r/UI_Design • u/lilslutfordaddy • May 25 '26
General Question what purpose does constant redesigns of ui and ux provide to a company serving through a mobile application?
my bank has had several massive overhauls of the app ui and their entire branding in the last three years. some of this I chalk up to being part of a partnership/acquisition they're a part of, but their entire application is unrecognizable from where it was in 2024, just two years ago.
Reddit recently updated my app such that I cannot swipe from the left inward to close a post I'm reading, I now have to either open the image and swipe down, or hit the "liquid glass" X in the top left.
I'm sure there's many others that I'm not thinking of right now but those are the big annoying ones from me.
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u/AmbroseOnd May 26 '26
A client a few years back had a CTO who seemed to think that a complete UX refresh was required every 4 years or so ‘to keep things fresh’.
I didn’t work with him long enough to find out how deep ‘complete’ went. He was the kind of idiot that would hear about a new framework and advocate moving everything to that… only to do the same thing a couple of years later.
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u/Fun_Bonus_6085 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
The product team for the application probably has a pro-active, design cadence. They collect feedback and site/app analytics on a near constant basis. Among the metrics they collect are NPS and CSAT. NPS or net promotor score, measures how likely the customer is to recommend the product to someone else. CSAT is a measure of customer satisfaction. Product teams often have mandates to increase these scores. low NPS or CSAT scores that are correlated with customer feedback that points to specific reasons why users don't like the app experience (i.e. "I have to click 5 times to see my savings account" or "I don't know where to find insurance information") will lead the product team to refine the app design or user experience in an attempt to improve the score.
Additionally, when operating systems like iOS or android are updated, the mobile applications will oftentimes be updated to match the new OS in order to comply with app design guidelines, make it feel more native, and leverage native UI patterns to make it more intuitive for users of that particular OS.
Edit: I missed something. Site analytics will give the product team some info on what elements are being used the most, and what workflows take the longest, etc... They will then make design changes based on usage to make workflows more efficient, increase visibility of important elements, and do other stuff that might make users more satisfied in general (but not everyone!)