Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Another Facebook Redesign...

Taking the market by storm, Facebook is still in it's youthful years from a company development perspective.  Despite it's relative infancy, it's been a driving force in shaping a new culture of on line communication tools.  Millions of users have come to enjoy and rely on Facebook as a means to sharing information with friends and family.  Though not without its flaws,  the lack of comparable tools available today,  renders 'Face-bookers' relatively forgiving of often complicated navigation and less than intuitive user interface.

With the launching of yet another Facebook redesign, how will users respond to the changes introduced?  I noticed several status updates today indicating some Facebookers were struggling with the new design.    Before I share my experiences, I'm going to create a thread on Facebook to ask people to post their comments about what they like or would like in the Facebook design.  It'll be a mini-usability study.

I'll be back with results during the next day or so.  Plus, I've invited folks to add their comments here.


Jill

2 comments:

Peggy Jaeger said...

I think the new design sucks! I can't find what are new updates and what are old, plus when I do the dropdown for "friends' It lisit people they want me to find not the one I have that i want to get in contact with.another lousy update that is not user specif nor friendly.\How's that for a comment!!

Jill Hart said...

How confusing! The first trouble I found was that I had to dig to a deeper level of navigation to Log Out. That's a task I need to complete with high frequency so why did the design team bury it? Hmmm... not sure.

I with you on the new updates presentation. I simply can't keep up with updates. Recently I logged on and had 300 updates. I can only view the most recent four or five so there is lots going on that I totally miss. And, I'm not sure from a design perspective the best to way to manage the info. Should I be able to decide who's updates I want to view? I think so and I think the tool is trying to afford us that flexibility. It's just not obvious how to accomplish that objective.

And then of course, the issue of privacy settings is a whole different issue as you may read in my 2-13 blog.

FB really is an incredible tool. The challenge is designing it in such a manner that it's functionality is obvious to the user.

I'm still struggling with uploading photos, too. What about you?

jill