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
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Erik Moeller erik@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:
- 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
Hi Erik, I really love the WikiWand design. The big image at the top, the
larger images throughout, the pale-grey boxes for block quotes, white space, larger fonts, different fonts. It's very clean and inviting.
Is there anything the Foundation can do to help us build the tools to achieve something close to WikiWand? I've been trying to introduce some of that look at Night (book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29, particularly the grey boxes for block quotes – it's block-quote heavy and could really use some design help – but the images push the boxes out of the way.
I posted about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#WikiWand.2C_images_and_blockquotes on the village pump, and was thinking of pinging you there. I also left a note for Brandon about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force&diff=prev&oldid=622819104 at the gender gap task force.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Erik, I really love the WikiWand design. The big image at the top, the larger images throughout, the pale-grey boxes for block quotes, white space, larger fonts, different fonts. It's very clean and inviting.
*nod* It's very nicely done. Though it's technically not a redesign but a separate site, so none of the change management issues come into play -- users who don't like it simply don't go there, and their experience remains unchanged, therefore no calls for heads on sticks etc.
We've made much more dramatic changes to the UX on mobile, where there's less user aversion to change. Check out the Night article on mobile https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29. Note how images are already styled differently, and blockquotes are as well (different style of quotes, different typography). The measure is narrower, the font is larger, etc.
We've been gradually porting over these changes to desktop, starting with the typography (which is now default everywhere). Changes to images are next, and we'll hopefully get to the quote styling soon. Edge cases and the 10% where things don't quite look right become much more important when going to desktop - hence moving carefully.
That said, you could take the mobile quotation style and port it over locally.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
That said, you could take the mobile quotation style and port it over locally.
(Though, as you can see, it definitely still has positioning issues that would need to be fixed - hey, imagine the community fixes those issues, and we port the fixes back to mobile. That'd be awesome :)
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Erik, I really love the WikiWand design. The big image at the top, the larger images throughout, the pale-grey boxes for block quotes, white
space,
larger fonts, different fonts. It's very clean and inviting.
*nod* It's very nicely done. Though it's technically not a redesign but a separate site, so none of the change management issues come into play -- users who don't like it simply don't go there, and their experience
remains
unchanged, therefore no calls for heads on sticks etc.
We've made much more dramatic changes to the UX on mobile, where there's less user aversion to change. Check out the Night article on mobile. Note how images are already styled differently, and blockquotes are as well (different style of quotes, different typography). The measure is
narrower,
the font is larger, etc.
We've been gradually porting over these changes to desktop, starting with the typography (which is now default everywhere). Changes to images are next, and we'll hopefully get to the quote styling soon. Edge cases and
the
10% where things don't quite look right become much more important when going to desktop - hence moving carefully.
That said, you could take the mobile quotation style and port it over locally. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Erik,
The mobile design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29 looks fabulous, and I love that the block quotes have a different font.
I see that the quote https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906 box I added toda https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906y to Night around one of the block quotes – the one starting "He's just trying to make us pity him" – changed the font in the mobile article.
And again the images are interfering. You can see that the large quotation marks aren't showing up properly around the images.
There is something about the way images are presented on WP that causes a lot of problems, but I don't have the vocabulary to explain what I mean. But is there some way images can be "boxed off," so that no matter where they are placed they don't have these effects on the surrounding text?
For example, we could have a dedicated sidebar running down the right side of the article that is only for images, infoboxes, etc, and it could also be left empty, so that images c ould be placed near the text they relate to. Then no matter what we do to text, it wouldn't affect the images, and vice versa. A sidebar on the right would have the added benefit of shortening the lines of text.
Sarah
Twitter vs. TED.com redesign http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/02/the-secret-of-successful-redesigns-what-ted-got-right-and-what-twitter-got-wrong/
TL;DR:
"99% of good design is redesign Design is about solving problems, but it’s rare that your first solution is your best. Quality is achieved through iterations: designs are redesigned and redesigned; concepts receive incremental improvements; solutions evolve."
"Ted.com redesigned by focussing on their core problem—the need to display videos on the devices their audience favors—and then assessing where their existing solution fell short. Twitter.com redesigned by focussing on their existing site, and applying a new skin."
"The single largest error you can make when redesigning is to mistake the current solution for a problem to be solved."
Overhauling a UI Without Upsetting Current Users http://uxmag.com/articles/overhauling-a-ui-without-upsetting-current-users
"In order to make functional (not just aesthetic) improvements, product managers and design teams need to perform research with real-world users."
"One of the most common mistakes companies make is to implement UI changes based on what users say they want."
Strongly agree with these above and thankful for Abbey's existence. We should look into users' difficulties more than we read what they say.
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 9:35 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Erik, I really love the WikiWand design. The big image at the top,
the
larger images throughout, the pale-grey boxes for block quotes, white
space,
larger fonts, different fonts. It's very clean and inviting.
*nod* It's very nicely done. Though it's technically not a redesign but a separate site, so none of the change management issues come into play -- users who don't like it simply don't go there, and their experience
remains
unchanged, therefore no calls for heads on sticks etc.
We've made much more dramatic changes to the UX on mobile, where there's less user aversion to change. Check out the Night article on mobile. Note how images are already styled differently, and blockquotes are as well (different style of quotes, different typography). The measure is
narrower,
the font is larger, etc.
We've been gradually porting over these changes to desktop, starting with the typography (which is now default everywhere). Changes to images are next, and we'll hopefully get to the quote styling soon. Edge cases and
the
10% where things don't quite look right become much more important when going to desktop - hence moving carefully.
That said, you could take the mobile quotation style and port it over locally. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Erik,
The mobile design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29 looks fabulous, and I love that the block quotes have a different font.
I see that the quote https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906 box I added toda https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906y to Night around one of the block quotes – the one starting "He's just trying to make us pity him" – changed the font in the mobile article.
And again the images are interfering. You can see that the large quotation marks aren't showing up properly around the images.
There is something about the way images are presented on WP that causes a lot of problems, but I don't have the vocabulary to explain what I mean. But is there some way images can be "boxed off," so that no matter where they are placed they don't have these effects on the surrounding text?
For example, we could have a dedicated sidebar running down the right side of the article that is only for images, infoboxes, etc, and it could also be left empty, so that images c ould be placed near the text they relate to. Then no matter what we do to text, it wouldn't affect the images, and vice versa. A sidebar on the right would have the added benefit of shortening the lines of text.
Sarah
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
In this talk http://vimeo.com/29965463 (min. 12), Jon Wiley from Google talks about the reactions to the Gmail redesign by their own Google employees, and how those reactions evolved from "turn it off, my eyes are bleeding" to "actually, it looks pretty good".
Pau
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 8:02 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 7:33 PM, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Erik, I really love the WikiWand design. The big image at the top,
the
larger images throughout, the pale-grey boxes for block quotes, white
space,
larger fonts, different fonts. It's very clean and inviting.
*nod* It's very nicely done. Though it's technically not a redesign but a separate site, so none of the change management issues come into play -- users who don't like it simply don't go there, and their experience
remains
unchanged, therefore no calls for heads on sticks etc.
We've made much more dramatic changes to the UX on mobile, where there's less user aversion to change. Check out the Night article on mobile. Note how images are already styled differently, and blockquotes are as well (different style of quotes, different typography). The measure is
narrower,
the font is larger, etc.
We've been gradually porting over these changes to desktop, starting with the typography (which is now default everywhere). Changes to images are next, and we'll hopefully get to the quote styling soon. Edge cases and
the
10% where things don't quite look right become much more important when going to desktop - hence moving carefully.
That said, you could take the mobile quotation style and port it over locally. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Hi Erik,
The mobile design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29 looks fabulous, and I love that the block quotes have a different font.
I see that the quote https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906 box I added toda https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_%28book%29&diff=prev&oldid=622808906y to Night around one of the block quotes – the one starting "He's just trying to make us pity him" – changed the font in the mobile article.
And again the images are interfering. You can see that the large quotation marks aren't showing up properly around the images.
There is something about the way images are presented on WP that causes a lot of problems, but I don't have the vocabulary to explain what I mean. But is there some way images can be "boxed off," so that no matter where they are placed they don't have these effects on the surrounding text?
For example, we could have a dedicated sidebar running down the right side of the article that is only for images, infoboxes, etc, and it could also be left empty, so that images c ould be placed near the text they relate to. Then no matter what we do to text, it wouldn't affect the images, and vice versa. A sidebar on the right would have the added benefit of shortening the lines of text.
Sarah
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
I'm surprised that a rather obvious example isn't mentioned: Facebook, which makes very frequent design changes. Some big and some small. Every time they do it, the users grumble in their status updates for a couple of days and then carry on. Probably the biggest design change came in 2011 with the "timeline" - a lot of people complained very loudly then for a bit more than a couple of days, but now it's taken for granted. Does anybody remember how did Facebook look before that time?
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
Of course, comparing ourselves to Facebook is not even apples and oranges :)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-26 4:54 GMT+03:00 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
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:
- 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
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
A post by Julie Zhuo https://medium.com/@joulee/whatevers-best-for-the-people-thats-what-we-do-ed75a0ee7641 (product design director at Facebook) provides interesting details on the rationale for one of the biggest redesigns they made, and the issues that made them reconsider it later.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
I'm surprised that a rather obvious example isn't mentioned: Facebook, which makes very frequent design changes. Some big and some small. Every time they do it, the users grumble in their status updates for a couple of days and then carry on. Probably the biggest design change came in 2011 with the "timeline" - a lot of people complained very loudly then for a bit more than a couple of days, but now it's taken for granted. Does anybody remember how did Facebook look before that time?
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
Of course, comparing ourselves to Facebook is not even apples and oranges :)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-26 4:54 GMT+03:00 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
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:
- 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
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
tldr: Change is scary to most people but we shouldn't be scared of making change. Is it clear what change we are bringing about? If it's not to us, how can it be to others? I think our process of bringing about change is the issue.
Longer version: I'm a little confused about this thread, I can only assume it's in the context of MMV so will work with that assumption.
Personally, I think pushback to any design change is a given. I hated the new Foursquare app when it came out for example, I still don't like it. I didn't like the new iOS design when it came out but I've grown to appreciate it over time. I loved the new Flickr redesign from day 1. Big changes are always going to result in polarity in the community. Change is scary to most people. There are loads of essays out there on why. We have to be more confident about our changes, and not allow ourselves to be put off by pushback.
I don't think this should put us off making radical changes. In fact we are better positioned then most sites in that we can make the path to change more comfortable. We have: * a beta feature mode where we can refine features and get feedback * an entire skin system, which would allow us to build radically different skins without upsetting the status quo of Vector/Monobook * we allow individuals to customise their own experience - the typography refresh for example came with some user css that could revert the change. * a completely different infrastructure on the mobile site where we can experiment with new ideas where change doesn't seem to cause as much irritation.
When I worked on typography refresh, when it went live a lot of people were seeing it for the first time and reacted angrily. A lot of people who had seen it were annoyed as they felt it 'wasn't ready'.
I think the real problem with pushback for a design is when it is a __sudden__, __big__ change. It's clear to me that we don't do a very good job about communicating release dates/our work on feature. This is not surprising when we have such fragmented conversation places - mailing lists, Village pump, beta feature talk pages, engineering report to name a few. We need to find ways of setting expectations and communicating better.
Even I don't know the answers to the following questions: * Do things in Beta Features always eventually become default? (Will Hovercards ever be default?) * How do I know what things in Beta Features are going to become default? Why do the others exist? What are their goals? * When will they become default? (Does Hovercards have a rough release date? Did we set an expectation of when Multimedia Viewer would be made default?) *. Is our community aware of the vision/and what we are working on? If they knew that would they be reacting differently to it right now, maybe even helping us more? * Should all our new features have an opt out?
I really feel like our main problem is that we are not very good at setting expectations and we surprise our community far too often. We have the tools we just are not using them well at all. We need to find the right way for us to bring about change with the least amount of resistance.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 12:52 AM, Pau Giner pginer@wikimedia.org wrote:
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
A post by Julie Zhuo (product design director at Facebook) provides interesting details on the rationale for one of the biggest redesigns they made, and the issues that made them reconsider it later.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
I'm surprised that a rather obvious example isn't mentioned: Facebook, which makes very frequent design changes. Some big and some small. Every time they do it, the users grumble in their status updates for a couple of days and then carry on. Probably the biggest design change came in 2011 with the "timeline" - a lot of people complained very loudly then for a bit more than a couple of days, but now it's taken for granted. Does anybody remember how did Facebook look before that time?
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
Of course, comparing ourselves to Facebook is not even apples and oranges :)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-26 4:54 GMT+03:00 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
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:
- NYT redesign (1000+ comments, mostly negative).
- Flickr redesign (if you think disputes in Wikimedia can be unpleasant
..). Even their recent changes to the photo view got similar reactions. 3) Slashdot redesign (which led to - ongoing - protests and boycott suggestions) 4) Gawker redesign (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
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
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- Pau Giner Interaction Designer Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Couldn't agree more.
Design doesn't sell itself. Selling and explaining why decisions are made should be part of the design process and ideally not be done by community managers, but designers and developers themselves.
I think if we explained how our data and test results lead to our design decisions the Germans wouldn't be as upset.
Best, max @awesomephant
On 26.08.2014, at 21:46, Jon Robson jrobson@wikimedia.org wrote:
tldr: Change is scary to most people but we shouldn't be scared of making change. Is it clear what change we are bringing about? If it's not to us, how can it be to others? I think our process of bringing about change is the issue.
Longer version: I'm a little confused about this thread, I can only assume it's in the context of MMV so will work with that assumption.
Personally, I think pushback to any design change is a given. I hated the new Foursquare app when it came out for example, I still don't like it. I didn't like the new iOS design when it came out but I've grown to appreciate it over time. I loved the new Flickr redesign from day 1. Big changes are always going to result in polarity in the community. Change is scary to most people. There are loads of essays out there on why. We have to be more confident about our changes, and not allow ourselves to be put off by pushback.
I don't think this should put us off making radical changes. In fact we are better positioned then most sites in that we can make the path to change more comfortable. We have:
- a beta feature mode where we can refine features and get feedback
- an entire skin system, which would allow us to build radically
different skins without upsetting the status quo of Vector/Monobook
- we allow individuals to customise their own experience - the
typography refresh for example came with some user css that could revert the change.
- a completely different infrastructure on the mobile site where we
can experiment with new ideas where change doesn't seem to cause as much irritation.
When I worked on typography refresh, when it went live a lot of people were seeing it for the first time and reacted angrily. A lot of people who had seen it were annoyed as they felt it 'wasn't ready'.
I think the real problem with pushback for a design is when it is a __sudden__, __big__ change. It's clear to me that we don't do a very good job about communicating release dates/our work on feature. This is not surprising when we have such fragmented conversation places - mailing lists, Village pump, beta feature talk pages, engineering report to name a few. We need to find ways of setting expectations and communicating better.
Even I don't know the answers to the following questions:
- Do things in Beta Features always eventually become default? (Will
Hovercards ever be default?)
- How do I know what things in Beta Features are going to become
default? Why do the others exist? What are their goals?
- When will they become default? (Does Hovercards have a rough release
date? Did we set an expectation of when Multimedia Viewer would be made default?) *. Is our community aware of the vision/and what we are working on? If they knew that would they be reacting differently to it right now, maybe even helping us more?
- Should all our new features have an opt out?
I really feel like our main problem is that we are not very good at setting expectations and we surprise our community far too often. We have the tools we just are not using them well at all. We need to find the right way for us to bring about change with the least amount of resistance.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 12:52 AM, Pau Giner pginer@wikimedia.org wrote:
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
A post by Julie Zhuo (product design director at Facebook) provides interesting details on the rationale for one of the biggest redesigns they made, and the issues that made them reconsider it later.
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
I'm surprised that a rather obvious example isn't mentioned: Facebook, which makes very frequent design changes. Some big and some small. Every time they do it, the users grumble in their status updates for a couple of days and then carry on. Probably the biggest design change came in 2011 with the "timeline" - a lot of people complained very loudly then for a bit more than a couple of days, but now it's taken for granted. Does anybody remember how did Facebook look before that time?
Googling for <facebook redesign timeline upset> shows a lot of relevant stories over the years.
Of course, comparing ourselves to Facebook is not even apples and oranges :)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-26 4:54 GMT+03:00 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
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:
- NYT redesign (1000+ comments, mostly negative).
- Flickr redesign (if you think disputes in Wikimedia can be unpleasant
..). Even their recent changes to the photo view got similar reactions. 3) Slashdot redesign (which led to - ongoing - protests and boycott suggestions) 4) Gawker redesign (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
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
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
-- Pau Giner Interaction Designer Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
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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@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:
- 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
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Design mailing list Design@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design