Community Wiki Question!
What is the best way to launch a redesigned application?
Do you announce the changes and then just launch the new look and feel ?
Do you announce the changes and then run two versions of your application ?
What are your thought on this process ?
You launch the new design and break out the asprin for the headache you're about to get from your users.
It would seem that it's a good idea to get feedback from existing users, first. Wikipedia's new look is being evaluated this way. It means that bad design decisions and bugs aren't exposed to all users.
You ensure that people who use the new design as if it was the old design do not get confused. Buttons shouldn't have moved too much and old features should still work in similar ways.
All of the pages in your old application either redirect or still exist in the new application (if it was web).
Finally, you move clients gradually from the old to the new, so you have a chance to get feedback from a subset of your most-friendly clients first.
Do you announce the changes and then just launch the new look and feel ?
If you're creating a web application, one of the greatest benefits is that you can launch the new design for only a part of your users, to get their reactions. This is one of the major benefits of a Web Application over a Desktop application, and I would definitely use it.
If users are frustrated with the old system, and the new system addresses most/all of their pain points, they will generally accept the switch without any complaint, even if they need to learn a new interface.
If people are happy with the old system, there will always be those who want to stick with it, no matter how much "better" the new system is. To reduce the size of this group and the amount of trouble it causes you, you must make it as easy as possible for someone to learn how to use the system - you may want to provide detailed instructions, video tutorials and the like - and of course, strive to make the new interface as intuitive as possible.