I think it’s mostly that people complain when something gets worse but don’t praise an update that improves the UX.
If a website or app gets made worse people get upset und complain, but if the UI gets improved people generally don’t constantly praise the designers. A couple of people will probably comment on an improved design but not nearly as many as when the UI gets worse. So whenever someone mentions a change it is almost always to complain.
If I just look at the Software I am using right now:
Windows 11 (seems better than e.g. Windows Vista)
Spotify (Don’t remember updates so probably slight improvements)
Discord (Don’t remember updates so probably sight improvements)
Same goes for Anki, Gmail, my notes app, my bank app etc.
All of those apps have probably had UI updates, but I don’t remember ever seeing people complain about any of those updates. I use most of those apps every day and I hear less about their UI changes than about reddit’s, a website I almost never use, people just like to complain.
How good was the Spotify UI 10 years ago? I have no Idea but I suspect it was worse than it is now and has slowly been getting better over the years.
I also looked up the old logo and it’s clearly much worse but people just don’t celebrate logos improving the way people make fun of terrible new logos.
I think it’s mostly that people complain when something gets worse but don’t praise an update that improves the UX.
If a website or app gets made worse people get upset und complain, but if the UI gets improved people generally don’t constantly praise the designers. A couple of people will probably comment on an improved design but not nearly as many as when the UI gets worse.
So whenever someone mentions a change it is almost always to complain.
If I just look at the Software I am using right now:
Windows 11 (seems better than e.g. Windows Vista)
Spotify (Don’t remember updates so probably slight improvements)
Discord (Don’t remember updates so probably sight improvements)
Same goes for Anki, Gmail, my notes app, my bank app etc.
All of those apps have probably had UI updates, but I don’t remember ever seeing people complain about any of those updates. I use most of those apps every day and I hear less about their UI changes than about reddit’s, a website I almost never use, people just like to complain.
How good was the Spotify UI 10 years ago? I have no Idea but I suspect it was worse than it is now and has slowly been getting better over the years.
I also looked up the old logo and it’s clearly much worse but people just don’t celebrate logos improving the way people make fun of terrible new logos.
Spotify apparently had a really strange approach, which may explain the improvement: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/901p0j/former_software_engineer_at_spotify_on_their/ (but also helps exemplify my comment about how so many things are more important to fitness in market environments than design).