If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#81

Post by xerox13ster » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 4:59 AM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #3

Notepad has had some surprising improvements. I've not used it in so long that when I did open it and saw it had tabs, and recover unsaved documents, and dark mode, I wasn't sure it was notepad.

OTOH with these changes, the new UX of being able to recover unsaved documents made it so that Windows sees no problem with restarting or shutting down on me without my approval even if I have a notepad open.

This breaks my historic workflow of keeping an unsaved notepad open so that if it was detected it wouldn't force close other processes with unsaved work and I could save them or rely on my PC to stay awake and running some long-running process overnight.

The first time I woke up to a restarted PC with my place lost bc of this, I realized that Windows' days were numbered on my hardware.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#82

Post by jcgrillo » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #73

jcgrillo wrote: post #16

This was actually not the conclusion I was expecting: > Don't bother improving your product unless it results in visible changes the user can see, find, and hopefully appreciate. I couldn't disagree more strongly. I can't think of the last time I encountered a UX change I thought was actually worth it. They're always bothersome, because now I notice the tool --it's no longer an extension of my mind and body, instead…

> I claim there are two reasons UX changes happen: You're quite literally leaving zero room for things improving over time . Either whoever built the software got it exactly right on the first try, or it's an insider political move. Never mind that products can evolve over time, or that technology can enable new features, or that users can request new things, or that we just get better at building UIs over time.

> You're quite literally leaving zero room for things improving over time

In some sense, yes. "Improvements" that break my workflow--where before said improvement a sequence of UX interactions produced a result and afterwards the result isn't any longer there or the interactions are no longer possible--aren't worth the price. So I'm all for non-breaking changes, just don't ever change anything in such a way as to break existing users.

> technology can enable new features

Great, so build those new features in such a way that they don't break existing users--i.e. such that I do not notice them.

> we just get better at building UIs over time

Congratulations! I'm happy for you! But I'll be really unhappy if you use me as a guinea pig to test out your newfound abilities.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#83

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 9:43 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #79

nkrisc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really just depends on the product and feature and the company culture. Submenus don't work when the feature has a powerful internal sponsor and they want it front and center.

Then you can still put the features that have weaker ‘internal sponsors’ there.

And then people complain on HN about “UX designers” hiding their most used tools in submenus, and the cycle is complete.

Re: If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)

#84

Post by MichaelZuo » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 12:23 AM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #83

MichaelZuo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you can still put the features that have weaker ‘internal sponsors’ there.

And then people complain on HN about “UX designers” hiding their most used tools in submenus, and the cycle is complete.

No, because even having something buried in a submenu is different from it not existing at all.. do you not understand what a submenu means?