Comments on: Google’s Take on “Change Aversion” Misses the Point

By: Aaron Sedley

Aaron Sedley — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:33:26 +0000

Hi Jared, thanks for commenting on my change aversion post. I’ve written a response, here on Google+:

https://plus.google.com/u/1/108569520749811779372/posts/3KVWgRYVZRx

I look forward to continuing the discussion!

–Aaron Sedley

By: Kaleberg

Kaleberg — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:15:28 +0000

A good example is Apple’s adding version management to a number of its products and getting rid of the “Save As” menu item in Lion. This changed a lot of people’s work flows since all changes were instantly saved. You could go back to the old version, but the history was not available if you dumped the document onto a flash card or Dropbox. Suddenly, you had to be much more careful about making casual modifications. You were stupid.

Apparently, Mountain Lion brings back “Save As”, and just in time.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:11:22 +0000

“In fact, people love change”

No, people like to change things but most hate when things are changed.

By: Felix

Felix — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:20:59 +0000

Wow, how timely. I just noticed that Google just made a few updates to Gmail: the “See more” link when you hover over a contact has been replaced with a dropdown/up arrow, which definitely wasn’t there yesterday. Ha!

By: Felix

Felix — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:17:47 +0000

Great post, and I totally agree with your assessment.

One of the big problems with Google’s design philosophy is a lack of accountability to their users: they, like Facebook, can make whatever changes they like and we haven’t a word to say about it. It seems like it’s a trend that’s catching on, too: if I got a nickel for every time Skype changed their UI, I’d be on my way to my private island as we speak.

Designing like this, in an analytics-fueled – or worse, “exalted designer” – vacuum, can be dangerous and definitely lead to the impression that us mere users are all change-haters.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:37:54 +0000

Your example of a teenage girl getting her first phone is not completely relevant as it reflects a person gaining a new tool altogether. In this context it would be more similar to someone switching from say an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy S3 or a BlackBerry whereby the functional tool represents the same basic functionality but the design changes significantly. In this respect people frequently do not like change for exactly the reasons you go on to point out.

I think that part of the problem for Google is that they are simply used to people accepting the things they produce when they are new because there have often been few or inferior alternatives with which to draw comparison. As they’ve had to move from creating new innovative products to a mix of that with improving and adding to existing
ones they need to have two different strategies.

By: Chantal Jandard

Chantal Jandard — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:05:32 +0000

Awesome article; it was a great read. You really got me thinking!

However, it might be too far to say Google’s approach to introducing change is entirely off the mark. There are situations when noticeable change is completely unavoidable, like in visual redesigns or workflow changes. In those circumstances, I think Google’s techniques are appropriate. Your approach seems better for less drastic transformations, such as new features. Not to say that we should cop out when something is tricky, but let’s face it: if one day the website was blue and now it’s red, users are going to notice.