[WikiEN-l] The New Look

[William Pietri]

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.