I’ll keep this one short.
Doesn’t it strike you that whenever a business comes up with a change to an established product or service, it’s always welcomed by a barrage of people who hate it?
New New Twitter was announced this week. Oh no. The Twitter app has too many clicks now, it’s clunky, where did “my retweets” go, it’s too much like cluttered Facebook now… and the list goes on.
WE HATE CHANGE
It clear that any changes introduces discomfort for users, and we’re creatures of habit. Why would we be happy with someone moving our cheese, forcing us to go back into discovery, learning curve mode? And yes, voices who complain are always louder than voices of appreciation.
THEY’LL GET USED TO IT EVENTUALLY
Conventional wisdom on change is that people will eventually see the light – users don’t know what they don’t know. Innovation is not a democratic process of asking people what they want – because they don’t know what they have not seen before. It’s the role of experts to improve and innovate, and know better than anyone else what can be done better.
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?
My problem is that in many cases, change fails to answer a very simple question.
“What’s in it for me?”
I’m in business, I get the whole thinking: every business has goals and strategy – and strategy is about change.
But I’m a user. And if you can’t show me added value for me, sorry but I’m out.
Sorry Twitter, I don’t see the point for me, of just switching things around, and making me click twice as much.
Likewise, sorry Klout, I did not see personal value in having my score drop 15points for the sake of a better algorithm distribution.
And sorry Netflix, breaking your business in two separate entities was entirely meaningless for me as a user.
What do you say? Anything in it for you?