A colleague was working on a new type of application, one that did not exist before. The team scratched together a pretty but quick prototype, a true MVP (minimum viable product) and started testing that on real users.
Every user they gave the app to, gave the same feedback on a detail they did not like after first experience of use.
Fixing the thing would take a while, but since the feedback was so unanimous, the team got to work. A week later, they delivered a new version.
Every user that had the app before, hated that there was a change, they had grown to like the way it was.
Every user they added for first time experience, hated how it was different from the usual way things are done. For the first day, until they learn.
I shared this story to my team at work this morning, as my team was wondering if we should immediately put back the "in review" state to our work board in Jira. The developers were so used to calling "in review" their done, but also refusing to call it their done and moving it to the done column. They used to leave tickets to this in review column, and no one other than themselves was finding any value on it.
We agreed to give the change two weeks before going back to reflect on it with the idea that we might want to put it back.
Users of things will feel differently when they are still adjusting to change, and when they have adjusted to change. Your needs of designing things may be to ease getting started, or ease the continued use. Designing is complicated. Pay attention.
