my name is mwd

There’s been quite a few people ranting about the new GUI tweaks to Mac OS X Leopard, both in the Ars Technica review, and more succinctly in the ThinkMac blog. Personally I’m not sure I mind that much – the transparent menu bar isn’t as bad as I feared, and there’s something about the new dock that appeals to me, but I can see why some might not like it. Most importantly at least Apple has made all the window styles consistent once more – no more brushed metal competing with pin-stripe competing with gray window styles.

I think though there’s a lot of feeling that they changed things that didn’t necessarily need changing. The new dock and menu bar don’t add anything particularly new. It’s change for change’s sake, and that’s got to be bad, right?

According to Scott Stevenson’s recent blog post, that’s not necessarily the case. Users expect UI changes with each release, and unless you feed them with some new glitz, they’ll walk on by:

If users see the same interface — same graphics, same interactions, same metaphors — for many years, the feeling of joy will begin to degrade. People experience this to varying degrees, but it seems to me that the typical mainstream user is more affected by this than the average software developer.

Change and fresh energy bring hope. I suspect this is why car manufacturers alter the bodies of their vehicles year after year. They know the contrast from the previous year sparks interest. Critics would say this is just marketing trickery, but no amount of labeling the phenomenon will change the reality of it. People seem to like it.

An interesting thought. Probably this sort of idea is more acute for an OS release like Leopard where there’s not one big single killer feature, just lots of small ones that together add up. You need something visual to attract people in. Of course, all this needs to be done with care – Windows 2000 to XP had a new set of gloss over it, but a bit to much in my opinion, and similarly XP to Vista. Apple seem to have, thus far been a bit more restrained.

Not sure if Steve is right or not, but it makes for an interesting idea for all of us out there designing user focused products.