How people perceive change

How people perceive change

There can be a stark difference in how change is perceived by consumers and producers of a product.

Creators try to overvalue what they’re building and the benefits that come with it. This may be because of recency bias. When you’re making an incremental change in an established system, we still have a tendency to place more emphasis on it. I’m not just talking about marketing the new feature. I’m talking about designers who place undue visual emphasis on the new feature inside the interface, without regard to whether it is warranted or not. I’m talking about product owners who put too much effort into building a new thing overestimating the impact it will have.

On the other hand, consumers have a tendency to act like change is bad. Now, this is not always true, users do love to see their favorite products evolve. But most change is greeted with a knee-jerk reaction from consumers. Most of the negative reaction dies down with time.