People that have years of experience using the older interface are going to have a tough time making the transition.
training is usually lacking, and a newer UI does not guarantee that more mistakes will not be made in the learning curve.
I doubt most UX designers have ever even used a curses based interface. They are just disgusted by seeing so much monospace text, and are compelled to tear it down and replace it with something they are comfortable with (And usually the only thing they know how to use).
I had to clean up after some UX monkeys a few years ago, who "upgraded" a warehouse inventory system. The warehouse used 30 year old embedded MSDOS based portable Symbol terminals and a SCO UNIX server in the back end. They also used Wyse terminals in the office for the admin interface and data entry. Everything booted in seconds, and the portable terminal/scanners lasted for days, and never had a problem.
They decided to replace it with React Native on Android touch screen terminals (this was a refrigerated food warehouse). The hardware couldn't go even a whole day, and the touchscreens were not at all appropriate. The software was slow and unreliable, and had led to costly mistakes.
Speaking to the designer, he seemed far more concerned about how it looked than about adding back essential features. He kept joking about how backward things had been, and how heroic he was for helping these simpletons see the light. His only justification for several things was that it was "trending" and he didn't want his client to be "left behind".
They also started by gutting essential features, and adding them back on a rolling basis, when they got around to it.
In my opinion, a big part of the problem is the culture of UX. It seems to have amplified the stereotypical arrogance that people sometimes associate with IT people, and combined it with smug fashionistas.
And they just assume that older technology must be inferior, because it is old. They use obsolete as a synonym for old.
In the span of a year, I had UX consultants tell me that password masking is obsolete, and that there should be one field for passwords, no wait, two fields but masked again. Decisions are not really based on logic, they are based on fashion trends, and intense fear of not being hip.
Maybe in some way this makes sense in the modern app ecosystem, that is possible. But is should be relegated to crummy Listicle apps. But these types of people should be kept well away from any software that does anything important.
As for the warehouse I mentioned, Android and React Native are not the right technologies. But maybe this firm didn't want to tell the client that they should go somewhere else.
I think this is a key point. Beyond the fact that their brain is still developing[1], most people under 25 (or with only 1-3 years in tech) simply don't have the breadth and depth of experience necessary to build an appreciation for reliability, much less the ability to identify reliable components or design reliable solutions for various environments.
[1] https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/18/at-what-age-is-the-...
I've seen CEOs give the reigns of their app to some UX person, because they want to impress the hip young UX expert, and they know just enough tech to appear to a wizard.
Software is art, fashion and politics.
Or you can do '5, 3, 12, <customer number>'
Try changing the work flow of the 60 year old lady in accounts payable who's been using that for the last 25 years, she will never bring you in brownies again.
Not to mention no fat web client interacting with a server in the cloud is as fast as interacting with the server in the basement of your own building.
We couldn’t find the issue for the life of us. Eventually, we sent someone down to the shop to see what was happening. We realized that the field workers weren’t waiting for the screen to update and were tabbing through using muscle memory. I had inadvertently switched a field and the tab order around.
And then there was the time that a new user was complaining about not being able to see a field but all of the old repairmen didn’t complain. Someone hadn’t actually tested the colors on the screen outside in direct sunlight where everyone was working. The new screen was just like the old one and all of the other repairmen just did it by memory.
Im sure those technicians went through a few new-hires who just c/would not put up with not being able to see what they were inputting.
Thank you, kind sir, for fixing what actually broke.
And the effort spent making the transition may not be worth the reward.