“Dealing with Radical User Experience Redesigns” & “Facebook Effectively Rolls out Experience Redesign” by Sergio Paluch
I think it is very true that people are generally not happy with too much change. They tend to like change only when things are not working, the recent election of President Obama is a good example. But in most cases, consumers like their products and service to not change. There are lots of examples of this, ‘New Coke’ is a good example and my friends also tell me that ‘Windows Vista’, the latest Microsoft update is not a positive change. There is an old saying, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
Why do developers and designers want to put their customer base through the trauma of updating websites, software packages and other online applications?
The articles by Sergio Paluch, “Dealing with Radical User Experience Redesigns” and “Facebook Effectively Rolls out Experience Redesign” are two articles that make a lot of sense to me. Paluch is clear that ‘almost all user experience redesigns will be unpopular with some people’ and ‘the more substantial the changes, the greater is the possibility that it will strike discord with user, causing them to abandon the product of service’. He then argues there are four key issues that lead to this discord:
• Anxiety
• Shock
• Disappointment
• Confusion
If you have users experiencing one or any of the above in response to changes made to your website or product then you risk losing business. Paluch describes what happens with each of these reactions and then outlines how web developers should critique their desire to change.
He outlines the following:
1. Make only changes that really will benefit users.
2. Let users know what improvements will be made and why.
3. Give users a preview of the new design.
4. Make sure that users will perceive the changes as beneficial in the short-term as well as long-term.
5. Give users aids such as tool tips, tutorials or an overview of changes.
6. Give users the option to continue using the old version.
He does not provide any evidence for why any of these will work, but they do sound like a sensible list of points for anyone to consider before they change their website. The two that I think make the most sense are 1 and 6.
Web developers and designers will always be looking for new or cool ways to do things, but if you have a good customer following and people are coming back to your site, then you really need to consider point 1 very carefully. I would add to this and say that customers should also be asking for changes to functionality. If you are improving the use of the site overall and solving a problem, then it would seem to make sense to make the change. But small changes over time is a better approach than a ‘big bang’, doing too much at once.
Point 6 is also very important, if users do not want to go with the new system, then they should give them the option to use the old system. And this is the point that Paluch speaks to in his second article “Facebook Effectively Rolls out Experience Redesign.”
I’m not an active user of on Facebook, but I do have some experience with it. When Facebook went to make changes to it’s format, it gave users the option of reverting to the old site if they did not like the new site. Even though Paluch is able to point to a chart that shows 55% to 40% of users reverting to the old Facebook site, at least they were able to revert to their preference. If there has been no ability to use the old site, Facebook may have seen a number of those who like to old Facebook cancelling their user membership with the site. By giving users the option to choose between using a new and older version the results are probably better versus having a new site only.
I am sure it will take more time for the users to fully switch over to the new version, but in this imperfect world there will still be a percentage of users that will not change to the new version no matter what. Not everyone like changes to what they’re already used to. And every time a website makes changes and redesign there will always be the positive and negative user experiences. However, we can try to eliminate the negative experiences by making sure that new changes are not a surprise by following a series of steps that thoughtfully plan out the change before implementation.
Noriyuki Kuroda
