We all know something is awfully wrong with the new Dropbox design, a design Dropbox says it’s the biggest change to the Dropbox brand in their 10-year history (might not necessarily be the best).

In this post, I attempt to simplify where Dropbox went wrong and why all the noise you’ve been hearing is something they should look into.

What is design?

In simple terms, design is all about reducing the friction between users and their goals. Design is not only software. There are various design systems around us.

Nowadays, companies employ design to reduce the friction between users and their goals and to convert visitors into recurrent users of their product.

Dropbox’s Problem

We all know what Dropbox is — a storage service. Simple as that.

Another thing that’s also simple is that Dropbox is boring and it’s not a household name. Storing files is boring. Recovering files is boring. A lot of other apps and products you use actually use Dropbox for storage but we couldn’t care less.

Now the problem is that Dropbox is a rich company. Rich companies want to get richer but mere file storage as a service won’t cut it. A lot of us use the free tier of Dropbox. To get richer, Dropbox needs to build products that people love to use every day. Something they have tried with both Mailbox and Carousel. Needless to say, both didn’t work out so well and Mailbox was shut down on February 26, 2016.

Enter Dropbox Paper. Paper is Dropbox’s latest attempt to create an everyday product users will actively interact with. It has received a reasonable amount of love so far and now Dropbox is trying to create a lot of buzz for their new baby.

Dropbox and the basics of design

Another thing has just become clear — Dropbox’s redesign is because of Paper.

Their new logo, images, and language overhaul is all because of Paper. Now where’s the problem?

1. Branding and identity

Identity — You produce it, and you market it. In order to get enough attention from potential customers to convert them, you need to communicate well with them to get them to know your product. You want to show them your identity over and over again till they recognize you unconsciously. Not 49 variants of your logo.

— You produce it, and you market it. In order to get enough attention from potential customers to convert them, you need to communicate well with them to get them to know your product. You want to show them your identity over and over again till they recognize you unconsciously. Not 49 variants of your logo. Branding — This is how people perceive your product. Great design well serves your product in establishing positive perceptions by potential and current customers. Uber? Airbnb?

It looks like Dropbox is going about their identity and branding well, except that they’re not. Their concepts lack empathy, it lacks any personal connection with the users.

At the core of design is people, So it’s important to have empathy for the user.

Take their logos for instance, the image below are only the ones they showed on Dropbox.design, I wonder how many more are in their raw “dropbox_logos.ai” file. Great brands are known for their logos in terms of color and uniqueness — Starbucks, for example, is known for their green color while Netflix is known to be red. Dropbox? The jack of all colors, master of none. 27 variants of one logo. Lost identity