A First Look: Stack Overflow Redesign

Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

So - this is a problem for a lot of us. Historically, the Stack Exchange Sites - whether the bigger ones with our own branding like Super User, Server Fault or Ask Ubuntu, or the smaller foo.stackexchange.com sites have been neglected, and treated as, well third class citizens.

The company already operates as Stack Overflow for most part, and getting pushed under that banner... doesn't really do us much good. As we've said before - we don't have the baggage SO has, and many of our sites have scopes that have nothing to do with programming.

So - what do we need to do to protect our identity? Way back when there was a campaign to preserve the Mascots of world building - Pandora and Slartibotfast, 'cause the company literally failed to understand that even with interconnected sites, our identities were important. As much as keeping the 'bodies' of the sites running, keeping their 'souls' healthy is important as well, and our site identities matter.

Over time - it's also the one thing that distinguishes smaller sites from the massive monolith that Stack Overflow was. A lot of per site branding has been on the backburner over time and while I get the desire to redesign the big site, it's worth remembering that we might benefit from our own site designs and branding, and our own distinctiveness. As a pets mod, what do canines have to do with C, or Rabbits with Rust? It also means potentially site promotion, should it be a thing will entirely be focused on Stack Overflow, over smaller sites, simply cause that's the only brand that matters. Maybe its been the case for too long, but that cements it.

And historically we've had more people confused that non programming sites exist (or asking programming questions on an inappropriate site).

The rest might have value, but I feel like pushing us under Stack Overflow's branding and name will do more harm, and cause more confusion.

There's been significant feedback about this through every single stage of consultation - pointing out issues with this, so I'd ask you take these into consideration.

An updated Design System: We're updating our library of reusable UI components (buttons, forms, etc.), introducing a new color palette, a new typography system, and refreshed icons.

Do you intend to address the technical design flaws that result in you consistently producing inaccessible UI components? A lot of problems are solved by semantic HTML (including semantic use of classes), and the CSS cascade: the current implementation of Stacks unsolves those problems, and the company lacks the resources or skill to re-solve all of those problems on a case-by-case basis.

If you're updating the Design System, this would be a good opportunity to reimplement your component library according to sound web principles. If you don't know how to do that, this would be a good opportunity to contribute some excellent questions to Stack Overflow (or other Stack Exchange sites, depending on exactly which parts you don't yet know how to do).

"Site usability"—which includes visual design—has been steadily climbing that list.

A large part of this is because you've been reducing site usability, thus making it a more urgent problem. Unless you reflect on why that is, you're not going to successfully make things better.

I have to say that I really don't understand the logic behind rebranding everything behind Stack Overflow name and I am mostly Stack Overflow user. For me Stack Exchange was very logical brand name encompassing whole network including Stack Overflow.

For non technical sites, Stack Overflow is meaningless. For technical sites, pushing Stack Overflow brand means that more users will be confused and instead of asking question on smaller, more appropriate site, they will end up asking off topic question on Stack Overflow.

When it comes to the actual sites redesign, I hope that you will not be using that dreadful colors and style you have shown us at your introductory post. Those are really hard on the eyes. Some of us will be able to use various user scripts to make it more usable, but we are only a fraction of your user base. Horrible design choices will not make sites more popular.

Reminder: in addition to wide layouts, test on narrow layouts. Many of us are using cell phones as browsers.

Pet peeve that I hope you can address: the pop-up menu that appears when text has been selected sometimes obscures the function bar at the top of the text entry box. This makes selecting text and then applying an operation to it, such as bold or hyperlink or quote, significantly more difficult than it has to be. I can work around by entering the markup manually, but this strikes me as something that could be done better.

Is this actually going to be a full redesign, where we go, on day one, from what we have to a new design? or is this going to be more of a slow, over time roll out where now instead of two to three different UI ideas being maintained/in use across the site it's three to four?

Will users have the ability to opt for legacy layout/design once the redesign goes live?

The announcement sounds self-contradicting in many places.

On the one hand it says the following:

Your feedback was clear: you wanted less marketing and more product.

It's a response to direct community feedback ...

We need to adapt while reinforcing what makes this community valuable.

On the other hand, it also says:

As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

So, which one is it? Do you (the company) care about the community feedback, or no? And if you do care about the community feedback, could the community expect to see it in your (the company's) actions, and not just words?

The announcement also says:

... we want to be transparent about why we're doing this now.

Except that you (the company) is not really transparent about why you're doing this. The technical changes proposed are alright, but there is no transparency about why you're shoving the unwanted Stack Overflow baggage down the throats of every other community. After the community has told you they don't want it. Repeatedly.

The announcement further mentions:

Your feedback is the primary reason we are working on this project.

As well, you (the company) has surreptitiously included a management's decision into community feedback. Which the community has unequivocally opposed. Repeatedly.

... our role as a community of humans helping other humans is more critical than ever.

You (the company) would do well to remind yourself and your shareholders that the community of humans is at the core of your business. Without their contributions, you have no business and no shareholding.

... we are committed to working with you.

The manner in which you (the company) has been running the show for the past several years suggests otherwise though. From the outside, it even appears as if the company thinks things would work much better if they didn't have to deal with this community feedback every now and then.

It is perhaps worth consideration if you (the company) could drop the act of caring about the community feedback, and just come clean with what you really want, which is to increase profit for the shareholders.

As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

Does this represent a change from previous iterations of this plan toward keeping more per-site identity?

I really think the "Renaming everything to Stack Overflow" is the hugest change here, and it really deserves more attention. And it feels like you're glossing over it with having 5 entire posts about different aspects of this overhaul, without really dedicating focused effort into it. You talk about "The Why" and none of the reasons motivate that change. You talk about "What's in scope?" and you don't mention that change. This is like if I was buying a car, signing 30 pages of paperwork, and halfway down page 23 it said "by the way you agree that we now own your dog".

So I really think we need some answers about what's going on with this name change. I'll try to make the different aspects of this direct and explicit.

1. Is this change locked-in? Is it definitely happening, or is it a concept you're playing with? Most of the other changes in this overhaul are mockups, concepts, baseline ideas, but still open to shifting. Does that apply to this one?

2. Has community feedback ever been sought for this change? Have users been asked "would you support renaming the network"? If not, why is this so at odds with all the other aspects which do solicit feedback?

3. Right now, we have Stack Overflow as the main, programming-oriented site, and Stack Exchange for all the spinoffs. When the spinoffs are called Stack Overflow, what is the intended branding for the big site? Right now I ask my space exploration questions on Space Stack Exchange, and my C programming on Stack Overflow. In the future, do I ask space on Space Stack Overflow and C on "The real actual original Stack Overflow"? I don't see how you can refer to that site post-rebrand in a non-clumsy way.

4. It's concerning seeing the internal fragmentation that seems to be happening here. I don't see why @Piper can make a post announcing that the name change is continuing forward, and then respond to comments on this saying "The name changes are not in my purview". When a post like this is made about the future of the site, then from a user perspective, we are hearing from, and talking to, the whole site. All the employees, the company, as a whole. If I open a box of crackers and find a dead mouse inside, I call the cracker company. I get a receptionist, and say "Hi I found a dead mouse". The receptionist then does not say "Well I don't work the production line, I didn't put it there". The receptionist directs me to quality control. That receptionist is my interface to the company as a whole, and in the same way, this kind of post is an interface to SE/SO as a whole.

If you can't speak about the name changing, then we really need to hear from who can, and figure out what is actually happening and what the actual reasons for the change might be.

Webpage layouts can be changed, reverted, and adjusted at will. I don't think anyone involved in this redesign expects the site to stay on this design for 20 years - it will get re-changed as needed to continue improving, hopefully. But a name change? Those are few and far between. It's a big deal, and really deserves its own post and discussion. This deserves as much community consideration as the question of whether votes go to the right or left of questions in the feed. We should know where this is coming from and the reasoning, with a breakdown of the benefits and acknowledgement of the downsides, and how the conclusion decides the benefits win out.

Ever heard of bikeshedding? This solicitation for feedback on visuals feels like a forced instance of bikeshedding. Changing the name and changing the appearance are two orthogonal modifications and should get separate feedback. Otherwise this feels like a tactic to sneak the big change in with a bunch of ultimately inconsequential ones.