professional hobbyist, visual novelist (Potion Stand Story, Iron Company), low-rent vtuber, human trainwreck. oregon, USA. let your eyeballs drift gently over to my pinned post for more information and tags and things. long live cohost โค๏ธโ€:eggbug:


โœจ personal website
doodlemancy.com/
๐Ÿ›๏ธ etsy
etsy.com/shop/doodlemancy
๐ŸŸฆ bluesky (most active)
bsky.app/profile/doodlemancy.com
๐Ÿ’Œ my mailing list
doodlemancy.com/#mailinglistinfo
๐Ÿฟ anime list (anilist)
anilist.co/user/doodlemancy/
๐Ÿก toyhouse
toyhou.se/doodlemancy
๐Ÿ“บ twitch
twitch.tv/doodlemancy
๐Ÿ’ญ dreamwidth (RSS-able!)
doodlemancy.dreamwidth.org/
๐ŸŽฎ itch.io
doodlemancy.itch.io/
๐Ÿ”— EVEN MORE PLACES I AM
doodlemancy.com/#links
๐Ÿ›๏ธ pillowfort
www.pillowfort.social/doodlemancy
๐Ÿ˜ mastodon
kind.social/@doodlemancy

doodlemancy
@doodlemancy

"people always complain about UI changes at first and then they get used to it" i'm going to break into your house and put all your important stuff you use every day in random drawers and see how you like it. i'm gonna hide your phone in the towel cupboard. i'll put all your spoons in the fridge. all writing utensils are now stored under a floorboard that i've drawn a pencil on (in very light pencil so you can't actually see it)

if you want your software to be a part of users' everyday lives then it has to be reliable and predictable. you can't just change the entire shape of it on a whim no matter how much better you think it is. make small changes slowly or leave it the fuck alone. a UI overhaul is rarely a good idea because even if it really is "better" you are straining the fragile trust of your userbase by throwing them unexpectedly into HEY LEARN A NEW THING when it is fucking thursday or whatever and they are busy or maybe have an urgent message to send to someone. it's disrespectful. it's a breach of common decency. you shouldn't overhaul your entire UI on a whim any more than you should "deliver" a package by hucking it through an open window at the recipient's head. take the time to knock, or at least don't complain when they yell at you and throw stuff back.


beige-alert
@beige-alert

Also, back in the Olden Days you'd maybe go to the book store and buy a magazine and take it home and leaf through it and see that Version 3 was just released and you'd read about it and maybe eventually go to the Computer Store and buy a box, covered in shrink wrap, for which you'd pay quite a lot of money, and bring it home and spend an hour exchanging floppy disks, and it was kinda supposed to look different, you expected that.

Now it's like you wake up on a Tuesday morning and go on the computer to do the same thing you always do and you can't fucking do it because they changed everything


doodlemancy
@doodlemancy

YEAH. like. there's little to no preparation most of the time, and even when there is a period where the new interface in some software or on a website is optional, they'll be like "this is the new thing! what do you think? tell us!" and then simply ignore everything the users say. i'm sure just me saying that has ignited some grudge in the reader here (for me it's my eternal smoldering grudge against deviantART lol). and i get why some of this is happening but if you're going to try to please investors by wiggling things, you could at least wiggle them GENTLY.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @doodlemancy's post:

I think a lot of the time it's not because developers or even the company think their new version is better, it's because they need to justify keeping large staffs of programmers and UX designers on the payroll and show their shareholders that they're "doing something."

there are so many versions of it and i don't even know how many it's been but i miss when i could swipe in two different directions from my home screen and have Left Apps and Right Apps. i had a whole system! swipe right for boring things and maintenance, swipe left for the Good Apps! and they destroyed it for absolutely no reason lol

โ€ฆthis is because they wanted to reserve swiping left for the google app, isn't it? I've only ever had screens to the right of my default screen so I didn't realize they'd removed the ability to add screens to the left at all, instead of just putting the google app crap left of the leftmost screen

now now i have had so many fucking google engineers yell at me that this was entirely justified despite it transparently being solely because they put a fucking notch and couldn't do anything better :|

"what are you gonna do bitch, make a comparably-featured version of our software/website and convince everyone to leave the one they know and that everyone else is using? good luck idiot"

in reply to @doodlemancy's post: