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I think "sales" is just one of the post-hoc rationalizations. The real purpose very often is simply to justify the money you spent on UI designers; there's a ki

I think "sales" is just one of the post-hoc rationalizations. The real purpose very often is simply to justify the money you spent on UI designers; there's a kind of sunk cost fallacy where spending resources exploring design changes leaves management feeling like they must ship some kind of design change, and the UI designers are strongly in favor of leaving their mark on the product and securing a big accomplishment on their resume. The incentives simply aren't aligned to support a long-term strategy of not constantly messing with your UI.

esafak 1y ago
> The real purpose very often is simply to justify the money you spent on UI designers It's backwards. It's for the UI designers to justify the money spent on them. They can't just sit there and do nothing. Designing is their job! It's the same with every position.
- wtallis 1y ago
  It's a management failure. Either management is directly approving gratuitous UI redesigns, or they're making the mistake of giving designers unrestrained freedom to decide what UI changes ship.
  - TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    Or they needed some kind of glossy faux-development to headline the marketing year when Apple AI tanked, and this was the best they could cobble together at relatively short notice. Meanwhile I get regular connection issues on Facetime on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, even though bandwidth isn't a problem here.
- diegof79 1y ago
  Do you dress with a hat and shirt like someone in the 50s? I see many angry comments because it's a change without a practical reason, and it's meant to make things more "new" or "fresh" at the cost of CPU and GPU resources. That's a valid complaint since making old devices obsolete is a design choice. However, it's good to see it from a humane perspective. Fashion trends change because they are associated with identity, novelty, status, self-expression, etc. Companies make fashion changes to appeal to those things. For example, nobody complains if Nike changes a model just for fashion; however, everybody uses the same phone every day, just as they do with a pair of shoes. For us, working on programming or software design, the phone is just a tool, but for most people, the phone is a form of self-expression (like using single or double quotes in code, or tabs vs spaces). And every few years, tech companies undergo a fashion refresh. So, even if Apple fires all the visual designers and keeps the same design for many years, people will likely grow bored with their UIs, which will push them toward competitors offering more stylish options.
  - esafak 1y ago
    I agree! The problem is that in software users don't have to option of retaining the old UI while updating the rest of the product, so there's always a fuss when some people prefer the old UI but are unwillingly forced to use the new one.
  - wtallis 1y ago
    The problem is this mindset that constant UI churn chasing "fashion" could ever be purely superficial and harmless. You say people would grow bored with a UI that never changes, but on the other hand, people learn to use a UI that doesn't constantly change. Changing UI layout obviously breaks muscle memory, but even just reskinning the same layout with a new color scheme that changes the relative visual prominence of different UI elements brings usability penalties. It's rare that any UI change is purely beneficial or has no effect on usability. Unless proven otherwise, any UI change should be assumed to impose some usability harm on existing users, and the potential usability benefits of the change need to be weighed against that harm. Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real.
    - RandomBacon 1y ago
      The downsides are enormous for older people. We are increasingly making everything digital, and it's leaving the older generations that cannot constantly adapt and relearn as their memory gets worse, in trouble.
    - diegof79 1y ago
      > Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real. Wow, you are barking at the wrong tree. In my comment, I didn't say that the UI style changes were good or bad for usability. The comment thread had two postures: either these design changes have a business reason, or they are there to justify the designer's salary. I wanted to highlight a third plausible reason: people crave experiencing something new, which is why businesses reflect that. For example, I love the classic Mac OS B&W style, but if Apple maintains the same style from 1984 to the present, many people will perceive it as outdated. (In fact, I remember reading MacOS 9 reviews pre-Aqua, that many comments highlighted how MacOS looked legacy compared to Windows 95.) I'm not defending poor style changes or implying that they don't affect usability.
toss1 1y ago
And messing with the UI is the single most salient thing that makes regular people hate using computers, and do so only when it is required. It doesn't matter what is their justification about making something "better". The industry has reached saturation; there no longer exists any justification for making a UI somehow "better" to invite in more users. Changes ONLY create frustration and anger among existing users, which is essentially everyone at this point. Changing the way a UI operates is like in an automobile swapping the position of the accelerator and braking pedals and moving the windshield wiper controls to the center console, heater controls to a steering-wheel stalk, and then claiming it is a "New Fresh User Interface!!". Of course people CAN adapt, but they will not like it. And automakers are already discovering how moving features from tactile knobs & buttons to a center touchscreen is hated and are going back to what people know and like. It is past time for the software industry to get the message.

esafak 1y ago

> The real purpose very often is simply to justify the money you spent on UI designers It's backwards. It's for the UI designers to justify the money spent on them. They can't just sit there and do nothing. Designing is their job! It's the same with every position.

wtallis 1y ago
It's a management failure. Either management is directly approving gratuitous UI redesigns, or they're making the mistake of giving designers unrestrained freedom to decide what UI changes ship.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Or they needed some kind of glossy faux-development to headline the marketing year when Apple AI tanked, and this was the best they could cobble together at relatively short notice. Meanwhile I get regular connection issues on Facetime on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, even though bandwidth isn't a problem here.
diegof79 1y ago
Do you dress with a hat and shirt like someone in the 50s? I see many angry comments because it's a change without a practical reason, and it's meant to make things more "new" or "fresh" at the cost of CPU and GPU resources. That's a valid complaint since making old devices obsolete is a design choice. However, it's good to see it from a humane perspective. Fashion trends change because they are associated with identity, novelty, status, self-expression, etc. Companies make fashion changes to appeal to those things. For example, nobody complains if Nike changes a model just for fashion; however, everybody uses the same phone every day, just as they do with a pair of shoes. For us, working on programming or software design, the phone is just a tool, but for most people, the phone is a form of self-expression (like using single or double quotes in code, or tabs vs spaces). And every few years, tech companies undergo a fashion refresh. So, even if Apple fires all the visual designers and keeps the same design for many years, people will likely grow bored with their UIs, which will push them toward competitors offering more stylish options.
- esafak 1y ago
  I agree! The problem is that in software users don't have to option of retaining the old UI while updating the rest of the product, so there's always a fuss when some people prefer the old UI but are unwillingly forced to use the new one.
- wtallis 1y ago
  The problem is this mindset that constant UI churn chasing "fashion" could ever be purely superficial and harmless. You say people would grow bored with a UI that never changes, but on the other hand, people learn to use a UI that doesn't constantly change. Changing UI layout obviously breaks muscle memory, but even just reskinning the same layout with a new color scheme that changes the relative visual prominence of different UI elements brings usability penalties. It's rare that any UI change is purely beneficial or has no effect on usability. Unless proven otherwise, any UI change should be assumed to impose some usability harm on existing users, and the potential usability benefits of the change need to be weighed against that harm. Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real.
  - RandomBacon 1y ago
    The downsides are enormous for older people. We are increasingly making everything digital, and it's leaving the older generations that cannot constantly adapt and relearn as their memory gets worse, in trouble.
  - diegof79 1y ago
    > Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real. Wow, you are barking at the wrong tree. In my comment, I didn't say that the UI style changes were good or bad for usability. The comment thread had two postures: either these design changes have a business reason, or they are there to justify the designer's salary. I wanted to highlight a third plausible reason: people crave experiencing something new, which is why businesses reflect that. For example, I love the classic Mac OS B&W style, but if Apple maintains the same style from 1984 to the present, many people will perceive it as outdated. (In fact, I remember reading MacOS 9 reviews pre-Aqua, that many comments highlighted how MacOS looked legacy compared to Windows 95.) I'm not defending poor style changes or implying that they don't affect usability.

toss1 1y ago

And messing with the UI is the single most salient thing that makes regular people hate using computers, and do so only when it is required. It doesn't matter what is their justification about making something "better". The industry has reached saturation; there no longer exists any justification for making a UI somehow "better" to invite in more users. Changes ONLY create frustration and anger among existing users, which is essentially everyone at this point. Changing the way a UI operates is like in an automobile swapping the position of the accelerator and braking pedals and moving the windshield wiper controls to the center console, heater controls to a steering-wheel stalk, and then claiming it is a "New Fresh User Interface!!". Of course people CAN adapt, but they will not like it. And automakers are already discovering how moving features from tactile knobs & buttons to a center touchscreen is hated and are going back to what people know and like. It is past time for the software industry to get the message.