Usability Issues: Seamless Upgrades

I’ve written about upgrades a number of times yet you couldn’t have expected I’d omit the subject in usability issues series.

Every upgrade is a tricky thing. If you work on desktop application you have to deal with a number of environments and a number of different setups of your product. You also have to find a way to deliver your upgrade to the end-user machine and encourage people to actually execute the process.

If you have web-based application the thing is easier but still you can screw it. User no longer control when upgrade is happening and you can interrupt people in the middle of the most important task they’ve ever been exercising with your app. If you screw something you don’t know about that until your forums become totally hot with discussion about brand new issues you invited with the new version. Rollback is really a pain in the ass since now you have users who already use new features and they won’t be happy if you remove them rolling the version back.

Anyway, no one said upgrades are a piece of cake. Most of the issues mentioned above are about quality of your upgrades but there’s one thing which you should remember about when you build your upgrades strategy. The most annoying thing for the user is when much effort is needed to update the software. Users either don’t do upgrades at all or become disheartened. Make it as seamless as possible. Your users will be grateful.

Whole usability issues series.

Tagged as: software upgrade, usability issues, user experience