Nope. Improvements are one thing, but complaints tend to result from UX designers chasing fads, or rewrites which break or worsen previous functionality.
I accept change but do wish a helpful but simplified explanation of the changes for the elderly users would be available to help understand them. Also in a font size these poor aging eyes could read. Today a Head Office email was in abt a 6 point size😢 Hard even for younger visually impaired to deal with.
Yes, change is inevitable. But that does not mean that we should blindly go along with change, like lemmings. It all depends on the nature and rationale of the change. If you are running a business, you should not change your key people, just to have change, and expect everyone to just accept it. I worked for a company that did just that. I was employed in a Fortune 500 company's IT department. Things were running smoothly. The management personnel were on the ball. They seemed to make the right decisions for virtually everything. Well, after ~10 years, the board of directors decided it was time for a change. So they brought in a new president. Everything went down hill -- or so it looked that way. Perhaps two or so years later, another change at the top. And things got even worse. And with each change, loads of executives were shuffled and dismissed and new executives were hired, with different titles, and departments were merged, and renamed, and on and on and on. Each new executive had to show that they were worth their keep, and so they made changes. No longer could employees focus on their responsibilities, assuming they were even given clear responsibilities. Competent employees found new, greener pastures. Inevitably, customer affecting outages occurred, and we became a CYA culture. The movie "Office Space" touched on this. Every action, no matter how insignificant, had to be approved by multiple teams, most of whom had no clue what that action meant. Red tape, galore. Huge time wasted, for the simplest changes. Virtually no different than huge changes. But even with huge changes, most of the people that had to approve them had no understanding of them. So we went in circles. With the original management, we frequently had changes. And everyone understood the rational for each change. The changes were good. It was also challenging. But it made sense. So the employees were gung ho and very productive. Then, with each new change in management, the employee's focus changed to avoid trouble. Employees became conditioned to figure out how not to be blamed for problems created by those that foisted groundless changes for others to implement. If you want to drag a company into a world of extreme time wasting "process", then implement ITIL. It is a one-size fits all for every IT department, that ensures that no IT department can ever excel and out-perform (in any meaningful way) the competition, when the competition is also using ITIL. Everyone will be wearing the same shackles. But the executives will get lots of spreadsheets to make them think that they know what is going on, right down to how long it took to move a cable. Change should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
I was very frustrated in the distant past when Google made it more difficult for my old eyes to read the text on their mail. I complained on their forum because the change intentionally removed quite a bit of the contrast making it much harder for me to read and causing me eyestrain. They didn't care. Their excuse was they had limited resources to work on the GUI. I told them in that case please just leave the interface alone instead of intentionally harming people who don't have perfect eyesight.
I used to work in the IT department at Atlantic Records, on 51 street in Manhattan (New York City). In that office, they had a sign: "If it ain't broke, fix it." In case anyone is interested, they ran their operations on two Data General MV series systems. A model MV10, and an MV20, both running the AOS/VS operating system (Advanced Operating System / Virtual Storage). They were very proud of those to systems.
@@SeattleSoulFan "When did you work there? I'm a huge fan of Atlantic Records' output in general. Did you get to meet Ahmet Ertegün?" I never met him. He probably never visited that Manhattan location. Such a visit would have had all of the employees talking. I was there for 3 years. I do not know what went on there before or after. It was a long time ago, starting off in an entry level position in their computer room. There was no studio. But I did get to see the board room. And I got to see which audio manufacturer they used for all of the people that had window offices, as well as in the board room. It was nothing special. They used Yamaha gear, and everyone with an office had a stereo. The board room had huge JBL speakers, and they cut out sections of the walls and inserted the speakers into the walls. Even I knew that that was the worst thing you could do with speakers. I did meet an executive (can't remember her name) that handed out tickets for concerts. I am sure that she had other duties. I just do not remember her role. When Phil Collins was touring, I found out that she was the go-to person to get tickets. When I was in her office, she pulled out a large inter-office envelope that was stuffed with tickets. She told me to help myself. Jackpot! I took 4 tickets. But I had no idea which ones to take. I learned from that experience that the record companies hold back lots of tickets. She probably had 1,000 or so tickets stuffed into that envelope. Also, just about every office and cubical had CDs all over the place. One somewhat large office looked like a storage room for CDs. That should give you an idea of the years that I worked there.
I think all of you in the comment section are missing Leo's simple point: change will happen for whatever reason, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You may not like a change, but oftentimes there is a valid reason for it, even though you may not see it.
There's a difference between change and change. They don't need to force changes on users, instead they can OFFER changes to the users. Even if - and I stress IF - they "must change", they frequently/generally make changes in the most convoluted and complicated ways possible, and new interfaces are often created without sufficient user input. They're not complicated because they're new, they're complicated because they're not set up intuitively.
On the other side, I heard a RU-vidr complain that a certain business website for ordering looked "very dated" although admitting it was fully functional. The business supplied things for busineses and tech workers who were concerned with getting their parts and not worrying that the UI wasn't keeping up with the latest trends.
I can't agree with what you say. As a programmer I know that software must get improved, but not change it at will. There are thousands upon thousands of changes made to "improve" a software that are not necessary and that it could have been done as an option. Instead, every new boss that comes along within the company, changes things just because they think it is the best thing to do. Oftentimes this is not ok by any measure. One example is the elimination of Wordpad in Windows. Worpad does not need maintenance or to be continuously updated to run without a glitch. A perfectly good program was erased because they said so. No options, no nothing. Another perfectly good program (a simple and helpful tool), MS Photo Editor was obliterated too. There are countless examples of impositions like these. No Leo, forced changes are not always good. Most of the time they are not even helpful but annoying. By the way, thank you for your good work! Keep it up! 😊
Wise words, Leo. Not only regarding living with computers, but also applicable about local planning, changing face of international commerce, automobiles, and on and on. Thanks! (Deep breathing ... 🤗)
The why is simple: So they can add creepy new features that you don't want or need! How else are they going to increase the ads you see and how much they can snoop on you? That is what makes them money.
