What's the point of all these UI changes?

For a long while, platforms have been making tons of usually pointless, often harmful changes to their UI. Reddit & Discord provide tons of examples.

  • Reddit's video player changes have been an issue for as old as time.
  • Discord has forced their new mobile UI, which I absolutely despise.
  • Reddit's new logo looks uncanny. (I wouldn't say the 3D character in general looks awful, and a couple of the expressions are honestly quite cute, but what they went with just doesn't look good).
  • A while back, Discord made messages with multiple images display them in this stupid grid layout that resizes & crops them to death.

And that's not mentioning all of the other changes that don't seem to actually accomplish any purpose.

So, why do you think they do this? Is there some good reason to it that I'm missing? Is it strategic business stuff? My personal theory is that they need to have the UI designers doing something and so roll out pointless changes to justify paying them.

umbraroze,
umbraroze avatar

I literally just looked at Reddit for the first time in ages.

What the fuck.

Here's the thing: Reddit's UI design has always been shitty. Old Reddit was fucking garbage, so admins cheerfully asked RES folks to fix their shit. (Instead of, you know, hiring them.) New Reddit? Always been shit, and nobody's going to fix it.

This Newer New Reddit? I... I don't think they even know at this point. What. What's going on.

If they ask critique from the community, some AI bot will AI-pat the admin's arse and AI-splain the remaining AI-users that things will be just fine. (Now, "things actually getting better" has literally never happened as far as Reddit or its user interface has ever been concerned, as you should well know if you've ever been a human Reddit user.)

Aatube,
Aatube avatar

Newer New Reddit isn't really a thing, it only exists when you're logged out. I actually think it looks better than new reddit.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

Actually, I am now one of the few people who got this new new UI by default even after logging in, and man, it's horrible.

Aatube,
Aatube avatar

Ah, my condolences. Still I think it looks better than current new Reddit :p

minnieo,
minnieo avatar

I loved old reddit and only ever used it lol

ProtonBadger,

I just got the Discord update, meh, seems ok to me, maybe even a bit more convenient. They obviously think it's an improvement.

Aatube,
Aatube avatar

They removed quick switcher and automatic mode still uses the old dark mode

Search in-a-server also looks ugly in the channel list like a sore thumb; why not just use browse channels + quick switcher?

Settings is a bit harder to get to. Why not just combine it with "You" altogether like I think the old one did?

They also introduced a fucking inconsistency: categories are now normal case instead of upper

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

I am surprised because majority of the discord userbase seems to disagree with you, just check out r/Discord for instance lol.

ramble81,

3D character?

ThatOneKirbyMain2568,
ThatOneKirbyMain2568 avatar

Yeah, they made a complete 3D Snoo. You can see it here. I think it's fine for the most part. It's just that the open smile that they used for the logo just doesn't work that well imo.

terath,

Because most people actually like the updates, but you will only hear from angry people who don’t like change. Everyone else just goes on with life.

ThatOneKirbyMain2568,
ThatOneKirbyMain2568 avatar

I think if most people genuinely liked these features, you'd see people say that more when they're being discussed. What's more likely (and what I see way more often) is the second thing you mentioned: that most people don't really care and just go on with life. But if most users don't care, it again begs the question of why waste time making these changes at all. It seems like it's just to keep the UI design team busy more than anything.

rush,

I think the point is more that those which are fine with UI changes will not go to their nearest community to tell everyone about it. Rage is a much better motivator for things like that, see the “simplification trend rage” where everyone is going mad about Simple Logos despite many of the same companies having had simple logos in the past before Skeumorphism was a design trend.

WarmSoda,

It keeps someone employed.

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