https://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisi...
Coca Cola modified and replaced their flagship product with a better product. It was proven to be statistically better in taste tests. But the product "new coke" ultimately became a failure.
"In retrospect, some marketers believe that the failure of New Coke may have had something to do with sensation transference, a human oddity first described by Louis Cheskin in the 1940s. Cheskin demonstrated that people will unconsciously associate imagery, sounds, tastes, aromas, and textures into their general impression of a product, even if such associations are unintended or inaccurate. These sensory inputs create a halo effect which actually modifies flavor perception, so while cola drinkers may have preferred the new Coke formula, they may have disliked the “taste” of the redesigned packaging. Even Gay Mullins —the man who tried to sue to restore the old flavor —showed a preference for New Coke when subjected to blind taste tests"
I wouldn't be surprised if windows UI/UX designers used statistics to verify the improvements of the windows UI changes. Despite this, consumer psychology always has a way of causing literally almost every major change to any popular product (that is on par with coca cola) be a "debacle" of epic proportions. I see it on every change to OSX, iOS, windows... all consumers are always flabbergast declaring out loud: "What were they thinking!??"
You guys remember when touch screen keyboards were a "debacle"? Nobody could type on that shit back then. It was a royal fuck up. Now everybody types on them.
Inevitably there will be someone who replies to me insisting that it's worse due to some personal yet convincing anecdotal experience. But until you take the UI equivalent of a blind taste test I'm not sure if this is sensation transference or an actual real rational judgement.