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> "People simply get bored with how their apps and websites look after six to seven years. They need a change" Real world objects rarely change design because

by ghusto 5y ago

> "People simply get bored with how their apps and websites look after six to seven years. They need a change" Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved. When they do, the change needs to justify that cost. For example, I'm not going to change the buttons on my microwave because I'm "bored" with them. The costs of changing software design is far less impractical and expensive, and therefore isn't driven by the same high level of justification. I strongly suspect then, there are two reasons for these design changes we see every couple of years in software: The first is easy, and most of us probably already agree; designers gotta design. They have to justify their salary _somehow_. The second is more philosophical. The west — and especially the U.S.A. — looks to alleviate existential crisis with distractions. Shiny new toys keeps us from having to face uncomfortable truths about the nature of reality (if you're not religious).

samatman 5y ago
> Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved What an astonishing claim. Fashion is too easy, you could maybe wiggle away from clothes not being "objects in the real world" although I assure you the Emperor aside they are exactly that. How about cars?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.
  - smohare 5y ago
    Do you leave your house? It’s much more difficult to find everyday objects that do not succumb to constant design changes. Bandages, razors, beverages, literally almost any box of foodstuff…
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way. > There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object. And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together with paper clips or binder clips? Maybe a staple. How about one of those new air staplers?
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Taking your example a paper clip and a binder clip both have the same fundamental form you have to separate two parts of the thing that then squeeze the paper together. A stapler is a leap step in binding things, where an interely different fundamental form is used to permanently bind things. An air stapler has a different operating principle (I don't push a staple a pneumatic driver does it for me) but it is not fundamentally different from a regular stapler in how it binds things. Storing this comment on a server is several leap steps forward from archiving a printed document and binding it to other comments in this thread. :)
      - travisjungroth 5y ago
        Then it seems like you’ve just stated a tautology. Things don’t change unless they do.
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  The only thing that changes my jeans is wear and tear. My car pretty much stays the same unless someone takes a swipe at it.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  The design of a given artefact in the real world won't change unless specifically acted on. A garment, or an automobile, or a building remains as it was originally designed, modulo wear, until and unless it is altered, modified, or renovated. With digital artefacts, especially SAAS, where each individual use is fetched anew from a server, there's no such material stability. Product lines are subject to revision, though even here, changes seem to follow marketing rather than functional logic. This is especially true when comparing, say, industrial vs. consumer products, particularly those with a common underlying design or base. Examples which come to mind are Hobart vs. KitchenAid mixers (both manufactured by the same company), consumer automobiles vs. the Checker Taxicab. The last production year of Checker, 1982, could have graced a dealer's lot in the late 1940s: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_A-11_Taxicab_1982.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_... Commercial jet airliners have seen at best marginal evolution since the introduction of the 707 in 1958 (and arguably for a decade prior to that). More recent design changes have finally begun to emerge largely thanks to advances in materials technology. Yes, there's been a great deal of change in avionics, flight control systems, overall infrastructure, and powerplants, but the overall design of a sausage on wings with gets slung from wings or fixed to the fuselage has remained fundamentally unchanged, largely due to laws of aerodynamics. Railroad oil tank cars strongly resembling the present-day DOT-111 standard emerged by the late 1860s. It turns out that there are only so many viable arrangements of material for handling bulk liquids on standard-gague rails given car dimensions, curve radius, braking, bogey capacity, and the like. The modern high-tension electric transmission line pylon dates to the early 20th century. It was the failure of what seems to have been an orginally-installed hanger hook which seems to have precipitated the 2018 Camp Fire in California, responsible for destroying the town of Paradise, CA, amongst numerous others. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed-as-cause-of-deadly-camp-fire/165757/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed... https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-deadliest-wildfire https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-dea... Clothing, particularly in an age of disposable ("fast") fashion does change quickly, yes. But that's through continued iteration and replacement of individual items, not, generally, by the repurposing of existing garments (accessorising and similar modifications excepted). Matter has persistence. Digital does not.
dgb23 5y ago
> The first is easy, and most of us probably already agree; designers gotta design. They have to justify their salary _somehow_. Designers are typically just _workers_, if it's their own thing, then sure they might want to use that as a canvas to explore things. But generally they produce things and solve problems and don't create them. In my experience and opinion, products are redesigned because: - Users who get bored quickly and have superficial concerns are very loud. They want more stuff and different stuff all the time, and they make sure you know it. They don't care about orthogonal, minimal features that work nicely together, nor about stability. - Marketing people are very good at selling things, internally and externally. Sometimes this is data driven, but it's generally a very hard and fuzzy thing to interpret. They are very good at hitting the right nerves. - Decision makers, executives are good at inventing work for others, convincing people to follow and expanding their influence. They need to think in the abstract and are often detached from workers and users so they miss important details.
- toopok4k3 5y ago
  Users who are vocal and complain, cause 95%(out of my ass number) of the users who silently like the software they way it is to suffer.

by ghusto 5y ago

samatman 5y ago

> Real world objects rarely change design because of the costs involved What an astonishing claim. Fashion is too easy, you could maybe wiggle away from clothes not being "objects in the real world" although I assure you the Emperor aside they are exactly that. How about cars?

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
Curiously enough both industries you use in your example (Auto, Fashion) have permanent designers in their payroll which again touches on GP's points. I don't have to learn how to use scissors or paperclips everytime, I use somebody else's stationery. There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object.
- smohare 5y ago
  Do you leave your house? It’s much more difficult to find everyday objects that do not succumb to constant design changes. Bandages, razors, beverages, literally almost any box of foodstuff…
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  I don’t know, this argument seems to be losing validity. Couldn’t it be that industries that need lots of design for some other reason hire designers? That would be cause going the other way. > There is a fundamental form to daily objects that does not change or otherwise changes in leap steps often by completely depricating the old object. And this just doesn’t seem true at all. Should I hold these papers together with paper clips or binder clips? Maybe a staple. How about one of those new air staplers?
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    Taking your example a paper clip and a binder clip both have the same fundamental form you have to separate two parts of the thing that then squeeze the paper together. A stapler is a leap step in binding things, where an interely different fundamental form is used to permanently bind things. An air stapler has a different operating principle (I don't push a staple a pneumatic driver does it for me) but it is not fundamentally different from a regular stapler in how it binds things. Storing this comment on a server is several leap steps forward from archiving a printed document and binding it to other comments in this thread. :)
    - travisjungroth 5y ago
      Then it seems like you’ve just stated a tautology. Things don’t change unless they do.
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
The only thing that changes my jeans is wear and tear. My car pretty much stays the same unless someone takes a swipe at it.
dredmorbius 5y ago
The design of a given artefact in the real world won't change unless specifically acted on. A garment, or an automobile, or a building remains as it was originally designed, modulo wear, until and unless it is altered, modified, or renovated. With digital artefacts, especially SAAS, where each individual use is fetched anew from a server, there's no such material stability. Product lines are subject to revision, though even here, changes seem to follow marketing rather than functional logic. This is especially true when comparing, say, industrial vs. consumer products, particularly those with a common underlying design or base. Examples which come to mind are Hobart vs. KitchenAid mixers (both manufactured by the same company), consumer automobiles vs. the Checker Taxicab. The last production year of Checker, 1982, could have graced a dealer's lot in the late 1940s: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_A-11_Taxicab_1982.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Checker_... Commercial jet airliners have seen at best marginal evolution since the introduction of the 707 in 1958 (and arguably for a decade prior to that). More recent design changes have finally begun to emerge largely thanks to advances in materials technology. Yes, there's been a great deal of change in avionics, flight control systems, overall infrastructure, and powerplants, but the overall design of a sausage on wings with gets slung from wings or fixed to the fuselage has remained fundamentally unchanged, largely due to laws of aerodynamics. Railroad oil tank cars strongly resembling the present-day DOT-111 standard emerged by the late 1860s. It turns out that there are only so many viable arrangements of material for handling bulk liquids on standard-gague rails given car dimensions, curve radius, braking, bogey capacity, and the like. The modern high-tension electric transmission line pylon dates to the early 20th century. It was the failure of what seems to have been an orginally-installed hanger hook which seems to have precipitated the 2018 Camp Fire in California, responsible for destroying the town of Paradise, CA, amongst numerous others. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed-as-cause-of-deadly-camp-fire/165757/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/hook-on-pge-tower-eyed... https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-deadliest-wildfire https://blog.thinkreliability.com/case-study-californias-dea... Clothing, particularly in an age of disposable ("fast") fashion does change quickly, yes. But that's through continued iteration and replacement of individual items, not, generally, by the repurposing of existing garments (accessorising and similar modifications excepted). Matter has persistence. Digital does not.

dgb23 5y ago

> The first is easy, and most of us probably already agree; designers gotta design. They have to justify their salary _somehow_. Designers are typically just _workers_, if it's their own thing, then sure they might want to use that as a canvas to explore things. But generally they produce things and solve problems and don't create them. In my experience and opinion, products are redesigned because: - Users who get bored quickly and have superficial concerns are very loud. They want more stuff and different stuff all the time, and they make sure you know it. They don't care about orthogonal, minimal features that work nicely together, nor about stability. - Marketing people are very good at selling things, internally and externally. Sometimes this is data driven, but it's generally a very hard and fuzzy thing to interpret. They are very good at hitting the right nerves. - Decision makers, executives are good at inventing work for others, convincing people to follow and expanding their influence. They need to think in the abstract and are often detached from workers and users so they miss important details.

toopok4k3 5y ago
Users who are vocal and complain, cause 95%(out of my ass number) of the users who silently like the software they way it is to suffer.