One UI Doesn’t Fit All
I love Skype. It’s one of the primary tools I utilize that allows me to run my business from anywhere in the world (currently Lima, Perú), so I was genuinely excited when I saw a tweet saying the Skype 5.0 beta was available for download. I rushed to the download page and waited impatiently for the 5 minutes it took to download on my 2mpbs connection. I installed it. I double-clicked the icon to launch the app. “Hmmm nice new launch screen I see,” I thought to myself. Then I practically broke down in tears.
Skype had slapped the UI from their newer Windows version of the app onto the Mac version and completely changed how the application looked and functioned. I couldn’t believe it. I was looking at a giant window taking up half of my screen, with some unintuitive mix of contacts and previous conversations in a side bar, and a huge list of my contacts in the main window. I double-clicked a contact (this would normally open a separate window for the conversation), the chat window replaced the main list of contacts. Not too big of a deal, but what happens if there is more than one conversation? So I double-click another contact to start a chat (again, this would normally open a separate window and I would have two conversation windows open) and guess what, the new chat takes over the main window and the first chat disappears. I have no idea where to find it. The list of issues and confusion goes on. Of course, eventually I sort out all these changes and figure out how the app works in the new version… and I’m completely disappointed. It’s so painful and annoying to use the new version with the UI ripped from the Windows app, that I have now re-downloaded the older version and reinstalled it. Some would argue that “well, this is what ‘betas’ are for, right?” and while that is true, I would argue that the changes in this new version are so far-reaching that I would say they need testing much earlier than a beta. I would have engaged users much much earlier in the process, showing them mockups of the new interface and functionality and getting feedback long before I released a beta version of the software with all of these changes in it. Perhaps Skype did do this and I (and everyone I know who uses Skype) wasn’t fortunate enough to be a part of their test group. I highly doubt that, even with a ton of negative feedback, Skype would roll back to the old UI once the beta reaches official release. My point here is that (in my opinion) Skype has repurposed its Windows version UI to their Mac version, and it is such a departure from the current Mac version that it just doesn’t work… at least for me. Had Skype rolled out these changes more gradually over a number of versions, it might have been easier to swallow (however, I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of their 1-window implementation, it is way to constrictive). Generally speaking, this is a bad maneuver. Mac users in general, are very different from PC users and have a different expectation of what software can/should look like. Assuming you can repurpose main UI elements from one platform to another is a mistake. One UI doesn’t fit all.
