Big irony: Net users hate change

[23skidoo]

I think one of the biggest pieces of irony to come out of the Internet era is how little Net users actually embrace change. Whenever Facebook or Google or whatever change something there is always a hue and cry, and sometimes the companies blink and revert (Quikster, anyone?).

It's also become the norm for sites to either immediately offer a "view old version" option or to do so after days of complaints. For example, Huffington Post's news site earlier this year introduced a Canadian version. And for a couple weeks IPs from Canada could only access that version. After days of loud complaints, Huffington blinked and added an option to view the US original. Most recently, the TV Guide-affiliated blog TV Shows on DVD introduced a redesign of their site, and a few days later conceded that not everyone likes it, so they added a "revert to old version" option. The Doctor Who News Page site recently decided to drop an RSS-style function that allowed, at a glance, the opportunity to see updates from about a dozen or more other DW news sites, and as such I don't visit that page near as much as I did a month ago.

I'm one of those who don't like change, especially if it's change for the sake of change or, as is the case with 100% of so-called "improvements" (yes that's a total plurality - I've never encountered an exception in 15 years of being online) either some functionality is lost/retired, or the changes make it more difficult to navigate and find, quickly, the information you want. The Internet Movie Database "upgraded" its interface a couple years ago, rendering it more difficult to find certain information; as a result I rarely use the site anymore (and they never offered a revert option).

Odds are TrekBBS will probably undergo some sort of change if it changes hosts, etc. And it'll probably piss off as many people as who like it.

So am I alone here in noticing the irony? Or have you also noticed cases where a favorite website has "upgraded" and rendered itself worthless in the process? And I'm not even going into the countless times I've read of people who have "upgraded" their OS/browser/favorite piece of software only to decide to revert to an older version because the new one either flat-out sucks or removes functionality from the older version; I experienced this for the first time about 8 or 9 years ago when I blindly upgraded QuickTime only to find the new version placed all the features I used on the previous version behind the "QuickTime Pro" paywall. I haven't trusted software/OS upgrades since (and have long since abandoned QuickTime for alternate software that provides the functionality I enjoyed early on).

Alex

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well, people are still people. Once they get used to something, they don't like it to change arbitrarily. Consider how many people were online back before the Web was popular, and hate how Usenet got flooded with AOL morons, and are now witnessing the death of newsgroups.

Then came the Web, Web-based email, instant messaging, etc. Now, those are things are going the way of the dodo, replaced by Facebook and Twitter and so forth. Things people might have once posted as detailed messages on a forum instead appear as videos on YouTube.

I can get why people are resistant to it. I am resistant, in some ways, but if that's what works for people, more power to them. I use Facebook pretty heavily (though I don't play any of the games.) I occasionally use Twitter. I have no interest in making videos of myself on YouTube, but I do like to use it for Minecraft videos.

I don't think there's really an irony here. When you're younger, you're discovering and establishing your own life, then you get accustomed to things being a certain way. Then, things change. Things just change faster with today's technology, so there's a lot more griping when the changes aren't perceived to be for the better.

But hey, I like the Office Ribbon interface, I'm fine with the new Facebook, and I still use email and IM and plain old Web pages.

 

[RoJoHen]

My biggest issues with change on the internet are that, like you say, they are changes for the sake of change. Facebook's layout changes have very rarely actually been an improvement over the previous version. One shouldn't have to ask, "It's different, but how is it better?" Sometimes I just think programmers get bored and redecorate their websites like they would rearrange their furniture.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I don't think it's always the users, most often the changes suck. There are some changes that are good, and yes, it takes time to get used to them. But I feel that people mostly change things just for the change. And when you always see changes that are for the worse, you totally forget about those that you eventually got to appreciate.

Let me provide a few examples that I hated and still hate:
1. Google instant. It's insane considering how simple and cool the original interface is in comparison. You should just watch what happens when you try it on a phone. It accelerated my switch to DuckDuckGo. (Yes, it can be turned off, but I often search from someone else's computer and it's really frustrating in absolutely every instance.)
2. The new Google image search. Totally unusable from my phone, and the link to the working version is at the bottom and constantly gets hidden by the ridiculous JavaScript that moves it further away if you don't click fast enough. Can't be switched off.
3. By extension: All sites that have auto-loading of more content as you scroll. They simply don't let you access the features at the bottom of the page!
4. Firefox copying Chrome. If I wanted to use Chrome, I'd switch. I don't see the point in having several identical browser. Most frustratingly, you can no longer copy URLs from Firefox because the inability to copy them makes them "look" more "friendly" (and like Chrome). After copying, in a third of the cases I have to manually type http:// in front of the URL. I preferred the time when you could send URLs from the browser without being tech savvy.
4. Firefox Awesome Bar revisited. Great addition at first, but ruined it after that. I can't open a site that's already open without typing out the entire address or doing Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.
5. GNU/Linux desktop environments getting ruined. The KDE environment got its features removed and was replaced with a half-baked crashing shiny desktop. The Gnome environment... no longer exists for me.
6. You mean that suggestion of TrekBBS switching to XenForo? Yes, that would be a disaster, given how it lacks useful features compared to vB, it runs slow on many browsers, doesn't work with JavaScript disabled and when it is enabled it takes 60 MB of RAM per site.

That said, QuickTime sucked 20 years ago, so the sooner it gets amputated, the better.

 

[milo bloom]

Very glad to see TVShowsonDVD offer a classic option. Their design was always simple, but that's all it needed.

I don't think the subject is really ironic though; like others have said, most times the changes are for the worst. Net users don't just fear change: we hate stupid changes that don't make any sense.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Stupid changes that don't make any sense" are surely in the eye of the beholder.

 

[milo bloom]

"Stupid changes that don't make any sense" are surely in the eye of the beholder.

If you get enough complaints that you have to go to the trouble of offering a "classic" view, it's probably a change you could have done without (and is likely well on the way to being "stupid". )

Seems like one of those things where your just looking for something to change, instead of responding to actual complaints about usage.

I'll admit the old design of TVShowsonDVD could have used one small tweak: the Reviews section could have been made more visible. In the classic view, the reviews are way down under the news listings, so a fix for that would have been to move the reviews up and over to the side or something. Instead they did that massive redesign that just looked cluttered.

And do I need to mention the Facebook changes? Why is the newsfeed ever anything besides a chronological feed of posts? That's another place where they seem to tweak it every so often, and just piss off more people every time.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Stupid changes that don't make any sense" are surely in the eye of the beholder.

If you get enough complaints that you have to go to the trouble of offering a "classic" view, it's probably a change you could have done without (and is likely well on the way to being "stupid". )

Seems like one of those things where your just looking for something to change, instead of responding to actual complaints about usage.

I'll admit the old design of TVShowsonDVD could have used one small tweak: the Reviews section could have been made more visible. In the classic view, the reviews are way down under the news listings, so a fix for that would have been to move the reviews up and over to the side or something. Instead they did that massive redesign that just looked cluttered.

And do I need to mention the Facebook changes? Why is the newsfeed ever anything besides a chronological feed of posts? That's another place where they seem to tweak it every so often, and just piss off more people every time.

There's also the phenomenon of focus groups, where what people say they want is not, in fact, what they actually want. Facebook doesn't do anything arbitrarily--some UI guru and user panel somewhere came up with everything they do. It's very difficult to anticipate the needs of users. One of the things Apple has been good at--what has made them so successful--is being able to anticipate and implement what users want to do, without the users even being able to articulate it beforehand. That sort of success is rare, though.

 

[Santaman]

I hate change, very much, true because most changes generally fuck up, bloat and turn formally well working stuff into something bug ridden, slow, ugly and unusable...

 

[milo bloom]

In response to Robert Maxwell, post# 8

That's what I was thinking: there may be a small number of people asking for these changes, but they're basically just a vocal minority. Everybody else is quiet because they're happy with it (until it gets changed due to that "focus group" , and then the site doesn't want to backpedal after they put in all that work, so they make a few tiny concessions, while saying the changes were "highly requested" and that the complainers are just "resistant to change").

 

[YellowSubmarine]

There are many changes that are good and/or necessary, and the user's first impressions are a terrible way to judge that, because the users often don't have a clue what they want and need. But the people who make the decisions for the changes are often more clueless for the answers of the same questions.

 

[sojourner]

Two words:

New Coke.

 

[RobertVA]

Two words:

New Coke.

I've never understood why Coke (classic) tastes good from a fountain but lousy from a can. While "New" Coke had a different taste (compared to Coke Classic) at least the canned version was consistent with the fountain version.

I may not be the only person with this perception, as a regional supermarket chain sold store brand colas in regular and "New Choice" versions for a while.

 

[RoJoHen]

Two words:

New Coke.

Yeah, I fucking hated it when they changed their website.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Or have you also noticed cases where a favorite website has "upgraded" and rendered itself worthless in the process?

The Gawker family redesign. Some of those sites (io9, Kotaku, Lifehacker) went from being daily reads to occasional reads, and then only when someone's posted on Facebook a link to an article that might interest me. I don't surf there on my own anymore; I can't find anything. And apparently I'm not the only one. This will be studied for years as the prime example of What Not To Do.

The latest Daily Kos design. The problem isn't the layout per se, but the underlying architecture for comments, which now doesn't always work.

 

[B.J.]

I've never understood why Coke (classic) tastes good from a fountain but lousy from a can.

It's just the opposite for me. Great out of a can, but lousy from the fountain or a plastic bottle.

 

[sojourner]

Or have you also noticed cases where a favorite website has "upgraded" and rendered itself worthless in the process?

The Gawker family redesign. Some of those sites (io9, Kotaku, Lifehacker) went from being daily reads to occasional reads, and then only when someone's posted on Facebook a link to an article that might interest me. I don't surf there on my own anymore; I can't find anything. And apparently I'm not the only one. This will be studied for years as the prime example of What Not To Do.

The Gawker sites do let you switch to "blog view" which makes the experience very close to the old format - which I prefer. Look for the icon at the top right side of whatever gawker site you happen to be on. Commenting is still a clusterfuck there.

 

[JGordon]

A successful redesign of an existing website or program needs to do one or more of the following:

1) Increase functionality
2) Make the interface easier to use/functions easier to find
3) Modernize interface/design to keep up with current technologies/design themes/etc.

The problem is that many redesigns don't do any of these things. The constant facebook redesigns for example, don't seem to add any significant functionality (at least, not functionality that anybody wants), are more difficult to use (why did you possibly do away with the time-oriented view of events? Now I have to scroll through a bunch of stuff I've already seen to get to what's new), and didn't modernize the interface at all.

I switched all of my PCs to Google Chrome as soon as I tried it, because I found the interface easier to use than Firefox, it seemed to run faster than Firefox, and had a couple of killer features that Firefox lacked (ability to install in my user folder on my locked-down work PCs, syncing bookmarks across all my PCs). This is a product that came out and hit all of my 3 points compared to the product I was using. So its not that people are scared of change, I think they are just scared of changes that don't work.

Or have you also noticed cases where a favorite website has "upgraded" and rendered itself worthless in the process?

The Gawker family redesign. Some of those sites (io9, Kotaku, Lifehacker) went from being daily reads to occasional reads, and then only when someone's posted on Facebook a link to an article that might interest me. I don't surf there on my own anymore; I can't find anything. And apparently I'm not the only one. This will be studied for years as the prime example of What Not To Do.

The Gawker sites do let you switch to "blog view" which makes the experience very close to the old format - which I prefer. Look for the icon at the top right side of whatever gawker site you happen to be on. Commenting is still a clusterfuck there.

I actually like the Gawker site redesigns. I regulary read Jalopnik, io9, and Kotaku. I find the side-bar topic page to be very useful, as I have to do significantly less scrolling to find the articles that are relevant to my interests. I think the traditional blog format works well for sites that you either check several times a day or sites that don't have a ton of new posts. But io9 for example, has 30+ posts/articles per day, and I check it every 2-3 days, so it's a lot easier for me to sort through than a traditional blog format is. I'd actually categorize the Gawker changes as a success, at least from a design standpoint.

This is all aside from the bugginess of the site though - I have to refresh or re-click on an article to get it to load several times per session. And the comments are all sorts of f'd up and hard to sort through. But I like the overall design.