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This whole recent update to Snapchat has been horrible in almost every way. Haven't heard a single good thing from the people I know who use it. My question is

This whole recent update to Snapchat has been horrible in almost every way. Haven't heard a single good thing from the people I know who use it. My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? Does Snapchat not have any user feedback in their design or is it simply "How can we make more money"? Seems to me Snapchat forgot the most important thing about a products profitability: the customers.

jbob2000 9y ago
The lesson for Snapchat, and really any new software company, is that design updates need to roll out slowly. You cannot drop a boat load of changes on users. Facebook learned this early on when they introduced the new wall and news feed. Now they allow you to preview design changes before they get fully rolled out. The design changes aren't necessarily bad, it still looks and operates fine. Snapchat just made the rookie mistake of changing everything at once before anyone could orient themselves around the changes.
- noblethrasher 9y ago
  eBay is a famous case study of this: https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience
- Spooky23 9y ago
  It’s typical tech hubris. For a consumer product, changes that are convenient to product development are almost always shitty for the customer.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    The issue here is assuming that the users of said sites are their customers. They are not. When you are selling beef, do you worry about how the cows feel about it?
    - _r_o_y_ 9y ago
      You do if it affects the way the beef sells.
      - noobermin 9y ago
        Right. Was going to add that ammendum, but didn't get around to it. The point is users are ancillary, not the primary means of revenue. Whenever there is that mismatch, you'll have issues like this.
    - the-pigeon 9y ago
      You might not but you should. If you don't care about the welfare of your cows they will not grow as large and you'll have less product to sell. Putting that in more literal terms, if you damage the user experience you will damage user engagement and your ad revenue is going to fall. There's certainly tricks to treat the cows poorly and still profit for a while but this sort of behavior has killed many companies.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Like I said, tech hubris. If you don't feed the cow, you won't be selling too much beef. To use an animal aphorism used in the context of Wall St, "Bulls run, pigs get slaughtered."
- radicalbyte 9y ago
  Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all did this. They're all spammy and terribly broken crapholes which I now barely use. If there were viable alternatives I'd eliminate that barely.
quasse 9y ago
I'm possibly starting to age out of the target market, but Snapchat has done a great job of getting me move to Instagram stories for my "social media" type content (vs. individual targeted stuff, which Snapchat still works all right for).
ilamont 9y ago
Some years ago Hootsuite changed the way a feature called "social picker" worked. It was a major change, and many power users (people managing multiple accounts or brand accounts) pointed out that it made their work a lot harder and more prone to error. Hootsuite's response: blaming users' "fear of change" for the reaction (1). Later someone from the company apologized, and said that "extensive user testing" had been done, but they clearly missed an important segment of the market. 1. https://in30minutes.com/hootsuite-takes-the-low-road-blames-complaints-on-fear-of-change/ https://in30minutes.com/hootsuite-takes-the-low-road-blames-...
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  Thing is, some segment of users will always go nuts whenever you change anything. If you're in charge of product development it's hard to take any particular moment of outrage too seriously.
  - nakedrobot2 9y ago
    Yes, this is very true. Can anyone name an update or design of software that was applauded by the majority of users? I can't.
    - torstenvl 9y ago
      Windows '95 over Windows 3.11 Mac OS X Tiger over Mac OS X Panther Windows 7 over Windows Vista
      - addicted 9y ago
        Until about Snow Leopard pretty much every Mac OS X update was almost universally considered much better than the ones before (though the truism that you avoid a new Mac OS X update on a primary computer till 10.x.1 still held).
  - cornholio 9y ago
    If you are in product development, the lesson is that any change has a cost and impact to your users, so you need to make sure that the benefits outweigh the cost and plan for resistance. That's entirely different from "they will complain no mater what you do so you should ignore them".
empath75 9y ago
Digg died basically overnight after a redesign. It happens.
- officemonkey 9y ago
  There was also a rapidly-maturing Reddit waiting in the wings. If you have a moat, you can weather the storm after a design snafu. If you don't? @Jack, you dead.
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    Makes one wonder if Reddit has a moat. I liked their conservative design so far, but there seem to be cracks appearing the form of 'mobilization' of the user profile page for example. Seems to be the trend of the last 5 years of making the desktop experience broken/annoying in some way or form and the mobile experience - ad-ridden and designed for momentary rather than deep engagement.
    - criley2 9y ago
      I think Reddit still has a moat. There have been attempts to do something else, such as voat, but those generally become either A) more akin to subreddits than reddit (like this very site) or B) ideological havens for groups not welcome on reddit. In voat's case, when reddit begin banning overt racism from white supremacists and calls for violence, as well as communities dedicated to hating fat people or women, those radicalized users all fled to voat. That toxic core userbase makes the site untenable for the masses who are repulsed by such naked racism, prejudice and other evil content. So I don't really see anyone waiting in the reddit wings. The ones that were there before are still there (SA, fark, /.), and the ones that follow aren't poised to be the same thing.
      - empath75 9y ago
        Reddit doesn’t have a moat, IMO, because they don’t have a social graph. It’s like Facebook for strangers. Someone could wipe them out over night because users don’t really have any connection to each other.
aaronbrethorst 9y ago
My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? Evan Spiegel is convinced that he's the second coming of Steve Jobs. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-snapchat-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-snap...
rob-olmos 9y ago
I'm also suspicious of the amount of testing that's being done. More than once the app was posting a completely black pic for every snap, lasting at least a couple days. I stopped using it after this last time it started doing that again.
eyeareque 9y ago
I use the app daily and I have to say while the new version is different and a bit rough, i still like where they are headed. With some tweaks I believe it will be better than the old and more confusing design
mayneack 9y ago
I really enjoy the update. I've posted this before, but I like the focus on my friends, the isolation of the branded content, and the ability to mute specific people's stories. I hope people get used to it rather than rolling it back or killing the app.
raverbashing 9y ago
1 - Company makes innovative product with crappy UI (Vine/Snapchat) 2 - Instagram copies the idea and improved the interface 3 - Company becomes irrelevant 4 - Rinse/repeat
patmcc 9y ago
>>My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? I think a lot of us are jealous of your work history right now - the answer to that question is almost always "the person who can fire me/signs my paycheck thought it was a good idea".
justboxing 9y ago
> Does Snapchat not have any user feedback in their design Apparently they don't even solicit feedback from their own inhouse employees, so I doubt they solicit it from control groups / influential users > Compared to the "dogfooding" tradition in many tech companies, where employees try out their products before releasing them to the public, most Snap employees don't know when a new product is coming — regardless if it would affect their team's long-term metrics or goals. When the company launched Lenses, its famous filters that morph people's faces, most employees learned about it for the first time on the company blog post announcing it to the world. Source: OP.
parliament32 9y ago
Being in the beta program, I've been dealing with the redesign for a few months now. I've mostly forgotten what the major changes were, but: I'm happy that the advertising "Discover" crap is put away on its own page, and I hate how hard it is to view my friends' stories now. What do you dislike about it?
pdkl95 9y ago
> Does Snapchat not have any user feedback This is the most important lesson for any service that depends on a community of users for survival: involve them in the update process, or you will scare them away. Even if the new version is objectively better (which is rare), unexpected changes cause confusion and anger. I encourage anybody involved in making this kind of service to watch this[1] talk from NOTACON by Joe Peacock of fark.com about their experience deploying a surprise redesign, then compounding the anger with their infamous reply: > You'll get over it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI

jbob2000 9y ago

The lesson for Snapchat, and really any new software company, is that design updates need to roll out slowly. You cannot drop a boat load of changes on users. Facebook learned this early on when they introduced the new wall and news feed. Now they allow you to preview design changes before they get fully rolled out. The design changes aren't necessarily bad, it still looks and operates fine. Snapchat just made the rookie mistake of changing everything at once before anyone could orient themselves around the changes.

noblethrasher 9y ago
eBay is a famous case study of this: https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience
Spooky23 9y ago
It’s typical tech hubris. For a consumer product, changes that are convenient to product development are almost always shitty for the customer.
- noobermin 9y ago
  The issue here is assuming that the users of said sites are their customers. They are not. When you are selling beef, do you worry about how the cows feel about it?
  - _r_o_y_ 9y ago
    You do if it affects the way the beef sells.
    - noobermin 9y ago
      Right. Was going to add that ammendum, but didn't get around to it. The point is users are ancillary, not the primary means of revenue. Whenever there is that mismatch, you'll have issues like this.
  - the-pigeon 9y ago
    You might not but you should. If you don't care about the welfare of your cows they will not grow as large and you'll have less product to sell. Putting that in more literal terms, if you damage the user experience you will damage user engagement and your ad revenue is going to fall. There's certainly tricks to treat the cows poorly and still profit for a while but this sort of behavior has killed many companies.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Like I said, tech hubris. If you don't feed the cow, you won't be selling too much beef. To use an animal aphorism used in the context of Wall St, "Bulls run, pigs get slaughtered."
radicalbyte 9y ago
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all did this. They're all spammy and terribly broken crapholes which I now barely use. If there were viable alternatives I'd eliminate that barely.

quasse 9y ago

I'm possibly starting to age out of the target market, but Snapchat has done a great job of getting me move to Instagram stories for my "social media" type content (vs. individual targeted stuff, which Snapchat still works all right for).

ilamont 9y ago

Some years ago Hootsuite changed the way a feature called "social picker" worked. It was a major change, and many power users (people managing multiple accounts or brand accounts) pointed out that it made their work a lot harder and more prone to error. Hootsuite's response: blaming users' "fear of change" for the reaction (1). Later someone from the company apologized, and said that "extensive user testing" had been done, but they clearly missed an important segment of the market. 1. https://in30minutes.com/hootsuite-takes-the-low-road-blames-complaints-on-fear-of-change/ https://in30minutes.com/hootsuite-takes-the-low-road-blames-...

nerfhammer 9y ago
Thing is, some segment of users will always go nuts whenever you change anything. If you're in charge of product development it's hard to take any particular moment of outrage too seriously.
- nakedrobot2 9y ago
  Yes, this is very true. Can anyone name an update or design of software that was applauded by the majority of users? I can't.
  - torstenvl 9y ago
    Windows '95 over Windows 3.11 Mac OS X Tiger over Mac OS X Panther Windows 7 over Windows Vista
    - addicted 9y ago
      Until about Snow Leopard pretty much every Mac OS X update was almost universally considered much better than the ones before (though the truism that you avoid a new Mac OS X update on a primary computer till 10.x.1 still held).
- cornholio 9y ago
  If you are in product development, the lesson is that any change has a cost and impact to your users, so you need to make sure that the benefits outweigh the cost and plan for resistance. That's entirely different from "they will complain no mater what you do so you should ignore them".

empath75 9y ago

Digg died basically overnight after a redesign. It happens.

officemonkey 9y ago
There was also a rapidly-maturing Reddit waiting in the wings. If you have a moat, you can weather the storm after a design snafu. If you don't? @Jack, you dead.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  Makes one wonder if Reddit has a moat. I liked their conservative design so far, but there seem to be cracks appearing the form of 'mobilization' of the user profile page for example. Seems to be the trend of the last 5 years of making the desktop experience broken/annoying in some way or form and the mobile experience - ad-ridden and designed for momentary rather than deep engagement.
  - criley2 9y ago
    I think Reddit still has a moat. There have been attempts to do something else, such as voat, but those generally become either A) more akin to subreddits than reddit (like this very site) or B) ideological havens for groups not welcome on reddit. In voat's case, when reddit begin banning overt racism from white supremacists and calls for violence, as well as communities dedicated to hating fat people or women, those radicalized users all fled to voat. That toxic core userbase makes the site untenable for the masses who are repulsed by such naked racism, prejudice and other evil content. So I don't really see anyone waiting in the reddit wings. The ones that were there before are still there (SA, fark, /.), and the ones that follow aren't poised to be the same thing.
    - empath75 9y ago
      Reddit doesn’t have a moat, IMO, because they don’t have a social graph. It’s like Facebook for strangers. Someone could wipe them out over night because users don’t really have any connection to each other.

aaronbrethorst 9y ago

My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? Evan Spiegel is convinced that he's the second coming of Steve Jobs. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-snapchat-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-snap...

rob-olmos 9y ago

I'm also suspicious of the amount of testing that's being done. More than once the app was posting a completely black pic for every snap, lasting at least a couple days. I stopped using it after this last time it started doing that again.

eyeareque 9y ago

I use the app daily and I have to say while the new version is different and a bit rough, i still like where they are headed. With some tweaks I believe it will be better than the old and more confusing design

mayneack 9y ago

I really enjoy the update. I've posted this before, but I like the focus on my friends, the isolation of the branded content, and the ability to mute specific people's stories. I hope people get used to it rather than rolling it back or killing the app.

raverbashing 9y ago

1 - Company makes innovative product with crappy UI (Vine/Snapchat) 2 - Instagram copies the idea and improved the interface 3 - Company becomes irrelevant 4 - Rinse/repeat

patmcc 9y ago

>>My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? I think a lot of us are jealous of your work history right now - the answer to that question is almost always "the person who can fire me/signs my paycheck thought it was a good idea".

justboxing 9y ago

> Does Snapchat not have any user feedback in their design Apparently they don't even solicit feedback from their own inhouse employees, so I doubt they solicit it from control groups / influential users > Compared to the "dogfooding" tradition in many tech companies, where employees try out their products before releasing them to the public, most Snap employees don't know when a new product is coming — regardless if it would affect their team's long-term metrics or goals. When the company launched Lenses, its famous filters that morph people's faces, most employees learned about it for the first time on the company blog post announcing it to the world. Source: OP.

parliament32 9y ago

Being in the beta program, I've been dealing with the redesign for a few months now. I've mostly forgotten what the major changes were, but: I'm happy that the advertising "Discover" crap is put away on its own page, and I hate how hard it is to view my friends' stories now. What do you dislike about it?

pdkl95 9y ago

> Does Snapchat not have any user feedback This is the most important lesson for any service that depends on a community of users for survival: involve them in the update process, or you will scare them away. Even if the new version is objectively better (which is rare), unexpected changes cause confusion and anger. I encourage anybody involved in making this kind of service to watch this[1] talk from NOTACON by Joe Peacock of fark.com about their experience deploying a surprise redesign, then compounding the anger with their infamous reply: > You'll get over it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVeysllPDI