One of my biggest frustrations

[ricketysquire]

I hate how the tech industry has lost touch with humanism. Like pushing constant updates, changing the way things look and work for no good reason at the most random of times. All the "experiments" they run on paying customers changing things for one group but not the other just to confuse the crap out of people.

Like does someone thats going to their banking website need to wake up to a new layout and design every few months when they just want to pay their bills and check their finances? Imagine if your car worked that way, every week, they pushed a new "release" of Car and suddenly the steering wheel and controls work differently. The accident rate would skyrocket. Sometimes things need to remain consistent for a reason. These companies can't just leave things alone. People who are using your products and services may not have the time or energy to learn something for no reason. Businesses also don't have time to sit there and teach employees the same system that looks different and deal with all the bugs of this quarter/years release. There's nothing wrong with using old software or releases if it meets the business needs. Not everything needs an update.

And Im not talking about security or bug fixes, im talking about changes in look, feel, new features and functionality.

 

[jchap]

I hate how the tech industry has lost touch with humanism. Like pushing constant updates, changing the way things look and work for no good reason at the most random of times. All the "experiments" they run on paying customers changing things for one group but not the other just to confuse the crap out of people.

Without disagreeing with your post, on the contrary I am a little surprised at how the larger things don't change a great deal.

Take macOS, for instance. Most of the basic functionality has not changed for many years. The idea of the browser is another example—browsers have changed very little over the past few decades, except for the little bells and whistles. E-commerce sites like Amazon may have changed here and there in terms of layout, but the overall flow of putting things into a "shopping cart" and "checking out" remains essentially the same with most such sites. Software like Microsoft Office may have changed its look several times over the course of the decades, but it still does essentially the same things. The larger categories remain remarkably intact.

Sometimes, features get moved around on websites and in software, and users have to spend time to get adjusted to the new way of doing things. That's often kind of inevitable. In whatever way the interfaces may change, the larger concepts remain remarkably stable.

I don't think this all has much to do with humanism. Humanism is "an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters." You might be thinking more about ergonomics, how stuff bothers you when someone makes changes and moves things around. That's a user experience-related complaint, not really a humanistic one. Some companies and organizations get it right—others aren't so good at it.

 

[cateye]

Leading edge users drive change. The bank already has you as a customer, and knows there is inertia working against you leaving. It couldn’t care less what you want. It wants new customers, as does Apple, as does Toyota, as does everyone. Customer churn drives business, and design is driven by marketing which drives customer acquisition.

“I want things to stay the same for me” is never going to be a motivating factor in anything beholden to capitalism, ever.

 

[Mrbobb]

Sorry to rain on your parade but unfortunately, I don't see this changing, there maybe a few exceptions like tax preparing software, heavily retail use, they at least entice to use their product rather than going to the competition.

Otherwise, you deal with the crappy software or be on phone hold and deal with dial numbers that go nowhere but another mailbox. Once in a while complaint succeed like Amazon making hard to cancel customers Prime Accounts.