Skip to content

Comment on If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices (2009)parent

Comments

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.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.