[kstenerud]

People don't like it when things change.

Change means things will break.

Change means your way of doing things won't work anymore, and you'll have to waste time and money figuring out why.

Change means that your fixes for when things go wrong won't work anymore.

Change means months of hitting new edge cases.

Change is scary.

Once you have a solution that works well enough for your use case to succeed, your motivation to adopt change goes through the floor. The bigger the organization, the worse the worst case scenario, and the lower the appetite for change.

[falcolas]

I really, really wish that Slack would learn this. Their constant creep in features means I lose about a cumulative hour every other week trying to do something that I once knew how to do.

[craftinator]

Reminds me of Microsoft Office's latest big UI change, removing drop-down menus in favor of "toolbar ribbons". Went from being a power user / expert to a complete novice over night. I always wonder if there's a better way to make those types of transitions.

[inetknght]

> I always wonder if there's a better way to make those types of transitions.

Yes, there is. It's actually pretty simple and takes one step:

1) don't.

I can expand on that though with a few more discrete steps:

1) don't screw over people who already spent time (money) learning your product

2) don't screw over people who paid money (and time) for certifications in your product

3) don't assume that everyone will work better with the new flow

The toolbar ribbons tanked discoverability, readability, and usability.

[wjdp]

Something needed to be done though. I use LibreOffice every few weeks, they still use the toolbar UI by default, and it's faster to google where an option is than to go hunting for it.

As a dev I'd love a ctrl+p sublime style search.

[ekko_]

One favorable way would be to use the Unix Philosophy[0] to create a new product, rather than a complete re-design.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Aren't you glad you live in the era of "evergreen" software?

I sincerely believe IT people of the future will look back unkindly on this trend.

[damandloi]

The solution provider is incentivized to add new use cases. Thus, always bringing the change that nobody has asked but the market.