

New Facebook design: Thoughts? - ErrantX

So I see we get a new facebook design (yes, yes I know - but it is handy for my ex-Uni friends).<p>It worries me that Facebook initially led the way in interface design and now have done this? Is it just me or is this an example of poor UI design. I've been studying/reading on this subject recently and it strikes me their failing on some crucial aspects.<p>Thoughts (purely the homepage here):<p>- somehow they have managed to compress the center part of the page. Every item seems twice as tall now<p>- The notifications on the left have been removed and replaced with ads and a "compressed" stream of media (which is really hard to read/skim/view).<p>- You have to use buttons now to filter the content, not a bad idea but some things now dont seem to appear by default - so you <i>have</i> to click = not easy.<p>Every tweak strikes me as adding more clicks and more complexity.<p>Any more thoughts from a <i>technical</i> viewpoint (this is HN :)). Am I being too picky &#38; thinking into the desing too deply? Or am in on the right track: have they messed things up?
======
jfarmer
Why did Facebook do this? One word: retention.

Making it so that every time you reload Facebook you get new, fresh
information should increase the frequency with which people return.

Facebook has been following (and sometimes leading) this trend for a while.
Pre-newsfeed how often did you check Facebook? Pre-v2-homepage? Pre-current
homepage?

They're trying to turn everyone into hardcore, super-engaged users.

Agree, disagree, thoughts?

~~~
robotron
As a hardcore, super-engaged user (something of an experiment for me) I
disagree. Well, I disagree that this move is successful anyway. We get more
Twitter-style but less of what differentiated Facebook from Twitter. The stuff
is still there, just hidden which I feel disengages me. Why would I post a
link if less people see it?

I know they will tweak things as time goes on so I'm not too disheartened.

~~~
jfarmer
Really? With the old feed it was only updated every N minutes. Say the feed
refreshes every hour or two, for the sake of argument.

Users who are more engaged than that see a stale homepage.

Facebook is pretty data-driven, so I'm sure that have a whole suite of metrics
that tell them this is a good move. At least I hope so.

~~~
jfarmer
Put another way, with the newsfeed there was an engagement ceiling. Letting
your hardcore users be as hardcore as they want keeps them there.

------
sachinag
I wish there was a way to decrease font size and the use of
<http://www.facebook.com/images/ui/UIRoundedImage.png> for the rounded corners
is just superfluous.

That said, it's interesting to see everyone in the firehose. And the
additional ad units aren't particularly obvious. I credit them - they're
clearly trying to up engagement (a user benefit), not try to stuff advertising
units on the page, which was my concern.

------
physcab
I know you can't impress all 175 bagillion people on facebook, but I am
seriously stunned by information overload.

Their new design is practical and reflects the direction they've been hinting,
so I'm not surprised.

It reminds me of Twitter, except with two additional sidebars of information.

The font size on my wall is incredibly large. I feel like I'm 85 years old.

~~~
ErrantX
I think you hit on the things that struck me too.

Actually analysing it there is now _less_ info above the fold but it feels
like a hell of a lot more.

Whats with the icons on the right column? That's basic readability rules
broken there (people dont "read" icons so they are a bit worthless as an
exlanation of the content).

Im not totally sure I'd agree it's functional

Also just noticed the "Connect with friends" section got bumped to the bottom
of the right column. Who scrolls that far? Surely that is one of the biggest
ways for them to get new users (via invites) and they have basically rendered
it ineffective :P

------
theschwa
"How do I find see my events page?" This is the first page that I couldn't get
to (without using the search at least).

Hitting the events button in the filter doesn't actually show all of your
events, or especially what's going on today.

The site also feels bloated. The front page of newyorktimes.com has arguably
more information, but lacks this bloated feeling.

------
amvp
More than twitter, isn't the interface (and whole paradigm) much more along
the lines of friendfeed?

Personally, I feel like it's a step back. I quite liked the old UI, and maybe
this one will just take some getting used to but I can't help but feel that
this one seems too noisy. There seems to be an awful lot shouting for
attention. The big repeating profile pics next to every item don't help much
either.

Is the 'like' option new? What does it do? Social voting to bring weight more
interesting content and make it stickier?

~~~
ErrantX
like came a few days ago (seperately). That was a pure friendfeed clone (and
feels clunky to say the least).

~~~
robotron
"like" actually appeared a few weeks ago.

------
unalone
* There are still a few design bugs left over from the old design. Some of the fonts are a bit odd.

* The central stream is great. Filtering is simple and easy.

* The primary right-hand thing I haven't used yet. Not sure if I need that when I have the main stream.

* I like that it's all bigger. Facebook's moving away from compression and towards ultrasimple streaming.

* The new "post things" bar is incredible. I like how they combined wall posting and status updates.

* I love that they added the [X] button to replace the click-menu for stories.

I can't think of much to dislike. This keeps people connected more, and that's
what matters. So far I don't notice a feature missing that I was using in the
first place.

------
idont
Facebook is winning where FriendFeed lost: bringing "life stream" to the non-
geeks.

Also intersting: with the new design, the "applications" are more and more
hidden... (Too bad for the dev. who invested time and money)... Do they only
want application who connect to facebook but not application "running in
Facebook" (From the user point of view)?

------
sidsavara
Can someone who is good with greasemonkey please hide the very right hand
column, and perhaps expand the middle one

;)

I have to get back to work, but if someone else manages to do it I will gladly
tweet and update my facebook and spread the word =P

~~~
ErrantX
Im at my Brothers for the weekend but when I get back tomorrow night I plan to
figure something out (more radical).

------
pedalpete
With the new design, I have no idea what I'm missing, and that's the problem.
It feels like there is tons of stuff there, but at the same time, it doesn't
feel like I'm getting what I need. One person mentioned events, and that's one
of the things that's missing, but there is more.

I don't think this new design entices you to venture on to your friends or
groups. Where do I go if I want to send a message (not status)? What about
posting a link? Again, i'm sure there's more.

Facebook needs to understand they have great value without twitter. The feed
is a great thing, but not everything.

------
HalcyonMuse
They've allowed you to filter down to the feeds of friends on lists, and to
set a filter as your default view. I like this a lot.

The big win for me is being able to do more from the first page rather than
having to go to my profile to post a link.

They could compress the information a lot more, though; I agree heartily with
that.

------
dgtized
It's still missing a method to hide an entry that you no longer feel like
having on your feed without explicitly removing that user from the feed.

~~~
jfarmer
AFAIK, there's no filter. Before they tried to surface "relevant" stories, so
you could give them feedback (more from Nicole, fewer posted items, etc.)

Now they just surface EVERY story, like Twitter or FriendFeed.

------
DrewTPL
Not sure yet. I need a couple of days to really tell. Change is hard - but
sometimes change is good.

------
bradgessler
They need an API that is as open as Twitter's if they are trying to compete
for realtime brain dumps.

~~~
mikebo
seriously -- right now users have to confirm any short story posted to their
stream by an app. As a developer I'd prefer auto publish with a throttle.

You can also prompt user to auto publish short stories but defaults are what
matter.

~~~
karmaVS
As a user, however, I am extremely glad about this default.

