Facebook has been famously notorious in making changes to its UI and Ux without the best practice of giving prior notice to users. Lately, I’ve been noticing this practice being used by my other social networks and cloud services.

Please stop it. Stop it now.

It’s beginning to feel like I’ve forgotten how to use my computer. The routine repeats itself every few days now. I fire up the browser to complete a quick task. Mouse in hand (or finger on mobile device), my automatic reflexes kick in and I unexpectedly stop in my tracks.

Wait.

What happened?

Where’s—?

Oh… there it is. Ok, they made a change.

So how do I…?

Do I click this?

Hey, what did I just do? How do I undo that?

That’s how I ended up accidentally accepting the switch over to Google Drive and Facebook’s much over-hyped timeline feature.

Not only has my work been interrupted, I’m now distracted by figuring out if my other favourite, useful features have been changed.

What happened to letting users know beforehand that changes will be forthcoming?

Is it a drain on the network’s communicators if they spend some time drafting up communications?

Would issuing a communiqué each and every time there’s an update create fatigue in users?

Maybe they have made announcements but since there’s so much information overload these days that it’s easy to miss anything that isn’t overly major (1 billion dollars, really, Facebook? 1 billion?).

Or maybe Facebook’s bad Ux habits formed a new habit in everyone accepting the fact that “even though I hate the new Facebook, I’ll be used to it in a day”.

Perhaps all the negative tweets about a surprise change makes for free press.

Whatever it is, it’s like a telemarketer interrupting my dinner. Just let me work!