‘Enhanced Experience’ Patch Removes Three Features Users Relied On and Adds Dark Mode
PARIS — The 4.7.2 update to a widely-used project management application, described in its release notes as delivering “a more intuitive and streamlined experience aligned with how modern teams collaborate,” has produced across the Paris offices that use it a unified response best captured by the message thread its largest office has been sending internally since the update deployed Tuesday morning: “Does anyone know where the task dependency view went.”
The task dependency view has not gone. It has been moved to a location whose logic the product team’s redesign justified in a blog post that three users have read and whose conclusion — that the previous location was “creating cognitive friction for new users” — the existing users have responded to in the blog’s comments section with the specific detail of people whose cognitive friction has been substantially increased by the relocation.
The Update’s Actual Contributions
The update has contributed: the dark mode (well-received, arrived three years after users requested it), the new font (no consensus), the “improved” notification system (fourteen separate complaint threads), and a welcome screen that appears each session until dismissed in a location that the update has moved from the previous location where dismissing it was possible. The dark mode is good. The font is fine. The welcome screen appears each session.
According to Psychology Today’s habit disruption and productivity research, interface changes in productivity software produce an average of 3.2 days of reduced productivity during adaptation, after which productivity returns to baseline. Day two is the worst day. The task dependency view is in the left sidebar, collapsed by default. It has been located. Wednesday is better.
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