Now, if you’re not familiar with Evan Spiegel, I’ll just let you know that he’s the CEO and co-founder of Snap Inc., the company that brought us Snapchat. He was also the youngest billionaire in history, at age 25, back in 2015.
What is he talking about? Well, back in the last quarter of 2017, Snap released a new design of their popular app. To make a long story short, it didn’t work. I’m talking losing 3 million users, a dip in brand impression from 30 to 8, and ad views and revenue going down 36%. Ouch!
I won’t go into the gory details of what they actually did, but suffice it to say that it was a perfect example of unintended consequences. I mean, the company certainly didn’t mean to lose all those users and revenue now, did they?
How did it happen? Once again, I won’t go into the details. Heck, I don’t even know them (though I certainly could guess). I looked around, but I’m not sure that’s something the company felt comfortable sharing.
Now, my first question, as a usability engineer, is, of course … DIDN’T ANYBODY DO ANY TESTING? How did they know this redesign was going to work? Where did their feedback come from? Did they get any feedback?
Now, Spiegel points to rushing things, but I think there’s a lot more to unintended consequences than just that. Hubris, for example. Or denial. Or short-term thinking. Or what have you …
Now, of course, you can put a lot of thought into something before you attempt it. Honestly, though, I don’t think you can still predict everything that might happen. And that’s why I think it’s so important to get something usability-tested. A/B might work, of course, but that means it’s live. Testing lets you get some feedback in a “safe space.” Might even give you some idea why it wasn't working.
Whatever you do, though, do something! Get some kind of feedback!
For some reason, most pix of Evan also feature his wife
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