Because it's a free service, and Google is a research company, not a service company. If they get better "results" -- which probably includes ad clicks, precision/recall for finding things, and many other factors, not just user complaints -- by making a UI change, I think they're entirely justified in making the change. I've seen some of their rig for experimenting with UI details, it's pretty cool actually. They get to do science on things most people would never dream of being able to do. If you don't like change, buy something, because if there's no exchange of value, no contract, there are no obligations.
I had the same visceral reaction "Why is GMail giving me a popup and things aren't where I left them, what is going on, this is like Facebook all over again" to the changes. Now I don't really notice.
I am not an HCI researcher, but I sort of doubt that UI changes would be adopted if users had a choice. An interface might save a user .1 seconds per click in the long term, but the extra .5 seconds per click the first day of using it might deter users of the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" persuasion. It would be nice if there were a way to effectively get users to adopt change without offending them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krja![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-12 06:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-12 06:16 pm (UTC)And they are still incredibly nice in many ways. e.g. Data Liberation Front.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-12 06:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 02:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 02:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 04:35 pm (UTC)I had the same visceral reaction "Why is GMail giving me a popup and things aren't where I left them, what is going on, this is like Facebook all over again" to the changes. Now I don't really notice.
I am not an HCI researcher, but I sort of doubt that UI changes would be adopted if users had a choice. An interface might save a user .1 seconds per click in the long term, but the extra .5 seconds per click the first day of using it might deter users of the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" persuasion. It would be nice if there were a way to effectively get users to adopt change without offending them.