Usability expert Jakob Nielsen had in an Alertbox column last year said that "users hate change, so it’s usually best to stay with a familiar design and evolve it gradually." 

The reason - users have spent long hours using a site, even the few mintues they spend adds up to a lot of user hours over months and years, and they are familiar with its features. "Users don’t care about design for its own sake; they just want to get things done and get out." So when an internal design team hankers for change, they have quite a different mindset from that of the regular users, who love ‘familiar design’. 

"Generally, it’s best to evolve a UI with gentle changes rather than offer a totally fresh design," said Nielsen.

We have had examples during the past year of news sites going for radical re-design, while at the same time we also have had examples of sites that have been redesigning in incremental doses. 

The BBC’s news site offers one example of change - very gentle change at that. After the site switched over to a multicolumn format some years ago, changes have been very gradual. During the past year, the pages have become a bit longer, with the addition of more links and pictures. (There are reports though that there will be a radical redesign in a few months).

Then look at the radical redesigners. Reuters for example, which went for a major redesign recently. The redesign was disruptive and many users had no qualms in saying so. "In fact, anytime you redesign, prepare for a flood of angry responses from users. It’s a law of nature that users hate change, and they’ll complain every time you move anything around or otherwise reduce their ability to just do what they’ve always done," said Nielson. Quite true; that doesn’t mean the redesign is necessarily bad.

CNN too came up with a major redesign. 

Another example is the USA Today site, which has made major changes treading the middle ground - the site does not look as radically different as in the case of the Reuters redesign.

What matters is that users should, after the initial ‘hate’ phase, get to like the redesign. 

Nielsen also said that the ‘gradual change approach’ might also in the long run undermine the ‘cohesiveness’ of the site and call for fresh design. Can a design team avoid this staleness by transforming the site radically over a period of time without the users actually noticing it? Therein lies the challenge.

Links:

Alertbox column - Fresh vs. Familiar: How Aggressively to Redesign 

Reuters has gone for a major redesign (related post)

Focus on better video content presentation in CNN’s redesign (related post)