Why you cannot definitively say Dropbox lost it.
Personally, I think this is the reason for the re-brand. I may be wrong.
There’s a big difference between a feature and a product. They were the first to beautifully introduce an efficient and seamless way to manage files but business, customer and industry realities changes over time.
When the big guys (Apple, Google, Microsoft) implemented cloud storage on OS level, what was a product became a feature. Apple has iCloud, Google has Drive, Microsoft has Onedrive all these on OS level. Dropbox built a feature.
“How Dropbox lost it”
Design is the new language of business. Companies must speak it beautifully to be successful. If this redesign makes them “more” successful or not I think its too early to judge.
“Abrupt End.”
Never assume you know more about a design than the company that made it. Nobody wakes up and decides to redesign, there’s a serious thought process behind every redesign.
There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes when design decisions are made. Much more than you can imagine. Like it or Lump it. There’s a lot of science and psychology that goes into design.
“Dropbox has no design system…”
You cannot definitely say from the outside that they have no design system. They build and consistently manage products across various browsers and operating systems (Windows, UWP, iOS, Android, etc.) and diverse form factors. Achieving this is no small feat and requires a unified design system internally.
“…and it’s fast losing its identity.”
What key performance indicators do you use to measure “fast loss of identity”?
“Their concepts lack empathy, it lacks any personal connection with the users.”
How much empathy is too much empathy? you can take empathy too far, you can lose your own identity.
On the typography, 259 varieties in their typeface. Somehow it sounds like overkill, but its part of the various ways they want to communicate their new brand.
Typography communicates too and I wouldn’t want to say that the designers at Dropbox wouldn’t know how well to contrast and make use of the typeface in different instances and scenarios.
Don’t mistake legibility for communication. Just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates. More importantly, it doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing.
It’s easy to criticize other people’s work. It’s only effective if you look at the problem and solution from both sides of the table. The first step to any site or app is really understanding the entire product, and that will influence your overall approach to it.
Design is about business too. When societal value and business value comes together, it creates shared value for all.
Users don’t hate change. Users hate change that doesn’t make their life better but makes them have to relearn everything they knew.
When a big change comes, the end user is focused on what they have lost: productivity, comfort, familiarity.
And the users weigh that loss as three times more important than any gain that company professes to offer. Change is expensive, even when it’s free. Change is expensive in relearning.
For change to be accepted, it needs to first have real value to the user. Then it must be explained clearly in the language of that person’s values. Not the designers’, not the company’s.
Your users have to love you more than they hate change. People hate change. In Dropbox case, they should know how much their user’s love their product. Its not for I and you to decide. I don’t use Dropbox, I don’t know about you or the next person.
This one thing I know for sure
Communication plays a vital role in design. In order to be successful, your products have to clearly communicate their intent and purpose.
When one has learned that good design has a certain number of steps, it can make you feel like a bad designer when you don’t do every step. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of the good.
I don’t know if its safe to say Dropbox’s redesign was overthought? Overall its a bold, big move and we can only hope to learn lessons from the results.
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