Wednesday, January 7, 2015

My Thoughts on Updating User Interfaces

When you open a piece of software, whether it be a game or a word processing application, what you see before you is the familiar layout you've grown attached to. The buttons are in the same place and if you need to use a function, you know how to use it. This can change, however, if the application is updated and suddenly the layout is changed and the functionality harder to find, if it exists anymore at all. While there may be new toys that improve the software and it runs more optimally, sometimes thing that didn't seem to need "fixing" end up getting "fixed." In a frantic search to try to revert to the older interface you're familiar with, you find there's no such option built in to the application and you have to resort to a more convoluted method to successfully revert. This also applies to web pages. This idea of a new interface that seems to lose functionality and lack options that appeal to more people, particular users who took a liking to the old interface, is where this rant begins:
I am aware updating applications and web sites is likely inevitable in most cases. Maybe the developer wants to go back and improve the code and work on what they believe to be a better interface. Sometimes they do indeed succeed to wide acclaim and in those cases there's little issue. For instance, I could probably do with updating the current site layout, though at the same time I like it though the reason why I have done no such update is because the updated layout could be worse (though reverting wouldn't be too difficult on my end). I am hoping developers are wary of updating, particularly when it comes to the interface.

No comments:

Post a Comment