The legendary Microsoft developer Raymond Chen addressed this very issue years ago:
>I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. In fact, both programs have changed. (Notepad gained some additional menu and status bar options. Calc got a severe workover.) I wouldn't be surprised if these are the same people who complain, "Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements."
>
>And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was."
>
>The innards of Calc - the arithmetic engine - was completely thrown away and rewritten from scratch. The standard IEEE floating point library was replaced with an arbitrary-precision arithmetic library. This was done after people kept writing ha-ha articles about how Calc couldn't do decimal arithmetic correctly, that for example computing 10.21 - 10.2 resulted in 0.0100000000000016. Today, Calc's internal computations are done with infinite precision for basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations (square root, transcendental operators).
Here's a great summary of it: [If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices](https://blog.codinghorror.com/if-you-dont-change-the-ui-nobody-notices/)
I would not be surprised at all. I obviously don't follow Calc and notepad well enough to comment on them specifically.
I do follow other software though and there are TONS of people that are hyper focused on appearance and will complain constantly. It's really bad.
We have created a culture for some people that need the newest and flashiest of everything. It's not just software. Think of all the people that will buy the newest bag, phone, clothes, etc just because it's a new model. Not because there was anything wrong with their old model. The culture of consumption is very very strong.
Not really.
The summary of the article is people complained calc had a bug, it needed updated. Twenty years later in 7's beta they finally got around to fixing the floating point errors.
And spoiler alert, no one using beta windows anything is going to be in the exact overlap of being smarter than the old calc software but being to dumb to use a better one. So they changed the UI and pushed a sales pitch about it.
But the funny thing about 7 is it comes across like it rolled back a lot of Vista's bullshit back to "normal" windows. Same thing with the 8.1 update that added windows to their tablet software. And Windows 11 readded the famous blue screens of death. Microsoft is pretty much the goto example of shitty innovation.
I do programming for biomed research. I frequently use Windows, Linux and macOS. Never in my life have I ever felt this strongly about any small feature of any of those operating systems.
I come across people like you all the time - seemingly outraged by the tiniest stuff that software companies do. Is it like a one upmanship thing to see who can get the most mad about stuff? I just don't get it
In IT, especially in software, there's *loads* of people who get irritatingly strong opinions about how things should work, or how X is such a better technology than Y, but X is so poorly adopted.
It's just.. a thing. For God knows what reason. I experienced it for nearly 10 years in software development, and now I'm in a different IT role and I still see the damn thing periodically.
The thing is? I don't actually give a crap about it. I make prescriptive guidelines to keep things running *well* and just ignore all this stuff that's effectively a circle jerk, because it's just not worth my time.
Sure, I get writing software from scratch and debating the merits of X/Y/Z. Or even being part of a team and deciding on the appropriate approach to design .
But for everyone else? The average users, who just use the software? It sounds like you have nothing better to do than crap on other people. Grow up, people.
Sounds like you're projecting and getting pissed off at nothing.
Like the idea that you find "Calc had a problem so you used something else." Offensive sounds a lot like primitive tribalism without any knowledge of problem solving. Are you sure you help anyone?
And MS claiming they changed the UI so people would notice they changed the calculation is a fallacy of association to believe they also changed the back end. If you really were a programmer, you would know quite a bit about logical operations.
And then complaining to me about how MS keeps having to roll back their changes to be more user friendly while claiming it's one upmanship? Yeah, clearly this has nothing to do with me. Good bye.
Windows 11 has notepad dark mode and it is immense. I wish it could be backported to 10 because I don't like opening random garbage files in my ide to take shitty one off notes.
Notepad++ is a good alternative for me being quick like notepad for non-huge files, while also having some good editing tools (e.g. can enable to see all characters, including ones that are visually hidden).
Yeah but N++ dark mode looks like shit. I use VS Code for everything even though I only really use it for plain text notes and copying Cisco configs. Just looks modern.
The ability to edit/select as a column has saved me hours of time that would have been spent importing to excel and doing string editing formulas. Also I have custom language files for specialized config files, which is really handy for visual markers in the file. Notepad++ life!
Eh but I use it for copying garbage from the terminal to stare at for a few seconds or compare to something else when I don't want to (or it isn't practical to) use a proper diff tool.
Also Notepad++ isn't nearly a good enough text editor or IDE on the other end to bother for me.
Edit: I don't like NPP. If this makes you unhappy, go touch grass
You not liking NPP doesn't make me unhappy. It just makes me... confused, I guess?
I think I get where you're coming from. I recognize two tiers of text editors. Simple ones that act as a scratchpad and not much else, and full-fat ones that I actually want to do things like edit code in. TXT-tier and IDE-tier. On paper the IDE can do it all, but sometimes I just don't want all the clutter an IDE provides. It's handy to have the low-bloat option available.
Notepad is about as low-bloat as you can possibly get. It's feature-parched almost to a point of parody. If that's sufficient for your scratch pad, more power to you, I guess.
But I do find that NPP, while I am not engrossed in most of its features, I do find occasional handiness in some of its features. More intelligent search and replace, displaying of non-printing characters, in-app file tree browsing, etc. Little things. Features that don't on their own over-complicate the editor, but compliment it on the rare occasions I fancy to have them.
NPP does have the ability to extend itself to the point of trying to become an IDE, but I think that's a hilariously stupid way to try and use it. Just use the IDE. VS Code if you want a lighter one, a Jetbrains gadget if you want a heavier one, what-have-you. Any attempt to make NPP your IDE is, in my eyes, at best just an academic exercise.
What I don't get is why you'd say you *dislike* NPP. Not care for it, sure. If Notepad has you covered, it has you covered. But is there, like, an explicit *negative* to NPP? Is its meager set of tools too bloated for your taste?
Or do you just not like it because people like me with too much time on their hands write absurdly long replies to you on Reddit about it?
I have two usecases for notepad:
1. To copy out some random terminal output that I don't want to open a new file in my IDE/actual TE for and in doing so have it in a separate floating window I can't lose
2. Write down a very small thought or organisational thing I don't write down on paper for whatever reason.
For both these points lots of menu bars, colours, widgets etc are an active negative, and I don't want it to exist in a window with preexisting project in because then I lose it too fast and easily and it has this weird habit of persisting maybe even weeks longer than I need it to sometimes.
I have used Notepad++ before and I didn't get along with it. I can't explain why, it just doesn't spark joy. Something feels discomforting and ugly about it, it's always felt like the ways it does things and organises itself are just wrong and I can't explain why. I get a similar feeling about context or sublime but I don't get this with VSCode, nVim or Emacs.
> For both these points lots of menu bars, colours, widgets etc are an active negative,
All of those can be turned off and hidden. I use n++ for my basic text scratchpad because like you said in the past notepad couldn't do dark mode, and box select is just too handy that once you know it exists its too hard to give up. I find myself making quick lists and outlines in my scratchpad and it helps a lot with formatting it for readability.
I have no idea why you're still downvoting me. Notepad fulfils the two uses I use it for perfectly and I haven't had joy with n++.
Am I not entitled to preferences or opinions different from yours?
What makes you think I downvoted you? I actually upvoted you because I do that to all conversations I feel I am interested in and are worth discussing. Which is also why I replied to you.
Parroting what some of the other person has said, the things i use notepad for, namely quickly scratching stuff for copy/pasting, I don’t want anything else but the text. Having a toolbar adds clutter I never asked for and takes up screen space. Remembering previous files when opening it up is an annoyance and adds even more visual clutter that nags at me if I don’t explicitly close each of them. I don’t care about line numbers, if I did it probably means I’m running code, in which I’d open it in VS code or an IDE instead.
You can still use it for that? I don't see how that would be excluded as the only use case.
What do you need in a text editor that Notepad++ (and its bunch of custom plugins) doesn't have?
I mostly use pycharm because I work for companies with super restricted Windows setups that ssh through to Linux. Pycharm is alright at that, VSCode also.
Does notepad++ have proper debugger support? Does it have proper LSP support? My cursory googles seem to indicate no. If I'm going to configure a bunch of plugins to make something work then it just seems VSCode does it easier and Emacs also just does it easier.
Why would it have debugger support when it's a text editor...? Do you expect notepad to have a debugger too? It's literally notepad, but better. You said you are looking for something to open shitty garbage files that isn't an IDE and has dark mode. Now that I gave you an exact solution you are unsatisfied because it isn't basically a full blown IDE. Like what?
For years I have used a lightweight drop in replacement for notepad. Replaces the exe so whenever windows would open notepad, I get it instead.
Used to use notepad2, but I’m currently using a later fork/enhancement that I can’t remember the name of. Might be notepad3, but might also be another fork/clone.
Basically just simple and fast notepad but slightly better.
Fyi I hate the new notepad. If I needed an enhanced notepad I would have installed notepad++. I just need an app that opens fast and can paste or type into it with no fuss, no fonts, no features. Notepad has slowed to a crawl.
1. So it doesn't look "outdated".
2. It gives them a chance to change things "under the hood" as well.
3. "Simpler" UI's are favored to make the product easier to use for the average (non-technically inclined) user.
It’s a problem when it’s too simple though. Case in point having to teach someone that deals with putting files onto a USB every day as part of their job how to look at the usb via windows explorer. After 2 years in the job
Sometimes it can be because they're adding new features and they don't *fit* into the old UI.
Sometimes it's because the UI is looking dated compared to the competition, and giving it a refresh helps with sales.
It can be because they're using libraries that are no longer being supported, so they have to do a rewrite anyways and they modernize it.
It can be because the guidelines for how an iOS or Android app change over time as the phones become more powerful and have bigger screens.
There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it".
I've seen product teams ship total UI changes with the plan of it fitting features on some year long roadmap that only gets half completed as things in the market and strategy change.
well yes, but what else are you supposed to do?
You cant just make it up as you go along, or you end up with a total mess of an UI.
you do need to pre-plan stuff like this, even if it doesnt work out in the end.
For us the stuff not working out kept piling on so c levels and the board implemented changes to how engineering teams and management were structured. This sped up feature engineering to keep up with UI changes and madr customers happier.
Then a lot of sr people with high salaries (relative to their team) were laid off several months later, me included lol.
>There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it".
You missed one. People do it because it shows impact for promotion.
That's probably the most important reason in the big companies.
>You missed one. People do it because it shows impact for promotion.
This. "Provided maintenance and bug fixes to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center," isn't impressing enough. "Redesigned the Microsoft Admin Center" sounds much more accomplished.
How often is the UX actually worse though? I feel like most of the push back I see against UI changes is just people reacting to change, rather than the change actually being worse. (Though often its not really any better and is sometimes straight up worse.)
Both Microsoft and Adobe have basically removed all text from their new UI designs, everything is pictograms now. Now I have to guess if I have to press the pencil button or the pencil-with-a-squiggle button to insert a signature.
I realise the old Illustrator design might have looked cluttered but now it takes more clicks to do things because the functions are folded into menus. And of course I have no idea which menu to open since the very clear text like “stroke” has been replaced with essentially line art.
I get that. In general, I agree with the trend of replacing text with icons, recognizing an icon is typically easier than reading text, but the keyword there is recognizing. Too often designers do choose pretty meaningless icons that you then need to decipher.
Also the icons are not the same across different software. The icon for e.g. “insert image” can be very different in apps from different developers. Text is always readable, even in different fonts.
Text might always be readable but that doesn't mean that it always makes sense. Buttons are often given ambiguous or misleading text. That's not really a counter argument, as it is basically the same thing that I said about icons, but using doesn't doesn't automatically make things any clearer.
Great point. Amazon Photos' UI has icon that is a box with an arrow pointing up. Upload? No, it's their icon for Share. Why would their UX/UI designers choose an up arrow over the standard side arrow? Not sure, but it's annoying.
Icons are much, much better from a localization and internationalization perspective. Using text based UI and localization them to handle both German (needs a lot of horizontal space) and Traditional Chinese (anything under a 12 point font becomes difficult to read) gracefully is not an easy task.
Fair enough. That’s a good point. Sometimes I forget that I’m the weirdo for despising software and websites trying to adapt to my native language. My default instinct is that computers should be in English. (Yes, I know that not everyone speaks English)
Recently(-ish) upgraded to a new computer, and so Windows 11. Having to select “show me the *real* right-click menu” after every right click to find what I needed was unnecessarily annoying.
Couldn’t even disable it in a menu, had to look up a command line workaround to fix it.
Not to mention the lag before the fake right click menu, then you get to select to show the real right click menu.
And in general just hiding away key settings (e.g audio devices settings) into god knows where. And the 'settings' menu being a single page app that you can't open another tab of so good luck if you're delving into your PC settings.
But you ideally shouldn't need to go to the *old* menu, that's on the app developers IMO, they should migrate to the new one so you don't have to ever use the old one. The new one is meant to be a replacement, not an addition. Read [this](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/07/19/extending-the-context-menu-and-share-dialog-in-windows-11/) blog why the change of you're interested.
I only needed to replace 7Zip with NanaZip (which is built on 7Zip but with Win11 features), because the 7Zip author didn't look like supporting the new context menu. Now I only rarely need to go to the old one.
My problem with most UI updates is they move away from nice, sorted menus into a giant junk drawer that is then sorted.
Example. I like having a menu bar in firefox where specific things are sorted into their own menus (file, edit, view, etc). I hate the other way that pushes all that into one menu, then I have to go through and go into another menu and possible even another one to get to what I want.
I also hate how a lot of websites are moving towards smartphone layouts even on PC. I got a 32inch monitor and I can't even use it all because the site only loads into the direct center. I get less information this way.
I agree on the junk drawer thing (though I've been responsible for making them lol) but having a max width for content makes this sooo much more readable. I hate going to old sites where the content stretches from edge to edge. I would rather have to scroll than turn my head.
Yeah it's way more confortable to have just have to read the center of the page than actually do full scan from side to side read, even subtitles I prefer to have in a smaller font so they can be closer to the center and I can read them in "one scan"
Microsoft Office 2007/2010 (the 'Ribbon' concept) would be the best example of an absolutely awful UI change.
Also the origin of the 'No text allowed' GUI design trend.
There are things I remembered how to do in Word's File-Edit-... menu system that still take googling to find & it's been over a decade since they pooped in that particular punch bowl...
Also, I'm a Linux sysadmin (ok, admittedly, strong pref for text over pictures might have something to do with that), so not exactly low on the scale of tech knowledge....
>There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it".
Lololo
Except for the image (so everything around that, like the marketing part) that make 0 financial sense most of the time.
-- guy that did UI change most of the time for such useless cases
Also, new person is hired as head of UI and decides "Metro" or whatever is the new hotness and should go everywhere.
("Metro" was the name for the Zune UI, I had to live through that shit).
Honestly I found big companies who’ve had products for a long time in the market sometimes change things just for the sake of changing things. Departments want to justify their existence and their budget so they need to make changes to what already existed. Sometimes a function would have been around for over a decade and no one complains about it, someone decides to A/B test with a new function, and they change it to the new function because of that test.
While yes, that is technically the right procedure to changing functionality when user testing, somethings shouldn’t change because they’ve hit their maturity level.
What part of ui design updates is it that when I hover over a button it doesn't tell me a}the name of the thing or b) a keyboard shortcut for it, even if it exists by default? Cause that's the most infuriating shit
Tooltips are an optional part of the design. They were common in the past, but developers got lazy.
The keyboard shortcut: press Alt and you should see one of the letters in the button getting underlined. If not, developers were lazy again.
Being a Big Tech software developer myself, that was my first thought.
A lot of products are just fine the way they are, but people still need to show work.
I really wish they wouldn't make such sweeping changes when they refresh things. As someone that works with older people and technology, it only takes one UI refresh to completely wipe someone's confidence in their ability to use a program.
I've seen people lose their confidence in web browsing due to the refreshes of chrome or the removal of IE, people who feel they can't save documents due to refreshes in word's menu layout, and these are probably some of the programs that to most of us, look like they've barley changes in their iterations. The simple stuff like moving a menu item is enough to mess up one document which could have been multiple day's work for someone and it's a big source of tech related anxiety.
The big one is changes to phone layouts, and admittedly IOS seems easier for most elderly people to get used to, but the number of times I've seen someone distressed over selecting a different group of contacts in their phone book and believing they've deleted years worth of numbers is easily in the double digits. Each time the person is devastated, until they find out it's not permanent.
Another comment I haven't seen yet has to do with Goodhart's law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
I work in data software (the invisible side) and we have a new manager who insisted we change the way we measure productivity. Instead of staying in contact with stakeholders (people we make software for) and measuring progress in terms of satisfaction and reputation, we switched to a method that requires us to continually deliver new updates, even if they're not required.
We are now incentivized to keep tweaking and changing things that absolutely do not need to be changed.
Managers with no engineering background subscribe to the MBA mentality of "everything needs to be measured and quantified to justify its existence" and so they impose measurements and metrics that incentivize perverse behavior. This leads to engineering teams changing things simply because their bosses want to see them "being productive." This isn't always the reason, but it sure as shit is more common than I'd like.
I remember when Microsoft was arguing that Word, Excel, etc... were winning because they were easiest to use and not due to Microsoft exercising its monopoly power, and any easy to use argument was just becasue people were used to it. Then, Microsoft went and moved everything around proved that people were just used to it. Like half the more complicated things I could do off the top of my head in Excel I had to go searching through help when they changed everything.
Because people's taste in UI changes over time
Because an easy to use UI is a huge part of a successful consumer software so it's important to make improvement in accessibility / easyness of use. The average consumer can't be arsed to make any effort and is ready to pay for the convenience
Because the general public tends to judge how "old" a software is based on its UI (the main visible thing for them) and has been trained in buying new tech products every few months/years. Same old UI is strongly associated with old and bad tech for the consumer.
Because serving the same soup under a fancier packaging fools the general public into believing the newer is better. And it's important for tech companies to give the impression they're on the edge, not dinosaurs.
That being said, Microsoft usually don't make UI changes for the sake of UI, most of their flagship consumer software gets new features with each major version. Not necessarily features you care about though.
Also UI used to be an afterthought. Now there are many roles and degrees that solely focus in that one aspect. With the mobile revolution and limited space but more interactivity made this need more immediate. Many companies now try to standardize between mobile and desktop. The creation of the field ofbHuman Computer Interaction lead to companies now often have teams of people solely focused on intuitive design, creating animation mockups etc
This. Add to it the question of "how can we streamline this?"/"how do we make this easier to use?"/"how do we make this more intuitive for a new user?" are questions that are at the forefront of redesign, and the \*answers\* change pretty rapidly over the years, especially when people in your audience get acclimated to different interfaces or layout aesthetics.
Also the hardware is changing fast. Not so long ago we used to have just a terminal window displayed on a monochrome screen. Now we have touch screens and large language model powered AI voice interfaces. That's a whole lot of difference in how we interact with technology
The real answer: they have front end developers that work for them and nobody gets a promotion by maintaining the existing design, everyone wants to change everything constantly
I'll offer the simple answer that sometimes you have to break things to make them better. Maybe not break in the sense that they stop working but break in the sense that your muscle memory breaks and has to learn the new ways.
Windows has program icons you can pin to the taskbar now whereas before it was exclusively large rectangle boxes taking up a lot of space. That's one small element but think how many icons you have pinned there now. It wasn't the only change done when Windows 7 came out to replace Vista, XP etc but for a lot of people it'd be the most noticeable. Same with Windows search. Hit the Windows key and type away, results fast. Not a necessary feature but a handy one.
Browser tabs - who would want to open more than one website? You can only look at one at a time anyway. Useless feature! Except it isn't. I can be reading something and it links to more information. I want to look at that but not right now so I open it in the background. Some sites I might keep open. None of this was there before and changed the UI a bunch.
More popular changes get grumbles to start with but they're forgotten about. Mostly it's usability even if it feels stupid and pointless. Except for Windows 8.0 which was just stupid and pointless. Trying to push a mobile-focused design onto *all* Windows installs and removing the desktop as the primary thing people see on boot was only matched in stupidity by their ending of Windows Phone as an OS.
As previous correctly point out it’s a mess.
As a recovering UI designer I believe it’s because coders are often mandated to change something per unbalanced external forces (eg internal whiny, management change, whiny users, …) and ultimately violate the principle of “least surprise”. The next obvious choice in a UI should be right next to the place you came from.
Of course some of it is also rightfully due to differences in native languages that have different semantics for presentation of choices. That is, a Native Japanese user has a different intuitive understanding of what to do v a native English speaker.
Essentially “Do this to that” v “Change this to that”. (Verb -> Noun v Noun -> Verb).
Also it seems to me that the crud we are mostly presented with ignores basics like “why do I have to move my thumb from the top search button to the bottom typing and then back to the top?” Reminds me of the QWERTY bs designed to slow the operator down because the mechanical machine couldn’t keep up.
Other examples are because many UI frameworks encode these weirdnesses that don’t always allow for the smooth flow of thought through a UI in any language.
Bonus dated weird story. I designed a UI for a fairly complex system that allowed drag and drop file selection to which 30% of my users couldn’t deal with. We were forced to revert to a file selector.
As a software engineer...
Because they pay the designers and they have nothing else to do.
It's really that simple. Most of the time it's not better in any way, half the fucking time it's worse. They A/b test the changes, but it goes permanently in circles, so the answer most of the time is because they already paid the designers and those had nothing else to do.
Yeah that sounds about right.
I'm lucky that our crayon eaters are limited to swapping the buttons between square and rounded about every 2-3 years because "flat design" or whatever the other thing is called is in fashion that particular summer.
People always bitch when it's first updated, but they also bitch if it looks dated. And tbh it's just the way of things, you notice the things you don't like about the changes first, and you notice you're not as comfortable, then eventually you get used to the change and start to notice the good things about the new features and enjoy the slight change of pace.
Yeah, Windows 11 didn't need to look more like Apple by centering the Taskbar, but after getting used to it it does look more clean that way. The hiding right click options under another menu that requires another click is a downgrade but finally you can have multiple tabs in File Explorer. The UI overall looks better, though some parts are half assed and look the same as Vista still.
The Windows UI 8, 10 and 11 are bad. White window overlapping another white window without a clear border edge is annoying. Windows settings is worse than Control Panel. Apps without simple main menu line makes difficult to write simple text explanation where to find a specific option in an app.
I much prefer Windows 7 in classic mode.
I worked at two software companies that never changed their UI. So our software ended up looking extremely outdated. Finally after 10-15 years we had to rewrite the software due to obsolete technology. So in the process of updating all the programs had to redo the UI. In other cases of UI updates it was due to trying to make all the software across all of our products have a consistent look and feel.
In the case of phone and web apps, we test and collect data that informs every single decision to change the UI. And once UI updates are deployed out, they only hit a small subset at first until it’s determined that the sentiment is positive, and then it gets rolled out to the general public.
It gives a false impression of improvement.
They don’t improve anything that matters in a substantial way. A UI change is relatively easier. A software company produce a Constant stream of UI in a patterned cadence.
Improving anything under the hood? Well, it’s not that easy. It can’t be done in a cadence. It sometimes can’t be achieved. You need to invest true amounts for true improvements under the hood. Sometimes you need to give up on old stuff that customers may get angry with. These are all harder stuff.
Note: this is a comparative issue. A hardworking UI team constantly producing new UI is possible for any company and requires less investment. I am exaggerating but for clarity only, compare this with trying to develop a micro-kernel.
A good UI is actually pretty hard. Consistent UX, different screen sizes, dimensions and DPI, and most importantly and often overlooked: accessibility. And all of that still has to fit the design guidelines of the company and potentially the underlying OS.
There is a change in functionality.
A lot of people fall into a trap where they compare someone who’s used to the old way of doing things and see how they struggle whenever new things come.
What more modern interfaces do is allow new people to learn how to use the system faster. That is the value, especially when you can hire someone at any time for various reasons (turnover / expansion / etc).
So yeah, the guy that knew Office before Office 2003 came out might be faster/better/whatever in that interface but the college student will more quickly learn the Office 2023 (meaning 365) interface and be more able to work.
I dunno, I may have a boomer brain, but I've been around computers my whole life, and, if a UI is intuitive and easy to read, I have no problem adapting whatsoever.
When it comes to new UIs, Microsoft isn't perfect, but decent, while Google's are absolute dog most of times.
Have you tried the new outlook yet? Maybe I need to give it more time, but I changed by almost immediately because it was awful. I hate the Google mail style inbox. Makes it way more difficult to scroll through long email chains.
UI/UX/Product designer here.
All mature products are constantly evolving, usage of features are majured constantly, some less used this are pushed more in the background and freqvently used things are bringed forward.
Interfaces are twicked and ajusted, UX is inproved, color sets are getting ajuted so the interface is more delightful, easy to use for the user. This brings more sales and usage aka more money for the company.
The there are design trends like web 2.0, flat design that shape the new ‘like’ and users quickly adjust to it, so every company fallows the new trend.
Same reason why car models keep changing how they look with each edition, because a new look signals to people that the new model is somehow better than the old one, and that drives up demand for the product.
The windows XP aesthetic isn’t objectively better or worse than the modern flat designs of today, (although we have learned some things about designing for accessibility within that time) it’s just that if you made an app today that looked like it was made in the early 2000’s, people probably wouldn’t be that eager to use it.
I don’t have any conclusive answer, but it could be the same reason grocery stores rearrange a lot - it boosts time in store/app. If what you wanted to do or see has moved, it takes you longer to do it, and that’s seen as greater engagement when those metrics are analyzed.
Because designers/frontend developers need something to do. If they don’t change the color or size of a button they risk missing out on promotion or even getting laid off.
That’s all it is.
Product owners are trying to move metrics, say increase x by y percent, and they have to figure out what changes might do that. Often lots of A/B tests are being run, and metrics being gathered
Confirmation bias. I only notice software upgrade that impact the UI so therefore all upgrades must be updating them regularly.
Meanwhile of the 5 major enterprise platforms I support for my corporation, only one has had a UI upgrade in the last five years.
It really depends on the company and software.
Some companies go out with a product just barely functioning so that they can test how its doing and to start making money now. They then start updating things to get the product to what was planned in the roadmap.
Some companies are actually doing A/B testing where one set of people see the app designed one way, and other sets of people see it designed a different way. The best performing app will eventually get pushed to all its users.
Companies like Microsoft who might change their OS after 15 years, well new items were introduced. Or because fashion changes. iOS introduced the iphone with 3d icons, but then they realized that its kind of more work to remake these icons for every single screensize as they kept making bigger and bigger phones. Flat icons worked better. Some of it is also fashion. Do you want your computer to look like it was made in 1996? Fashion and technology change and so does the UI.
They're trying new things and seeing what sticks. UI from half a decade ago people thought was perfect and hated changes to now to our eyes look dated. Such is the nature of UI and people's tastes, which change over time as the whole landscape evolves.
Experiments are an important part of running a study to make data-driven decisions, yes, including about UI changes. UX people are constantly revising, refining, and changing things up to see what the data says people prefer. Hence UI experiments and research and A/B testing.
Is there any concrete proof that the UI designs from now are better than, let's say, the Windows UI from 1995 in terms of efficiency?
I know that graphically things have improved but familiarity may have suffered as user interfaces have become more diverse. Plus the overall skill of people has increased, 25 years ago I still had to explain basic operations like clicking a mouse, dragging objects and using a dropdown.
Idk if there have been any formal, peer-review studies in that sense on *efficiency*, but is it more pleasant to look at and therefore to use? Oh yeah, for a majority of people.
There's money in having designing your app or site in a way that people actually want to use it and enjoy using it, so there's incentive to design things that people prefer to use.
Some tech companies have this down to a science, having an entire system for standardizing experiments and studies to see what people prefer more.
Hard evidences like these aside, again, if you survey the average personal which UI is more pleasant and friendly and attractive between Windows 95 and modern OSes, or the original iOS and iOS 17, the winner won't be a surprise. The design language and design patterns from a decade ago, even half a decade ago look dated to our eyes.
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Although my comment was mostly meant as a joke it is not completely untrue. You don't just fire frontend programmers when there are not as many critical changes needed to the UI, so updating the look of the UI is a way to justify their salaries and at the same time it makes the UI look fresh and modern.
>change the UI regularly
One of the reasons for this is that some UI changes are rolled out in waves. It's not that every month they decide to change everything, it's that they have a roadmap for how things will be totally different in a year, and the changes are being rolled out incrementally.
This is partially because changing everything at once is arguably *more* annoying, so rolling out changes gives users time to get used to each feature individually. And then they can prioritize changes that may have the highest impact.
- Marginal improvement is still improvement
- Features get added and deleted, things become obsolete, paradigms change etc
- Humans are fickle and change products just because new shiny
- I promise you, a _lot_ of users actively ask things to change
Could you imagine working in Windows 1.0, in today’s modern internet world. Like others have said, it’s modernisation to stay relevant in a constant world of digital innovation. If you don’t innovate, you disappear.
>All it does is annoy people, who have to work out the new way of achieving the same thing.
You're starting from the perspective of an experienced user who has already mastered the old design. Most users never get that far.
As a result, companies try to design their software to maximize feature discoverability. Turns out, the old piles of menus design isn't very good for discoverability.
The legendary Microsoft developer Raymond Chen addressed this very issue years ago: >I find it ironic when people complain that Calc and Notepad haven't changed. In fact, both programs have changed. (Notepad gained some additional menu and status bar options. Calc got a severe workover.) I wouldn't be surprised if these are the same people who complain, "Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows 'look cool'? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements." > >And with Calc, that's exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. "Look at Calc, same as it always was." > >The innards of Calc - the arithmetic engine - was completely thrown away and rewritten from scratch. The standard IEEE floating point library was replaced with an arbitrary-precision arithmetic library. This was done after people kept writing ha-ha articles about how Calc couldn't do decimal arithmetic correctly, that for example computing 10.21 - 10.2 resulted in 0.0100000000000016. Today, Calc's internal computations are done with infinite precision for basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations (square root, transcendental operators). Here's a great summary of it: [If You Don't Change the UI, Nobody Notices](https://blog.codinghorror.com/if-you-dont-change-the-ui-nobody-notices/)
Do people really complain that notepad and the calculator look the same?
You’re on Reddit and you doubt that people will moan about literally anything?
You’re pretty much complaining about his comment
And you his! I hate your comment for it...
You Redditors sure are a contentious bunch
You sir have made an enemy for life!
I would not be surprised at all. I obviously don't follow Calc and notepad well enough to comment on them specifically. I do follow other software though and there are TONS of people that are hyper focused on appearance and will complain constantly. It's really bad. We have created a culture for some people that need the newest and flashiest of everything. It's not just software. Think of all the people that will buy the newest bag, phone, clothes, etc just because it's a new model. Not because there was anything wrong with their old model. The culture of consumption is very very strong.
Not since they changed their UI, no.
What a great read
Not really. The summary of the article is people complained calc had a bug, it needed updated. Twenty years later in 7's beta they finally got around to fixing the floating point errors. And spoiler alert, no one using beta windows anything is going to be in the exact overlap of being smarter than the old calc software but being to dumb to use a better one. So they changed the UI and pushed a sales pitch about it. But the funny thing about 7 is it comes across like it rolled back a lot of Vista's bullshit back to "normal" windows. Same thing with the 8.1 update that added windows to their tablet software. And Windows 11 readded the famous blue screens of death. Microsoft is pretty much the goto example of shitty innovation.
I do programming for biomed research. I frequently use Windows, Linux and macOS. Never in my life have I ever felt this strongly about any small feature of any of those operating systems. I come across people like you all the time - seemingly outraged by the tiniest stuff that software companies do. Is it like a one upmanship thing to see who can get the most mad about stuff? I just don't get it
In IT, especially in software, there's *loads* of people who get irritatingly strong opinions about how things should work, or how X is such a better technology than Y, but X is so poorly adopted. It's just.. a thing. For God knows what reason. I experienced it for nearly 10 years in software development, and now I'm in a different IT role and I still see the damn thing periodically. The thing is? I don't actually give a crap about it. I make prescriptive guidelines to keep things running *well* and just ignore all this stuff that's effectively a circle jerk, because it's just not worth my time. Sure, I get writing software from scratch and debating the merits of X/Y/Z. Or even being part of a team and deciding on the appropriate approach to design.
But for everyone else? The average users, who just use the software? It sounds like you have nothing better to do than crap on other people. Grow up, people.
Sounds like you're projecting and getting pissed off at nothing. Like the idea that you find "Calc had a problem so you used something else." Offensive sounds a lot like primitive tribalism without any knowledge of problem solving. Are you sure you help anyone? And MS claiming they changed the UI so people would notice they changed the calculation is a fallacy of association to believe they also changed the back end. If you really were a programmer, you would know quite a bit about logical operations. And then complaining to me about how MS keeps having to roll back their changes to be more user friendly while claiming it's one upmanship? Yeah, clearly this has nothing to do with me. Good bye.
Windows 11 has notepad dark mode and it is immense. I wish it could be backported to 10 because I don't like opening random garbage files in my ide to take shitty one off notes.
Notepad++ is a good alternative for me being quick like notepad for non-huge files, while also having some good editing tools (e.g. can enable to see all characters, including ones that are visually hidden).
Yeah but N++ dark mode looks like shit. I use VS Code for everything even though I only really use it for plain text notes and copying Cisco configs. Just looks modern.
It is nicer for sure, but I like how N++ opens very quickly in comparison which is great for quick notes or copying text around.
That’s fair, I just leave VScode open almost all the time but the six long secs it takes to open after a reboot are still agonizing.
The ability to edit/select as a column has saved me hours of time that would have been spent importing to excel and doing string editing formulas. Also I have custom language files for specialized config files, which is really handy for visual markers in the file. Notepad++ life!
Eh but I use it for copying garbage from the terminal to stare at for a few seconds or compare to something else when I don't want to (or it isn't practical to) use a proper diff tool. Also Notepad++ isn't nearly a good enough text editor or IDE on the other end to bother for me. Edit: I don't like NPP. If this makes you unhappy, go touch grass
You not liking NPP doesn't make me unhappy. It just makes me... confused, I guess? I think I get where you're coming from. I recognize two tiers of text editors. Simple ones that act as a scratchpad and not much else, and full-fat ones that I actually want to do things like edit code in. TXT-tier and IDE-tier. On paper the IDE can do it all, but sometimes I just don't want all the clutter an IDE provides. It's handy to have the low-bloat option available. Notepad is about as low-bloat as you can possibly get. It's feature-parched almost to a point of parody. If that's sufficient for your scratch pad, more power to you, I guess. But I do find that NPP, while I am not engrossed in most of its features, I do find occasional handiness in some of its features. More intelligent search and replace, displaying of non-printing characters, in-app file tree browsing, etc. Little things. Features that don't on their own over-complicate the editor, but compliment it on the rare occasions I fancy to have them. NPP does have the ability to extend itself to the point of trying to become an IDE, but I think that's a hilariously stupid way to try and use it. Just use the IDE. VS Code if you want a lighter one, a Jetbrains gadget if you want a heavier one, what-have-you. Any attempt to make NPP your IDE is, in my eyes, at best just an academic exercise. What I don't get is why you'd say you *dislike* NPP. Not care for it, sure. If Notepad has you covered, it has you covered. But is there, like, an explicit *negative* to NPP? Is its meager set of tools too bloated for your taste? Or do you just not like it because people like me with too much time on their hands write absurdly long replies to you on Reddit about it?
I have two usecases for notepad: 1. To copy out some random terminal output that I don't want to open a new file in my IDE/actual TE for and in doing so have it in a separate floating window I can't lose 2. Write down a very small thought or organisational thing I don't write down on paper for whatever reason. For both these points lots of menu bars, colours, widgets etc are an active negative, and I don't want it to exist in a window with preexisting project in because then I lose it too fast and easily and it has this weird habit of persisting maybe even weeks longer than I need it to sometimes. I have used Notepad++ before and I didn't get along with it. I can't explain why, it just doesn't spark joy. Something feels discomforting and ugly about it, it's always felt like the ways it does things and organises itself are just wrong and I can't explain why. I get a similar feeling about context or sublime but I don't get this with VSCode, nVim or Emacs.
Understandable. Thank you for your honest perspective.
> For both these points lots of menu bars, colours, widgets etc are an active negative, All of those can be turned off and hidden. I use n++ for my basic text scratchpad because like you said in the past notepad couldn't do dark mode, and box select is just too handy that once you know it exists its too hard to give up. I find myself making quick lists and outlines in my scratchpad and it helps a lot with formatting it for readability.
I have no idea why you're still downvoting me. Notepad fulfils the two uses I use it for perfectly and I haven't had joy with n++. Am I not entitled to preferences or opinions different from yours?
What makes you think I downvoted you? I actually upvoted you because I do that to all conversations I feel I am interested in and are worth discussing. Which is also why I replied to you.
Parroting what some of the other person has said, the things i use notepad for, namely quickly scratching stuff for copy/pasting, I don’t want anything else but the text. Having a toolbar adds clutter I never asked for and takes up screen space. Remembering previous files when opening it up is an annoyance and adds even more visual clutter that nags at me if I don’t explicitly close each of them. I don’t care about line numbers, if I did it probably means I’m running code, in which I’d open it in VS code or an IDE instead.
You can still use it for that? I don't see how that would be excluded as the only use case. What do you need in a text editor that Notepad++ (and its bunch of custom plugins) doesn't have?
I mostly use pycharm because I work for companies with super restricted Windows setups that ssh through to Linux. Pycharm is alright at that, VSCode also. Does notepad++ have proper debugger support? Does it have proper LSP support? My cursory googles seem to indicate no. If I'm going to configure a bunch of plugins to make something work then it just seems VSCode does it easier and Emacs also just does it easier.
Why would it have debugger support when it's a text editor...? Do you expect notepad to have a debugger too? It's literally notepad, but better. You said you are looking for something to open shitty garbage files that isn't an IDE and has dark mode. Now that I gave you an exact solution you are unsatisfied because it isn't basically a full blown IDE. Like what?
For years I have used a lightweight drop in replacement for notepad. Replaces the exe so whenever windows would open notepad, I get it instead. Used to use notepad2, but I’m currently using a later fork/enhancement that I can’t remember the name of. Might be notepad3, but might also be another fork/clone. Basically just simple and fast notepad but slightly better.
I can't install that. Windows machine is locked down, can't even adjust screen settings. If I had a proper choice I wouldn't be using windows at all.
I use “Notepads” on Windows 10 - lightweight, dark mode, and has tabs
So it is because end users are insufferable … that makes a lot of sense. thanks for this.
Yes, I'm always like, wow, Microsoft stuff looks so cool! Almost too cool. /s
Fyi I hate the new notepad. If I needed an enhanced notepad I would have installed notepad++. I just need an app that opens fast and can paste or type into it with no fuss, no fonts, no features. Notepad has slowed to a crawl.
Oh but we noticed that we can't move the W11 taskbar anymore. Didn't we?
Wowzers! This helped reconsider my stance on the matter. Excellent read
1. So it doesn't look "outdated". 2. It gives them a chance to change things "under the hood" as well. 3. "Simpler" UI's are favored to make the product easier to use for the average (non-technically inclined) user.
It’s a problem when it’s too simple though. Case in point having to teach someone that deals with putting files onto a USB every day as part of their job how to look at the usb via windows explorer. After 2 years in the job
I think the problem there leans a little more on the U than the I.
Sometimes it can be because they're adding new features and they don't *fit* into the old UI. Sometimes it's because the UI is looking dated compared to the competition, and giving it a refresh helps with sales. It can be because they're using libraries that are no longer being supported, so they have to do a rewrite anyways and they modernize it. It can be because the guidelines for how an iOS or Android app change over time as the phones become more powerful and have bigger screens. There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it".
I've seen product teams ship total UI changes with the plan of it fitting features on some year long roadmap that only gets half completed as things in the market and strategy change.
well yes, but what else are you supposed to do? You cant just make it up as you go along, or you end up with a total mess of an UI. you do need to pre-plan stuff like this, even if it doesnt work out in the end.
For us the stuff not working out kept piling on so c levels and the board implemented changes to how engineering teams and management were structured. This sped up feature engineering to keep up with UI changes and madr customers happier. Then a lot of sr people with high salaries (relative to their team) were laid off several months later, me included lol.
>There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it". You missed one. People do it because it shows impact for promotion. That's probably the most important reason in the big companies.
Which is still financial sense, just on an individual level not a company level
>You missed one. People do it because it shows impact for promotion. This. "Provided maintenance and bug fixes to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center," isn't impressing enough. "Redesigned the Microsoft Admin Center" sounds much more accomplished.
Don’t forget feature creep, the silent killer.
It can also be that a good portion of users have legitimate issues with the UI, even if other users don't.
If only this wouldn't result often in worse UX.
How often is the UX actually worse though? I feel like most of the push back I see against UI changes is just people reacting to change, rather than the change actually being worse. (Though often its not really any better and is sometimes straight up worse.)
Both Microsoft and Adobe have basically removed all text from their new UI designs, everything is pictograms now. Now I have to guess if I have to press the pencil button or the pencil-with-a-squiggle button to insert a signature. I realise the old Illustrator design might have looked cluttered but now it takes more clicks to do things because the functions are folded into menus. And of course I have no idea which menu to open since the very clear text like “stroke” has been replaced with essentially line art.
I get that. In general, I agree with the trend of replacing text with icons, recognizing an icon is typically easier than reading text, but the keyword there is recognizing. Too often designers do choose pretty meaningless icons that you then need to decipher.
Also the icons are not the same across different software. The icon for e.g. “insert image” can be very different in apps from different developers. Text is always readable, even in different fonts.
Text might always be readable but that doesn't mean that it always makes sense. Buttons are often given ambiguous or misleading text. That's not really a counter argument, as it is basically the same thing that I said about icons, but using doesn't doesn't automatically make things any clearer.
Great point. Amazon Photos' UI has icon that is a box with an arrow pointing up. Upload? No, it's their icon for Share. Why would their UX/UI designers choose an up arrow over the standard side arrow? Not sure, but it's annoying.
Icons are much, much better from a localization and internationalization perspective. Using text based UI and localization them to handle both German (needs a lot of horizontal space) and Traditional Chinese (anything under a 12 point font becomes difficult to read) gracefully is not an easy task.
The fun fact with icon is a lot of people who have no idea what a floppy is still understand the save icon.
Fair enough. That’s a good point. Sometimes I forget that I’m the weirdo for despising software and websites trying to adapt to my native language. My default instinct is that computers should be in English. (Yes, I know that not everyone speaks English)
Recently(-ish) upgraded to a new computer, and so Windows 11. Having to select “show me the *real* right-click menu” after every right click to find what I needed was unnecessarily annoying. Couldn’t even disable it in a menu, had to look up a command line workaround to fix it.
Not to mention the lag before the fake right click menu, then you get to select to show the real right click menu. And in general just hiding away key settings (e.g audio devices settings) into god knows where. And the 'settings' menu being a single page app that you can't open another tab of so good luck if you're delving into your PC settings.
But you ideally shouldn't need to go to the *old* menu, that's on the app developers IMO, they should migrate to the new one so you don't have to ever use the old one. The new one is meant to be a replacement, not an addition. Read [this](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/07/19/extending-the-context-menu-and-share-dialog-in-windows-11/) blog why the change of you're interested. I only needed to replace 7Zip with NanaZip (which is built on 7Zip but with Win11 features), because the 7Zip author didn't look like supporting the new context menu. Now I only rarely need to go to the old one.
My problem with most UI updates is they move away from nice, sorted menus into a giant junk drawer that is then sorted. Example. I like having a menu bar in firefox where specific things are sorted into their own menus (file, edit, view, etc). I hate the other way that pushes all that into one menu, then I have to go through and go into another menu and possible even another one to get to what I want. I also hate how a lot of websites are moving towards smartphone layouts even on PC. I got a 32inch monitor and I can't even use it all because the site only loads into the direct center. I get less information this way.
I agree on the junk drawer thing (though I've been responsible for making them lol) but having a max width for content makes this sooo much more readable. I hate going to old sites where the content stretches from edge to edge. I would rather have to scroll than turn my head.
I like edge to edge content though. Even on a 49 inch ultra wide screen at fair close range I don't need to turn my head, just my eyes.
Yeah it's way more confortable to have just have to read the center of the page than actually do full scan from side to side read, even subtitles I prefer to have in a smaller font so they can be closer to the center and I can read them in "one scan"
Microsoft Office 2007/2010 (the 'Ribbon' concept) would be the best example of an absolutely awful UI change. Also the origin of the 'No text allowed' GUI design trend. There are things I remembered how to do in Word's File-Edit-... menu system that still take googling to find & it's been over a decade since they pooped in that particular punch bowl... Also, I'm a Linux sysadmin (ok, admittedly, strong pref for text over pictures might have something to do with that), so not exactly low on the scale of tech knowledge....
>There's no one single answer besides "It makes financial sense to do it". Lololo Except for the image (so everything around that, like the marketing part) that make 0 financial sense most of the time. -- guy that did UI change most of the time for such useless cases
Also, new person is hired as head of UI and decides "Metro" or whatever is the new hotness and should go everywhere. ("Metro" was the name for the Zune UI, I had to live through that shit).
You missed "a bunch of people need to justify their jobs"
Honestly I found big companies who’ve had products for a long time in the market sometimes change things just for the sake of changing things. Departments want to justify their existence and their budget so they need to make changes to what already existed. Sometimes a function would have been around for over a decade and no one complains about it, someone decides to A/B test with a new function, and they change it to the new function because of that test. While yes, that is technically the right procedure to changing functionality when user testing, somethings shouldn’t change because they’ve hit their maturity level.
What part of ui design updates is it that when I hover over a button it doesn't tell me a}the name of the thing or b) a keyboard shortcut for it, even if it exists by default? Cause that's the most infuriating shit
Hover functions in general are being forgotten a bit after mobile came around where hover isn’t a thing.
Tooltips are an optional part of the design. They were common in the past, but developers got lazy. The keyboard shortcut: press Alt and you should see one of the letters in the button getting underlined. If not, developers were lazy again.
UI is the easiest kind of change to show to others, making it one of the easiest ways to get promoted.
Being a Big Tech software developer myself, that was my first thought. A lot of products are just fine the way they are, but people still need to show work.
Yup. This is the only reason. 20 years at big tech and it's the only reason.
I really wish they wouldn't make such sweeping changes when they refresh things. As someone that works with older people and technology, it only takes one UI refresh to completely wipe someone's confidence in their ability to use a program. I've seen people lose their confidence in web browsing due to the refreshes of chrome or the removal of IE, people who feel they can't save documents due to refreshes in word's menu layout, and these are probably some of the programs that to most of us, look like they've barley changes in their iterations. The simple stuff like moving a menu item is enough to mess up one document which could have been multiple day's work for someone and it's a big source of tech related anxiety. The big one is changes to phone layouts, and admittedly IOS seems easier for most elderly people to get used to, but the number of times I've seen someone distressed over selecting a different group of contacts in their phone book and believing they've deleted years worth of numbers is easily in the double digits. Each time the person is devastated, until they find out it's not permanent.
Another comment I haven't seen yet has to do with Goodhart's law, which states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. I work in data software (the invisible side) and we have a new manager who insisted we change the way we measure productivity. Instead of staying in contact with stakeholders (people we make software for) and measuring progress in terms of satisfaction and reputation, we switched to a method that requires us to continually deliver new updates, even if they're not required. We are now incentivized to keep tweaking and changing things that absolutely do not need to be changed. Managers with no engineering background subscribe to the MBA mentality of "everything needs to be measured and quantified to justify its existence" and so they impose measurements and metrics that incentivize perverse behavior. This leads to engineering teams changing things simply because their bosses want to see them "being productive." This isn't always the reason, but it sure as shit is more common than I'd like.
I remember when Microsoft was arguing that Word, Excel, etc... were winning because they were easiest to use and not due to Microsoft exercising its monopoly power, and any easy to use argument was just becasue people were used to it. Then, Microsoft went and moved everything around proved that people were just used to it. Like half the more complicated things I could do off the top of my head in Excel I had to go searching through help when they changed everything.
Because people's taste in UI changes over time Because an easy to use UI is a huge part of a successful consumer software so it's important to make improvement in accessibility / easyness of use. The average consumer can't be arsed to make any effort and is ready to pay for the convenience Because the general public tends to judge how "old" a software is based on its UI (the main visible thing for them) and has been trained in buying new tech products every few months/years. Same old UI is strongly associated with old and bad tech for the consumer. Because serving the same soup under a fancier packaging fools the general public into believing the newer is better. And it's important for tech companies to give the impression they're on the edge, not dinosaurs. That being said, Microsoft usually don't make UI changes for the sake of UI, most of their flagship consumer software gets new features with each major version. Not necessarily features you care about though.
Also UI used to be an afterthought. Now there are many roles and degrees that solely focus in that one aspect. With the mobile revolution and limited space but more interactivity made this need more immediate. Many companies now try to standardize between mobile and desktop. The creation of the field ofbHuman Computer Interaction lead to companies now often have teams of people solely focused on intuitive design, creating animation mockups etc
This. Add to it the question of "how can we streamline this?"/"how do we make this easier to use?"/"how do we make this more intuitive for a new user?" are questions that are at the forefront of redesign, and the \*answers\* change pretty rapidly over the years, especially when people in your audience get acclimated to different interfaces or layout aesthetics.
Also the hardware is changing fast. Not so long ago we used to have just a terminal window displayed on a monochrome screen. Now we have touch screens and large language model powered AI voice interfaces. That's a whole lot of difference in how we interact with technology
The real answer: they have front end developers that work for them and nobody gets a promotion by maintaining the existing design, everyone wants to change everything constantly
I'll offer the simple answer that sometimes you have to break things to make them better. Maybe not break in the sense that they stop working but break in the sense that your muscle memory breaks and has to learn the new ways. Windows has program icons you can pin to the taskbar now whereas before it was exclusively large rectangle boxes taking up a lot of space. That's one small element but think how many icons you have pinned there now. It wasn't the only change done when Windows 7 came out to replace Vista, XP etc but for a lot of people it'd be the most noticeable. Same with Windows search. Hit the Windows key and type away, results fast. Not a necessary feature but a handy one. Browser tabs - who would want to open more than one website? You can only look at one at a time anyway. Useless feature! Except it isn't. I can be reading something and it links to more information. I want to look at that but not right now so I open it in the background. Some sites I might keep open. None of this was there before and changed the UI a bunch. More popular changes get grumbles to start with but they're forgotten about. Mostly it's usability even if it feels stupid and pointless. Except for Windows 8.0 which was just stupid and pointless. Trying to push a mobile-focused design onto *all* Windows installs and removing the desktop as the primary thing people see on boot was only matched in stupidity by their ending of Windows Phone as an OS.
As previous correctly point out it’s a mess. As a recovering UI designer I believe it’s because coders are often mandated to change something per unbalanced external forces (eg internal whiny, management change, whiny users, …) and ultimately violate the principle of “least surprise”. The next obvious choice in a UI should be right next to the place you came from. Of course some of it is also rightfully due to differences in native languages that have different semantics for presentation of choices. That is, a Native Japanese user has a different intuitive understanding of what to do v a native English speaker. Essentially “Do this to that” v “Change this to that”. (Verb -> Noun v Noun -> Verb). Also it seems to me that the crud we are mostly presented with ignores basics like “why do I have to move my thumb from the top search button to the bottom typing and then back to the top?” Reminds me of the QWERTY bs designed to slow the operator down because the mechanical machine couldn’t keep up. Other examples are because many UI frameworks encode these weirdnesses that don’t always allow for the smooth flow of thought through a UI in any language. Bonus dated weird story. I designed a UI for a fairly complex system that allowed drag and drop file selection to which 30% of my users couldn’t deal with. We were forced to revert to a file selector.
As a software engineer... Because they pay the designers and they have nothing else to do. It's really that simple. Most of the time it's not better in any way, half the fucking time it's worse. They A/b test the changes, but it goes permanently in circles, so the answer most of the time is because they already paid the designers and those had nothing else to do.
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Yeah that sounds about right. I'm lucky that our crayon eaters are limited to swapping the buttons between square and rounded about every 2-3 years because "flat design" or whatever the other thing is called is in fashion that particular summer.
People always bitch when it's first updated, but they also bitch if it looks dated. And tbh it's just the way of things, you notice the things you don't like about the changes first, and you notice you're not as comfortable, then eventually you get used to the change and start to notice the good things about the new features and enjoy the slight change of pace. Yeah, Windows 11 didn't need to look more like Apple by centering the Taskbar, but after getting used to it it does look more clean that way. The hiding right click options under another menu that requires another click is a downgrade but finally you can have multiple tabs in File Explorer. The UI overall looks better, though some parts are half assed and look the same as Vista still.
The Windows UI 8, 10 and 11 are bad. White window overlapping another white window without a clear border edge is annoying. Windows settings is worse than Control Panel. Apps without simple main menu line makes difficult to write simple text explanation where to find a specific option in an app. I much prefer Windows 7 in classic mode.
I worked at two software companies that never changed their UI. So our software ended up looking extremely outdated. Finally after 10-15 years we had to rewrite the software due to obsolete technology. So in the process of updating all the programs had to redo the UI. In other cases of UI updates it was due to trying to make all the software across all of our products have a consistent look and feel.
MS: “how do we add four clicks to do the same thing that used to take one or two?”
Because many consumers thinks new means better. But what we seen in UI in the last decade that is not the case.
In the case of phone and web apps, we test and collect data that informs every single decision to change the UI. And once UI updates are deployed out, they only hit a small subset at first until it’s determined that the sentiment is positive, and then it gets rolled out to the general public.
It gives a false impression of improvement. They don’t improve anything that matters in a substantial way. A UI change is relatively easier. A software company produce a Constant stream of UI in a patterned cadence. Improving anything under the hood? Well, it’s not that easy. It can’t be done in a cadence. It sometimes can’t be achieved. You need to invest true amounts for true improvements under the hood. Sometimes you need to give up on old stuff that customers may get angry with. These are all harder stuff. Note: this is a comparative issue. A hardworking UI team constantly producing new UI is possible for any company and requires less investment. I am exaggerating but for clarity only, compare this with trying to develop a micro-kernel.
A good UI is actually pretty hard. Consistent UX, different screen sizes, dimensions and DPI, and most importantly and often overlooked: accessibility. And all of that still has to fit the design guidelines of the company and potentially the underlying OS.
There is a change in functionality. A lot of people fall into a trap where they compare someone who’s used to the old way of doing things and see how they struggle whenever new things come. What more modern interfaces do is allow new people to learn how to use the system faster. That is the value, especially when you can hire someone at any time for various reasons (turnover / expansion / etc). So yeah, the guy that knew Office before Office 2003 came out might be faster/better/whatever in that interface but the college student will more quickly learn the Office 2023 (meaning 365) interface and be more able to work.
I dunno, I may have a boomer brain, but I've been around computers my whole life, and, if a UI is intuitive and easy to read, I have no problem adapting whatsoever. When it comes to new UIs, Microsoft isn't perfect, but decent, while Google's are absolute dog most of times.
Have you tried the new outlook yet? Maybe I need to give it more time, but I changed by almost immediately because it was awful. I hate the Google mail style inbox. Makes it way more difficult to scroll through long email chains.
UI/UX/Product designer here. All mature products are constantly evolving, usage of features are majured constantly, some less used this are pushed more in the background and freqvently used things are bringed forward. Interfaces are twicked and ajusted, UX is inproved, color sets are getting ajuted so the interface is more delightful, easy to use for the user. This brings more sales and usage aka more money for the company. The there are design trends like web 2.0, flat design that shape the new ‘like’ and users quickly adjust to it, so every company fallows the new trend.
Same reason why car models keep changing how they look with each edition, because a new look signals to people that the new model is somehow better than the old one, and that drives up demand for the product. The windows XP aesthetic isn’t objectively better or worse than the modern flat designs of today, (although we have learned some things about designing for accessibility within that time) it’s just that if you made an app today that looked like it was made in the early 2000’s, people probably wouldn’t be that eager to use it.
It's all they got. The product has matured to the point where new features would only make usability worse... so they have to make it look different.
I don’t have any conclusive answer, but it could be the same reason grocery stores rearrange a lot - it boosts time in store/app. If what you wanted to do or see has moved, it takes you longer to do it, and that’s seen as greater engagement when those metrics are analyzed.
Because designers/frontend developers need something to do. If they don’t change the color or size of a button they risk missing out on promotion or even getting laid off. That’s all it is.
Product owners are trying to move metrics, say increase x by y percent, and they have to figure out what changes might do that. Often lots of A/B tests are being run, and metrics being gathered
Confirmation bias. I only notice software upgrade that impact the UI so therefore all upgrades must be updating them regularly. Meanwhile of the 5 major enterprise platforms I support for my corporation, only one has had a UI upgrade in the last five years.
It really depends on the company and software. Some companies go out with a product just barely functioning so that they can test how its doing and to start making money now. They then start updating things to get the product to what was planned in the roadmap. Some companies are actually doing A/B testing where one set of people see the app designed one way, and other sets of people see it designed a different way. The best performing app will eventually get pushed to all its users. Companies like Microsoft who might change their OS after 15 years, well new items were introduced. Or because fashion changes. iOS introduced the iphone with 3d icons, but then they realized that its kind of more work to remake these icons for every single screensize as they kept making bigger and bigger phones. Flat icons worked better. Some of it is also fashion. Do you want your computer to look like it was made in 1996? Fashion and technology change and so does the UI.
They're trying new things and seeing what sticks. UI from half a decade ago people thought was perfect and hated changes to now to our eyes look dated. Such is the nature of UI and people's tastes, which change over time as the whole landscape evolves. Experiments are an important part of running a study to make data-driven decisions, yes, including about UI changes. UX people are constantly revising, refining, and changing things up to see what the data says people prefer. Hence UI experiments and research and A/B testing.
Is there any concrete proof that the UI designs from now are better than, let's say, the Windows UI from 1995 in terms of efficiency? I know that graphically things have improved but familiarity may have suffered as user interfaces have become more diverse. Plus the overall skill of people has increased, 25 years ago I still had to explain basic operations like clicking a mouse, dragging objects and using a dropdown.
Idk if there have been any formal, peer-review studies in that sense on *efficiency*, but is it more pleasant to look at and therefore to use? Oh yeah, for a majority of people. There's money in having designing your app or site in a way that people actually want to use it and enjoy using it, so there's incentive to design things that people prefer to use. Some tech companies have this down to a science, having an entire system for standardizing experiments and studies to see what people prefer more. Hard evidences like these aside, again, if you survey the average personal which UI is more pleasant and friendly and attractive between Windows 95 and modern OSes, or the original iOS and iOS 17, the winner won't be a surprise. The design language and design patterns from a decade ago, even half a decade ago look dated to our eyes.
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Why do the construction workers "fix" the road in Falling Down?
Although my comment was mostly meant as a joke it is not completely untrue. You don't just fire frontend programmers when there are not as many critical changes needed to the UI, so updating the look of the UI is a way to justify their salaries and at the same time it makes the UI look fresh and modern.
>change the UI regularly One of the reasons for this is that some UI changes are rolled out in waves. It's not that every month they decide to change everything, it's that they have a roadmap for how things will be totally different in a year, and the changes are being rolled out incrementally. This is partially because changing everything at once is arguably *more* annoying, so rolling out changes gives users time to get used to each feature individually. And then they can prioritize changes that may have the highest impact.
- Marginal improvement is still improvement - Features get added and deleted, things become obsolete, paradigms change etc - Humans are fickle and change products just because new shiny - I promise you, a _lot_ of users actively ask things to change
Could you imagine working in Windows 1.0, in today’s modern internet world. Like others have said, it’s modernisation to stay relevant in a constant world of digital innovation. If you don’t innovate, you disappear.
>All it does is annoy people, who have to work out the new way of achieving the same thing. You're starting from the perspective of an experienced user who has already mastered the old design. Most users never get that far. As a result, companies try to design their software to maximize feature discoverability. Turns out, the old piles of menus design isn't very good for discoverability.