My sister refuses to receives photos by Dropbox because, she says, it's less usable than WeTransfer and it looks like a virus to her. When sitting with her, I noticed:
- Dropbox aggressively suggests to create a new account to recipients,
- She's unknowledgable, so when a popup appears, she assumes it's mandatory. Hence she installed Dropbox without wanting it on her phone and PC and couldn't understand why so many steps are required to download a few photos. Also, "why does it try to upload all my folders ?!?" hence the spammy/virus impression.
- Dropbox sends an Android notification for every upload, which is both annoying and worrying to her, because she doesn't want her private life to go online.
I always assumed the mass went with Dropbox. Turns out the first example I see from that audience thinks it's a virus. Big lesson of user experience here.
I can imagine. My use patterns mostly let me avoid this, but I've seen some of the stuff you've described.
It seems that any good business, in its quest to grow, will eventually start making annoying and user-hostile things. Dropbox definitely was cleaner and better in the past than it is now. It's a story I repeated by company after company - they reach peak quality, and instead of leaving things as they are, they have to "innovate" in more and more crap.
I'm one of the earlier users of Dropbox, so I still have a "Public" folder with an ability to create direct links to uploaded files. They've turned this feature off for new accounts some time ago - I guess because people started using Dropbox as a CDN. Still, it's one of its most useful features for me. I use the "Public" folder almost every time I want to transfer some files people - it lets the recipient avoid all that popups and captive forms bullshit.
- Dropbox aggressively suggests to create a new account to recipients,
- She's unknowledgable, so when a popup appears, she assumes it's mandatory. Hence she installed Dropbox without wanting it on her phone and PC and couldn't understand why so many steps are required to download a few photos. Also, "why does it try to upload all my folders ?!?" hence the spammy/virus impression.
- Dropbox sends an Android notification for every upload, which is both annoying and worrying to her, because she doesn't want her private life to go online.
I always assumed the mass went with Dropbox. Turns out the first example I see from that audience thinks it's a virus. Big lesson of user experience here.