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Dropbox Bizarre Empty State Illustration(imgur.com)

over 5 years ago from Juan J. Ramirez, Another Designer

  • Suganth SSuganth S, over 5 years ago

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just allow yourself to be acquired by someone.

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it culture don't work in Products, unfortunately. If Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Google Maps remained the same as 5 years back, they would have either get shut down or get replaced by something superior.

    Dropbox has a bigger problem. Apple, Google, Box, Microsoft are trying to squeeze their business share through their own cloud storage services, some of them are prebaked into the ecosystem and relatively cheaper. They will essentially get wiped out of their core product in few years because their product is well just "sync my goddamn files" and anyone could do that in 2017

    This rebranding is essentially intended to get next million users who would see the product differently. These users will see it as a product they can't live without every day and they will remember using it to get things done. While the rebranding itself is a separate topic, I just want to highlight why it's important for them today than tomorrow when they are close to being eliminated from the market they started with.

    4 points
    • Juan J. RamirezJuan J. Ramirez, over 5 years ago

      Other services are not cheaper but definitely better priced. I get 50 GB of iCloud for 1 USD a month. Dropbox gives 1TB for 10 USD a month. So Dropbox is largely cheaper but also more inconvient because cloud storage has an aggressive value decline once you don't need the extra capacity.

      That's Dropbox problem. They are no longer the incumbent and perhaps they never were.

      Dropbox hasn't gone public because they would be crushed in the public market. A company that sells a highly commoditized resource, that depends heavily on their B2C revenue and has no extra sources of incomes.

      And this is why we are seeing what we are seeing. It seems that Dropbox wants to make a push in the design market and establish a new source of revenue. They seem to have the internal talent + the data to backup this move.

      This is just my personal speculation but I think overall it's pretty clear that's what's happening. They are even creating landing pages asking their customers about their interest on design tools.

      0 points
      • Suganth SSuganth S, over 5 years ago

        Not sure how Dropbox is better priced since I can get 2TB for $9.99 in iCloud. Dropbox literally charging twice for the price and that's just with their old plan.

        But I agree with all your other points. Dropbox's vision is changing/getting broader. That is a bigger change compared to the brand change that we see.

        1 point
    • Andrew C, over 5 years ago

      This is fine. What does it have to do with with making empty state illustrations less understandable or instructive? I guess we could discuss hypotheticals about how solid of a foundation Dropbox had to begin with? Too bad. I like them... but I do just use Drive for my shit since it's in the flow of all the other apps I use.

      1 point