Improvement or just Change

There’s a difference between change for improvements sake and change for change’s sake.

As most of you know, Blogger recently changed the user interface. They say it is an upgrade. But in truth it is just a change.

 Does the new interface give us something we didn’t have before?

 No.

 Does it use less computing power?

 No.

So how is it an upgrade? They’ll say it makes the interface “cleaner.” What it really does is remove the convenient buttons and make us click through a menu to find what we want.

Microsoft did the exact opposite with the Microsoft Office suite when they changed from menus to ribbons. Was it better? Maybe. If you ask me they killed corporate productivity because all the training on the old system was lost. I know people who went to open office because the menus were closer to the old version of Word.

Techies will remember how small the original versions of Word were and they worked great. Then they added … and added … and added. Some “upgrades” added a few nice features but most where just changes. Now we have an application that does pretty much what the original did, but takes up more space.

If you’ve been following this blog you probably know that I love finding new tools for writing. In fact, I love finding new tools for dealing with any part of my life. I think it is important to constantly learn new techniques to improve whatever you do. Be careful though. If you have a great relationship or a great manuscript, throwing a new approach into the mix might not give you the desired results.

Consider carefully.

Make sure the change is actually a change for the better and not just a change.