It's good to get a list of these milestones as a general food-for-thought
exercise, but I also think it's a bit dangerous to make generalizations
from any of them individually, rather than thinking of them as part of a
continually evolving and extremely complex relationship between the people
who make software and the people who use it.
The fact is that none of these events occurred in isolation; each new major
site redesign comes with the baggage of the last. As the demographics of
Internet users shift (with technology becoming cheaper/more accessible and
techno-jargon spreading with it) and as the very concept of a "redesign"
becomes more mainstream, people approach change with a very different set
of expectations year to year. The first time Facebook introduced a major
new redesign, there were mobs armed with torches, out for blood. The
23435th time Facebook made some tweak to their interface since then has
been met with shrugs of apathy – in fact, if someone were to start a
petition today to abandon Facebook because of some new change to their
interface, I think most Facebook users would giggle and find that adorably
quaint. "Aw, grandpa hates the new like button..."
But that was a very particular – and in many ways irreproducible – set of
circumstances. We have no way of knowing what would have happened if the
first redesign had been rolled back, or if it had been a set of incremental
improvements rather than one big one. And no website can ever do a redesign
again without risking comparison to that moment, rightly or wrongly. That's
why it's dangerous to try to use history as hard data – not enough data
points, huge bias, and no way to A/B test ;)
So, I don't think we should be looking back at any one notable redesign
event or set of events for literal arguments pro/contra one huge redesign
versus many small incremental changes, how we should or shouldn't be
communicating changes to users, whether we ride the wave of criticism or
roll back, etc.
Or, at the very least, we can't *just* be doing that. What we should be
doing more of, imho, is looking forward, thinking about who our users are
today and who we want to attract to our projects tomorrow. The very fact
that "well of course the average person hates change" is becoming a
platitude among the digerati is a strong indication that the trend toward
*more* change isn't likely to go away anytime soon. It's extremely unlikely
that in the next 5-10 years, *fewer* people will own multiple
Internet-enabled devices, visit *fewer* sites and apps, and know *less* about
technology... what does that mean for the interfaces we build today? How
can we ensure that we're not spending all our efforts solving for
problems/users that won't exist in 5 years' time? Those, I think, are
things that are just as if not more important for us to start thinking and
talking about.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi folks,
As WMF looks to clarify its role for UX changes, I think it's important to
look at other examples, and initial reactions to major design changes. It's
also important to understand which efforts have succeeded and failed.
Here are examples that I can think of:
1) NYT redesign
<http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/times-designers-are-monitoring-reaction-to-the-redesign-with-adjustments-possible/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body>
(1000+
comments, mostly negative).
2) Flickr redesign
<https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/> (if you
think disputes in Wikimedia can be unpleasant ..). Even their recent
changes <https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157642911765443/> to
the photo view got similar reactions.
3) Slashdot redesign
<http://meta.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/1849218/come-try-out-slashdots-new-design-in-beta>
(which
led to - ongoing - protests and boycott suggestions)
4) Gawker redesign
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker_Media#2011_redesign_and_traffic_loss> (which
by all accounts was a failure - PVs declined) - anyone got a comment thread
for this one?
5) Wikia 2010 redesign, which led to many wikis forking (including the
World of Warcraft Wiki) and the formation of an Anti-Wikia Alliance
<http://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Anti-Wikia_Alliance>
Others you can think of? Other than Gawker, what's the evidence for
success/failure of the above changes? What are examples of really
successful major UX changes that were welcomed by communities, if any?
Thanks,
Erik
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Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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