Today's Daily 60 (seconds) is on something very basic, UI.
Sometimes neat and flashy isn't always the best. Let's look at everyone's favorite site, Google+. I've been using G+ for years, so when things move, they usually move a little bit, or I'm invested enough in the site to learn the new locations, but someone who is just trying it out isn't. I watched someone fumble over how to start hangouts, then how to find their friends in circles, and so on. Honestly, is it really intuitive to mouseover a little floating house, then go down to people and click, then go up to the top middle on the right and click my circles. Not to me, that one even took me some time to find.
I don't care how amazing your software is, if no one can figure out where the play button is, no one's going to click it. I know it's hard, Google, but you need to ask someone who doesn't know who you are to try out your site, and please don't make the Apple mistake. You know, the one where you say something like "we don't care if you can't find it, we know better than you and we won't move it."
To all the developers out there, remember, your users are your customers, and your customers keep you getting your paycheck, so just look twice before you change your interface, and make sure someone new to the suite looks three times.
I'll second that, with the caveat that some people are going to complain no matter what the change is. Don't listen to them. If the change is good, helps existing and new users use your product, then make the change. But know someone's going to complain because they were used to the way things were. Not all change is bad.
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