User Interface

I don’t mind if a company I deal with online, my bank for instance, changes their Web appearance (the user interface) because they’re adding features to their website pages. But I mind a lot when they change their user interface just for the sake of change. “Our new website looks more modern” is not something that is useful to me. Having to hunt for links I used to know second nature is a waste of my time. And when they tout their new website as more “streamlined” and easier to use, what they really mean is all the links I need are hidden in dropdown menus and other obscure locations, and I’ll spend three times as long finding the link I need.

A similar thing happens at brick-and-mortar stores. After a time, I learn the location of items I purchase frequently, then one day I walk into the store and everything is in a different location. All this does is annoy customers. In the end, I never buy anything I wasn’t intending to buy when I entered the store — I just spend more time finding what I want. And often I have to get a store employee to help me, and then I’m burning the employee’s time. And the end result? The employee might direct me to the correct location, or he might direct me to the wrong location. At that point I might decide “another time” and leave without making the purchase. I’m really skeptical that these inventory ‘resets’ help store profits.

Software programs have a user interface, too. I just upgraded Mozilla Firefox to the new version 57 called Firefox Quantum. It loads pages twice as fast, which is useful, but why change the user interface? Why move a ‘button’ from the right side of the program window to the left side of the window? Why make things look different? Is it to emphasize that it’s a new product “under the hood”? Frankly, I rarely think a new user interface is an improvement in any way. I think it just looks different and unfamiliar. What’s the point of that?

I have a suspicion that the webmaster and the software programmer merely want to justify their jobs. After all, they have to put something on their time sheets. “Our old user interface is boring. We need a complete redesign.” And that is how ‘make-work’ comes to be.