbon was a classic redesign. It broke the standard menu metaphor and crashed productivity for no good reason.

Flat design was in a similar league, but not quite as bad. Is that a button or a text element? How can anyone tell?

Refinement is a much harder challenge. Improving the aesthetics of something while making it subtly easier to use is a really difficult thing to do.

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