[mattkevan]

A redesign of a system you use regularly and have some sort of personal attachment to is like someone sneaking into your house at night and rearranging the furniture.

I work for a major UK community site and we get a furious backlash against even the slightest of changes. And sometimes against things that users think have changed but actually haven't.

(Very) generally we as humans hate having to think. Figuring out a change to something we use regularly means all our automatic shortcuts no longer work and we have to start paying attention.

It's like how annoying it is when they keep moving stuff round in the supermarket but *100 worse.

[emodendroket]

Yes, but nobody would want to go back to Windows 3.1 now, and new users get put off by old-looking pages. There can be real advantages to those redesigns.