How do you know how many have forgotten the old UX vs. simply given up after being dismissed or ignored? How do you distinguish between someone who has learned to like the change, and someone who is quietly enduring it or has left the conversation to migrate away from the problematic software?
I don't know a way to measure those two groups better than simply talking to them, but I can say with certainty that the latter exists. I have felt the impact of short-sighted, change-happy, dismissive UI development more than a few times.
This bit from the article resonates with me:
> What matters to [most regular people] is continuity and reliability. Again, this isn’t being change-averse. Regular users typically welcome change if it brings something interesting to the table and, most of all, if it improves functionality in meaningful ways.
I like continual improvement as much as the next creative mind, but I also have great respect for the users of my software and understand that disruption is frustrating and costly to them. I therefore avoid releasing workflow-breaking changes until I am fairly sure they make things objectively better and I can also provide backward compatibility and/or a smooth migration path to folks who need it. If I can't, then I seriously consider redesigning or discarding the change I had in mind.
To put it a different way: Once I have encouraged people to use my software, I feel a responsibility to them. It no longer belongs exclusively to me, and I am not necessarily the most qualified judge of what is "better".
That's not an "ergo." Initially not liking something doesn't make it bad.
You seem to be extremely overestimating the cost of change. A few people can complain loudly for 24 hours, and then everyone's practically forgotten what the old UX was even like.
Kids can be averse to eating their vegetables, it doesn't mean we stop giving them to them. Similarly, when consumers actually benefit from the changes, it's not always immediately apparent, so they complain until they realize that son of a gun, the app is actually better/faster/easier now -- and then they rarely go back and talk about how great the new way is, they just use it without comment.
Using "humans are adverse to change" as an argument to not change is a pretty terrible way to go about things.
I'm not saying change for change's sake is good... but that people are actually happy for positive change even when it's small, even if they gripe about it at first. Remember, actions (continued usage) are louder than words.
(If people are leaving your app, on the other hand, it's probably not because of change in itself -- it's because the change was bad. We all make mistakes. Just fix it!)