Everyone Will Love This New Feature, Trust Us

One of the great things about online multi-tenanted apps like Facebook or Salesforce.com or Google Apps is that you get automatic upgrades to new versions when they come out without having to buy or download or install anything. Even better, many of these hosted solutions roll out small changes frequently, giving users access to new features sooner. Netflix is well known for their continual improvements to their interface in the name of improved service.

All sounds great, right? Well, there can depend on how you roll out these changes. Facebook not too long ago ended up on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times because of massive revolts by hundreds of thousands of users outraged over changed the social networking site had rolled out without the necessary preparation. Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering has a great analysis of what went wrong and how it could have been avoided.

In addition to the usual admonition to "know thy customer," here are some nice quotes to give you a sense of what was learned.

A staged rollout of the new functionality would likely have helped gauge the users' initial reactions. The site has millions of users, yet a rollout to a few hundred, and the appropriate feedback collection mechanisms, could have easily predicted users would have misconceptions with privacy functions.

Just designing new features isn't enough. We need to design the process by which users will learn to adopt those features. One strategy is to use an opt-in preview, where the site offers the new functionality as a sneak peak, allowing users to start using it on their own schedule.

Good lessons for anyone with a hosted, multi-tenanted application.