As a Product Owner you are not only responible for testing the delivered software, but also for giving feedback on the UX design before the developers pick it up. In the past years I have seen many user screen recordings, AB test results, and user interviews. This helps to get a strong general understanding of what does and especially what doesn’t work in UX.

Difficulty of re-desining for a big existing user base

It is very difficult to change your design when users have used it for many years. Redesigns can lead to outrage from your core users, see the example of the Reddit redesign. Ofcourse you can decide to push a redesign through, but if you aren’t careful it will affect your performance (and not only temporarily), see the example of the Snapchat redesign and how it resulted in a loss of users.

This is because no matter how outdated a design is, when users get used to it (after ±2 months) they are able to effectively use your system. The Technology Acceptance Model is a theory that nicely explains how this works.

Design review of Ebay’s new product pages

During a visit to Ebay.com I was presented with the following AB test on their product pages. Let’s have a look at the changes.