Introduce a way to communicate incoming UI updates to users

[andraganescu]

We are introducing more and more updates to WordPress. While developers have various channels to get updated on incoming changes, the users find themselves surprised by a new feature. After an update, which now is silent and just happens automatically, a user can find their workflow completely disrupted out of the blue.

What if we had a system where we introduced the news of incoming UI updates to users? We would communicate only on thise updates that are definitely going to land in the upcoming release.

An idea is adding a dashboard widget, so the message can be coming via some API on wordpress.org website, and link the message to some page where we explain the changes, ways to opt out, how to test today and so on.

Of course for strictly controlled environments this could be filtered out and disabled.

This is a light approach. There is a more complex route as well, where we try to introduce UI updates in dot versions, silently launching them and inviting users to "switch" to the new feature and try it out before it becomes the new default. This is a rather common thing in software as a servuce products, but less seen in distributed as a package OSS software.

What do you all think about this?

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #38418, #38419, #41316.

[kellychoffman]

If it's a major new feature in Gutenberg, let's use the Welcome Guide.