Users don’t hate change. They hate our design choices. (Jared Spool)

Change does not necessarily always equal good. Something new does not always mean innovation.

Consider the poor transfer user. These are simply folks who have gotten used to doing things a certain way. Then along you come with your improvements. 

But, are they improvements? Or are they just one more thing in the user’s way that day? Do they actually make the user’s job easier? Or are they just one more thing they have to figure out and deal with? Do they add new functionality? Or have you simply added something that no one will ever use, and made the interface that much more busy in doing so? Is it better than before? In your eyes? In the user’s?

Sometimes change comes for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps the higher ups simply want a new look and feel, a refresh.  Or you could simply have been shanghaied into somebody’s pet project. I often accuse my marketing friends of monkey see, monkey do.  Perhaps management is simply flailing away. They know they need to be innovative. But how to do that other than issuing the directive to “go innovate!” might be beyond them.

True innovation comes from seeing what users are having issues with. The brainstorming and ideation (I really don’t like that word) can help you come up with a creative solution, but unless you’re trying to solve a real problem, you may simply be creating new problems.

Even if you have a good idea, though, you still need some kind of change management. As a former instructional designer (who mostly worked on new internal systems for banks), I actually spent as much time on rollout as I did on anything else. I’m always amazed at how little that’s thought of, though, in good, old-fashioned B2C. And I don’t mean just training here, but communications and even selling. 

Other ideas to support what Jared calls “embraceable change” include tours; demos; coachmarks; complete mock systems; allowing the user to switch between the old and new systems whenever they feel like it; making small, incremental changes over time rather than one big one … There are no shortage of ideas. You do, however, have to come in with a mindset that change is not always welcomed with open arms, and that it is up to you to make sure that the changes that you make really do add value, and that you are presenting them in such a way as to maximize their benefit – and minimize their disruption – 
to the user.

More from Jared:

• "You can’t stop people from putting beans up their nose."