4 ms·

There's also the perverse incentive created by having dedicated UX people. At some point the UI is at a good point and doesn't need significant improvement, but

There's also the perverse incentive created by having dedicated UX people. At some point the UI is at a good point and doesn't need significant improvement, but the UX person needs to justify their existence, so changes happen just for the sake of making changes. To me, Discord's UI - especially on mobile - exemplifies this perfectly. They change the image upload process every few months, alternating between various levels of decent and terrible design. First it used to be one tap, then they put it in a submenu, now it's back to one tap but uploaded images get grouped together requiring tapping on them to scroll through, so we're forced to upload them one by one to have them show in the more convenient old way, making it still strictly a step back. Add in the managers who think that not having large UI changes every few years is a sign of stagnation regardless of reason.

deeg 3y ago
I think this largely explains it, along with a desire for the UX designers doing something new and "modern". This explains a lot of user-unfriendly changes in other areas, too. I worked for a prominent travel web company and the army of people in marketing were constantly looking for new sources of "incremental revenue" to justify their work. This led to pop-unders and pages packed with more ads than content.
internet101010 3y ago
Spotify has made a lot of changes in the last 2-3 years and most of them have been bad. A couple of instances come to mind. The first was with CarPlay. They went from list of thing (playlists, podcasts, etc.) that you click on to get to a new section to a home page with a row of useless tiles and a "view all" that is difficult to get to if using something like a scroll wheel in a BMW. Thankfully the feedback was so bad that they reversed the decision. They made the mistake of thinking that everyone with a touchscreen in their car uses it. The second is everything related to podcasts. Podcasts and music need to be completely isolated from one another because the method of browsing and maintaining are completely different. To this day there is no way to simply view a list that has all episodes for podcasts you follow and sort by recently updated. There is a "new episodes" thing that exists but if you click on something and back out it gets removed from the list. This assumes it is even updated, because clicking into loads from cache rather than doing a refresh. The only safe way to get an updated list of episodes is by hard closing the app and then re-opening it.
- wuiheerfoj 3y ago
  Trying to find a playlist as it magically reorders them in front of my eyes is a ballache
yCombLinks 3y ago
Spotify is the worst ever for this. Major UI changes that are awful every year or so. It was very easy to find anything you wanted 10 years ago. Now there's slideouts and hovers and collapsible garbage hiding everything.

deeg 3y ago

I think this largely explains it, along with a desire for the UX designers doing something new and "modern". This explains a lot of user-unfriendly changes in other areas, too. I worked for a prominent travel web company and the army of people in marketing were constantly looking for new sources of "incremental revenue" to justify their work. This led to pop-unders and pages packed with more ads than content.

internet101010 3y ago

Spotify has made a lot of changes in the last 2-3 years and most of them have been bad. A couple of instances come to mind. The first was with CarPlay. They went from list of thing (playlists, podcasts, etc.) that you click on to get to a new section to a home page with a row of useless tiles and a "view all" that is difficult to get to if using something like a scroll wheel in a BMW. Thankfully the feedback was so bad that they reversed the decision. They made the mistake of thinking that everyone with a touchscreen in their car uses it. The second is everything related to podcasts. Podcasts and music need to be completely isolated from one another because the method of browsing and maintaining are completely different. To this day there is no way to simply view a list that has all episodes for podcasts you follow and sort by recently updated. There is a "new episodes" thing that exists but if you click on something and back out it gets removed from the list. This assumes it is even updated, because clicking into loads from cache rather than doing a refresh. The only safe way to get an updated list of episodes is by hard closing the app and then re-opening it.

wuiheerfoj 3y ago
Trying to find a playlist as it magically reorders them in front of my eyes is a ballache

yCombLinks 3y ago

Spotify is the worst ever for this. Major UI changes that are awful every year or so. It was very easy to find anything you wanted 10 years ago. Now there's slideouts and hovers and collapsible garbage hiding everything.