> Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox.
Why is this such a huge problem for you? Seems super minor?
Its not about the button. It’s a signal that the people who want to make the best UI are less powerful in the company than the people who want to drive the highest number of Dropbox signups (making users think that signing up for Dropbox is the only/preferred way to get the file).
That’s a sign that the company’s growth has tapped out and that they need to do shit like that, a solid leading indicator of trouble ahead.
I think (but it is a guess) that what the parent comment means is that the company is at a stage where they need to resort to bad UI to try and keep users in some way. It might be hard to download a file that has been shared with a user but they might make it easy to have that file ready if you have a dropbox account.
If you see Dropbox as a service for managing files, and many of us do, then not being able to easily download the actual file is annoying. The client still won't let you set a preference for direct download links instead of dropbox preview links, the android client is basically useless and more and more the features added have no value to me as a user.
It's a really reliable signal that the company is optmizing for the wrong things. The company just got out of its way to make non-customers life harder, that normally doesn't happen by accident.
It's not impactful by itself, but the more impactful things are less reliable as signals anyway.
The detail is that you have two people: one is paying for the product and one is not. The one who is paying shares a file with the one who doesn't pay. Dropbox provides a worse experience for the person who doesn't pay.
This is in contrast to services like Zoom or Google Drive where part of the sales pitch is that you get a seamless experience when communicating with people - even if the person you're talking to might not be paying, you can guarantee because you are paying their experience won't be impaired, at least for the duration of your interaction.
User retention. Keep people in the platform so they can't take their data. Force users to come back to dropbox again and again (to run up your engagement stats) instead of throwing the file over Slack or whatever.
Why is this such a huge problem for you? Seems super minor?