“If You Don’t Change the UI, Nobody Notices: I Saw a Screenshot a Few Days Ago That Made Me Think Windows 7 Beta Might Actually Be worth Checking Out.”, Jeff Atwood2009-01-11 (design, cognitive bias)⁠:

[I think this is only partially right. Take the Microsoft Windows calculator example where the calculator no longer uses floating-point, which causes notorious problems like 1 + 1 = 2.000001—existing users will notice the fix, as they no longer encounter the bug, if only subconsciously as they become less reluctant to use the calculator; new users may not explicitly notice, but they will gradually notice quality improvements compared to competitors; and the bad reviews & mockery of the floating point problems will stop appearing online, so reputation of the calculator (and as positive externalities, Windows & Microsoft as a whole) will improve. Perhaps no one is going to write rapturous essays on their blog about a given bug being fixed, but of course fixing bugs does matter to perceptions.

But it also seems clear that fixing bugs is valued a lot less and tends to go unnoticed… unnoticed by whom? Well, company management. Who ever gets promoted inside a big tech company for fixing a bug, rather than overseeing some new feature? A feature can be pointed to easily in memos & performance reports, and an uninvolved executive can understand it despite never using the feature or even software in question. But a fixed bug? No matter how bad it was, the executives probably never encounter it personally, even if they ‘dogfood’ to an unusual extent. And it’s hard to remember what is not there. So you have a systematic bias everywhere towards noticing, rewarding, and promoting people for additions, but not subtractions. (And how would a large corporation possibly solve this? Ship two versions, one deliberately buggy, and the fixed one? That would not measure the externalities, either positive or negative.)]