Slashdot Mirror
ShatChat: How Facebook's Bizarre Obsession With Snapchat Is Ruining User Experience On Messenger (500ish.com)
Columnist MG Siegler writes: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." I often find myself pointing to this quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park. It's just so succinctly perfect for so many things. This week's example: Facebook Messenger's new 'Day' functionality. [...] They've [Facebook] decided to weaponize all of these networks [Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram], user experience be damned. On Messenger, people have their list of contacts and/or groups that they chat with. The most recent conversations -- likely the most important -- are at the top of that feed. But if you're anything like me, you're often scrolling down a bit because you have many regular conversations. And so this screen real estate is insanely valuable. And Messenger puked up this new 'Day' nonsense all over it. Yes, people share photos on Messenger. Undoubtedly a ton. That's maybe how you try to justify this move to yourself if you're Facebook. But Messenger is fundamentally about chatting; it's a utility. Photos may be additive, but they're not core. You could try to pivot your service into making them core, but that doesn't mean you should.As of last year, Facebook Messenger has over a billion active users.
I don't think that users subjected to the awful UIs of Millennials are "apathetic".
In fact, I've seen the exact opposite: these users are very outspoken against the UI changes that have been made.
A close-to-home example is the Slashdot Beta site from a few years ago. It embodied so many characteristics of Millennial-designed UIs: it was less intuitive, it was less efficient, it wasted a lot of space, and users hated using it. There was a massive backlash here, with many people leaving, and not returning, even after the Beta project was finally terminated.
We've seen the same with Firefox. It once enjoyed 30% or more of the browser market. After many awful UI changes, most of Firefox's users have left for Chrome, Safari, or even Edge. Firefox is now down to only about 5% or 6% of the browser market. Now the UIs of these other browsers aren't all that much better than Firefox's (they've also been influenced by terrible Millennial UI "design" practices). It's just that they aren't as bad, and there's not much choice for users to begin with.
And we've seen the same with GNOME 3. GNOME 2 was among the most widely used Linux desktop environments in its day. Then GNOME 3 came along, and users expressed their dislike of it so loudly. The GNOME developers didn't act on this feedback, and many of the users jumped to desktop environments like MATE, KDE, or Xfce.
And yet again, we've seen the same sort of response from users to Windows 8 and 10. They express their displeasure very loudly, and they continue to use Windows 7 or even XP, assuming they haven't moved to macOS.
The users aren't apathetic. They do provide lots of feedback. When this feedback goes ignored, they do the only thing they really can do: they stop using the software with a Millennial-ruined UI and move on to the next best alternative. This isn't apathy or inaction; it's completely action.