Pushing forward

Back in early September, Andrew Wilkinson of MetaLab posted an open letter to Zappos pointing out some shortcomings of Zappos’ new design. Going to lengths to make his criticism constructive, he mocked his ideas up in a very detailed comp, and presented it all on a carefully designed page separate from his blog.

Brian Kalma, the “Director of User Experience/Web Strategy” at Zappos, publicly responded to Andrew’s letter on a Zappos blog.1 Kalma elaborated on three comments he’d heard about the letter: that they (the Zappos UX team) were working on such changes, that they agreed with Andrew, and that design at Zappos is a process or evolution (it takes time).

Andrew was criticized by some for the brazen tone of his letter, but it was obviously the product of care and consideration, so Kalma and Zappos deserve a commendation for treating it as such. In a way, it might seem like there’s not that much up for debate here, because Kalma said that Zappos is working on changes and improvements and that it would just take time. The problem, though, is just that: time.

It’s almost December, and the new “Zeta” design that Andrew critiqued and revised is still not the default design; it’s effectively still in beta two and a half months later. Why does it take companies like Zappos so long to evolve their design? Kalma’s explanation was that there were questions Wilkinson left out, like:

Who are we designing for? Is it paid traffic, organic? Is it for new customers? Existing customers? What percentage of folks search vs. browse? What are the top entrance pages? What is the impact of site speed/load time? I am barely scratching the surface on considerations that must be met before making design evolution decisions, there are many more but I am hoping you and your readers can get my point.

Zappos is right to be asking those questions, but they should be able to answer and act upon them quickly. Instead, companies like Zappos become essentially paralyzed by fear, a notion to which Kalma alludes rather obliquely: “I just hope that as members of the design community we can do more acknowledging and addressing of all the difficulty that exists in business that affect the design process.” The “difficulty that exists in business” is a fear of change, because change is a risk, and businesspeople like to minimize risks. Too many businesses reach a point of success and stop taking risks. They lose their agility, become slow to change, and eventually fail. They stop wanting to be better.

Companies (and people) need a drive to be better if they want to sustain success. That can be tough, because what’s better might not always be as clear as it is in Zappos’ case: it might be down a path not yet blazed or in a direction opposite previously successful paths. Maintaining and responding to that kind of drive take guts, but it pays off. Look at Apple and the incredible success of the iPhone. The iPhone has a software keyboard. It has only four buttons. It completely countered and changed expectations about how a phone could look and function, and even the scope of what a “phone” could do. Or look at Google, which began as a research project in 1996 because Larry Page and Sergey Brin thought they could make search better. Google is still trying to change expectations with products like Chrome OS and Android.2

Microsoft is faltering where it cannot innovate quickly enough (namely Windows and Windows Mobile). There’s a lot of smart people at Microsoft producing a remarkable number of products that millions of people use every day, but the company is significantly paralyzed by a fear of change. How much time and effort does Microsoft spend to ensure backwards compatibility for their enterprise customers? Compatibility is important, and it can seriously effect reception, but as soon as it becomes more important than innovation, there’s a problem. Adobe is in a similar boat with its Creative Suite, now weighed down by years and years worth of additions and revisions. Inconsistencies abound and the software has become as unreliable as it is necessary.3

With their newer products, like the Xbox and Lightroom, Microsoft and Adobe were more flexible, and in both cases those products are excellent competitors in their markets. So the problem is really not an inability to make good stuff, it’s an unwillingness to change the stuff they already made, or even to accept that radical change is required. There’s certainly an argument to be made for caution, but it’s possible to be overly cautious, and that’s what Zappos, Microsoft, and Adobe are in regards to their flagship products.

Going back to Zappos in particular, the real shame of their situation is that their product lives on the web. To a degree even greater than Adobe or Microsoft, Zappos can quickly change and deploy. Not only can they quickly add, but they can also revert if necessary. Changing does mean that the way a customer expects the site to look and work will change. That’s certainly part of the consideration when making any change, but it can be dealt with. Kalma is right to declare that the changes on a large site like Zappos should be more inclined towards evolution than redesign, but even if customers have to take a second to learn the new system (it shouldn’t take much longer if you design it well), the change will benefit in the long term because it makes the experience better.

Always want to make it better. Sometimes that means you must be willing to decide what is better and stand by it, so stay informed and smart. And be willing to change more once you finish changing.

Notes

  1. He was not subsequently fired.
  2. In some respects, though, Google has also become paralyzed.
  3. See Neven and Merlin for examples of Adobe gripes.