[jacquesm]

I don't think that covers it. Imagine you're living in a house for years, one day some guy comes in and changes everything subtly.

The walls are just a different shade, everything gets moved around a fraction. Nothing dramatic, just a lot of small changes.

You'd walk in and feel like you are in an unfamiliar place.

Unfamiliar ties right in with 'danger' on the reptilian brain level and that manifests itself as a feeling of being uncomfortable. Give it four weeks, change it back and people will be arguing the exact same thing.

Change always leads to resistance of this sort, even change for the better.

[pg]

I've been working on software design for a long time and I'm pretty sure the problem with the Google redesign is not merely that users are unfamiliar with it. They've made classic design errors.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1326795

[jacquesm]

That's very well possible. But in my experience, running a roughly million-member website for over 12 years any change we ever made led to the exact same pattern:

  - initial bitching

  - gradual acceptance

  - the new is much better than the old

This usually over a period of 3 months or so. And that's for improvements and mistakes alike. There seems to be an automatic component to all this that is 'conservative', as in 'opposed to any change'.

Time will tell on this one, if google reverts to the old lay-out then the conclusion is that they also thought that it was better before. But it is very well possible that this 'worse' lay-out is actually better for google, even if it is worse for the users, for instance because it increases their bottom line.

A design error is not always a business error.

[staunch]

MySpace's lack of AJAX-based functionality resulted in a massive number of "extra" page views, which meant significantly higher ad revenue. Better for their revenue, worse for users. That was not a good business decision.

[nzmsv]

I think it's like the MS Office redesign. The new UI is supposedly better, especially for newbies. But the amount of bitching among experienced Office users was remarkable.

[netcan]

That may be true. If so, it makes recognising errors in design more difficult. It doesn't mean they aren't possible.

[mixmax]

That is so very true. Great companies know this and have the guts to go ahead and make the needed changes anyway.

Your point also hints at the fact that asking users isn't always the right thing to do - often they don't know exactly what they want. Either because they can't imagine it or because of the friction you describe.

[mst]

I am reminded of the idea of doing this, except subtly enough they can't actually prove anything's changed, over and over again, as a way to bend somebody's mind quite badly.

Of course said idea was presented as a Malkavian prank in a Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebook I was reading, so it's hardly a serious suggestion.

I do occasionally wonder if you could make sweeping changes in a gradual enough way for regular users to not so much not mind as largely not notice, under the frog/frying pan principle. Sadly for this wondering, Shadowcat's a consultancy so the sites I work on with enough traffic for it to be interesting all belong to other people :)

[mrtron]

Exactly what I was thinking when I heard the complaints about the new interface.

Objectively I think it is a change for the better - but it does feel just a bit off.

Many websites have these issues. People cried foul to Fark when they did a redesign. An employee was fired for saying 'You will get over it'. People did.

[ZeroGravitas]

As they say: Different isn't always better, but better is always different.

[tel]

Sounds like there might be an interesting psychology at play. Anecdotally, I didn't even notice the changes until they pleasantly surprised me.

I wonder how many others feel this way.