
Managing UI Complexity - callahad
http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-complexity/
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huhtenberg
Interesting.

Few weeks ago a friend of mine showed me <http://www.bvckup.com>, which is
basically a folder copier. Not terribly useful, but what did blow me away was
its UI. It wasn't just too simple for a backup utility, it was humane and
thoughtful. I emailed the guy my thumbs up and he replied saying that quite a
few people expected the UI to be complex and assumed that a simple and obvious
UI equated to a less functional software. He seemed to be completely perplexed
by this.

Point being is that the UI complexity is actually _expected_ in some cases,
because it's a de facto standard. Users may actually _want_ a bad UI, because
that's what they are used to, and trying to offer them better alternatives may
end up being an uphill battle.

~~~
joe_the_user
Perhaps the potential users were curious what the features of the application
_were_? When I clicked on the "features" item in the main menu on the above
link, I got this slick-but-weird fade-in pop-up saying "work-in-progress". A
valiant effort to substitute slickness for content but still ... how could he
sell any users without a list features?

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patio11
I am severely, severely jealous of web developers because of how easy it is to
test, measure, and iteratively improve this. Using your judgment is nice,
using your data is muuuuuuch better.

I have one screen in my workflow which I realized was costing me 20% of trial
users (thank you, Mixpanel). That was clearly unacceptable.

I redid it to introduce more complexity to the interface (it has the same
number of total options as before PLUS a way to show/hide several of them) but
hide most of it from novice users.

When I checked my stats for yesterday this morning, it looked like I was
losing only 10% at that step now, not 20%. I have no idea whether that data is
statistically significant, but just the fact that I'm even in a position to
collect it, for practically free, amazes the desktop developer in me.

Now I just need to get my A/B testing framework working so that I can get
automated statistical significance tests done on it, and then I can start
doing that sort of iterative improvement on an industrial scale, rather than a
series of ad hoc one-offs as I've been doing for a while.

~~~
dangoldin
Is there a way you can incorporate the A/B testing into an actual product?

You can release two pieces that are functionally equivalent but have a
slightly different UI on it. If you send stats back to the server you can
probably get a good amount of data.

~~~
patio11
You mean like downloadable software? I did it once.

There are many ways to distribute Java applications to customers. That
probably bores you. To make a long story short, the tradeoff is usability
versus download size.

I made two functionally identical (or so I thought -- long story) versions of
BCC, and randomly redirected half of the people downloading from my site to
one (1 MB, required JRE) and half to the other (10 MB, did not).

I was able to check which versions were causing sales by incorporating a URL
parameter naming the version of the executable when people clicked from the
nag prompts to the website. Set the version they're using in a cookie,
associate it with a later purchase, blah blah bob's your uncle.

Early testing suggested that the larger one was statistically significantly
more effective at producing sales, but this trend did not continue.

There are numerous downsides with this. It took a LOT of work to set up. I got
to maintain two versions of the same executable, which introduced bugs (I'll
spare you the details, aside from one: Vista). It cost me in support requests.
I will be supporting those executables for years to come (trust me -- I still
get people buying from software not on my website in 2+ years). Changing the
A/B tests used takes a full release cycle.

On the web, these are all so easily surmountable it isn't even funny.

~~~
dangoldin
Thanks for the elaborate explanation. Most things seem pretty easy at first
glance until you sit down and try to do them.

I suppose you probably look forward to the day when most apps will be online.

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antidaily
Sorta reminds me of tumblr I just start following called Abobe UI Gripes (much
less educational): <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/>

