On 05/13/2010 04:38 AM, AGK wrote:
But although it's too early for the mainstream
media to have covered
the redesign, what reception the blogosphere has given it seems to be
generally negative. (Google 'wikipedia new design' and take a look at
the blog posts and comments. But take the comments with a pinch of
salt; typically, only those with some kind of axe to grind will
comment on a blog post.)
People should probably take blog and blog comment reaction with quite a
bit of salt. I've been through a lot of redesigns, and the visible
reaction always includes a lot of grumbling. The best you can hope for
is general acquiescence with some griping, but getting a bucketful of
worst! design! evaaar! still doesn't tell you much about the quality of
the design.
For all but the most neophilic and the most design-aware of your engaged
users, a design change is, when it is noticed at all, a pure short-term
cost. There may be a long-term gain for them, and there will hopefully
be a bigger gain for the previously less-engaged users. But almost by
definition, current users think things are mostly fine, especially the
ones engaged enough to notice and comment upon a new design. And just
when they've gotten comfortable, somebody's gone and moved things around
on them. How rude!
The true measure of a new design is in its medium-term impact on the
behavior of users, both the large majority of current users who never
would have bothered to comment and the new users that turn up for the
first time. Are people searching more? Do they have an easier time
finding the left-hand links that they need? Are novices editing more?
And so on.
For comparison, people should look at the comments on any recent Google
redesign. Google has a love of data and the resources to do a ton of
testing before any public launch of a redesign, so you can be pretty
sure that the metrics for any change are solid. But you can still find
as many zomg-design-fail comments as you care to read.
William
P.S. That's not to say that any redesign, including this one, is
perfect, or to devalue user feedback. I'm just saying that the tone of
the initial reaction isn't a good way to measure design quality.
