
Whatever’s Best For The People, That’s What We Do - comex
https://medium.com/p/ed75a0ee7641
======
numair
Regardless of personal opinion, I hope people on HN understand that this is a
talented person providing an honest opinion about their work. Which is rare,
and should be commended, rather than being treated as evidence of a
conspiracy.

Also, Dustin Curtis seems to forget (or not understand) that Facebook is the
same company that made a decision to implement AJAX at the expense of
pageviews, at a time when that decision was highly controversial (the era of
the Empire of MySpace). You can ding the management at Facebook for a lot of
things, but this really isn't one of them.

The bigger story, really, is that poor people use Facebook on a computer, and
thus that is where web-based experience optimization is focused. If you don't
have a smartphone, or your smartphone sucks, you're going to be on the web;
otherwise, why aren't you using your iPhone or iPad? (And remember, that's
where Facebook derives a majority of their revenue -- so if there's going to
be a conspiracy, it's going to be a conspiracy to get you to stop using the
website, and to buy a high-ad-revenue-generating iPhone). Welcome to the wacky
user landscape of 2014, where the Web is for nerds and poor people.

I like that Julie used Medium for her thoughts, rather than a Facebook post.
Experimentation with others' products and services is super cool.

~~~
1stop
Sorry but screen width is a pretty dumb reason to drop a rich experience on
larger screens.

It's just another media query.

Why can't 27 inch/high res/super duper screens get the awesome layout, and
shitty "poor people" screens get the shitty layout?

~~~
ntaso
But an inconsistent experience, if the page looks vastly different for some
people than for others.

~~~
danabramov
I don't get why you're downvoted.

Toggling between two _completely different_ newsfeeds based on screen size is
not responsive—it's inconsistent.

If you don't agree, check out how different the old and the new feed are.

~~~
madeofpalk
what if... there's a middle ground?

If facebook was set on using media queries, im sure they would have kept the
same general design but just optimised layout and spacing for different screen
sizes.

~~~
d23
You guys are going down a pointless path of pedantry. The original attack
suggested Facebook's sole reason for making the decision was advertising
metrics. This person is saying that isn't true. I'm guessing the team running
one of the top trafficked sites in the world is aware of media queries.

~~~
madeofpalk
Yeah that was kind of my point... I got sucked in.

------
calbear81
I'm glad Julie took the time to respond to Dustin's article and dispel the
lower revenue assumption. I looked back at the articles in March of last year
and it does appear that everyone reported that the new design would bring in
more ad revenue via more engaging ad formats for advertisers.

One thing I want to understand is if the concern is about accommodating people
on less-than-the-latest tech or smaller screens, etc. then we've solved
largely for that via responsive design. It's not hard to detect that I have
enough real estate to support having a 2x larger photo in my feed. Why not
adjust as needed?

~~~
BigBadBionicBoy
How exactly did she dispel the lower revenue assumption?

There is not a sentence in this article that does that.

~~~
ghayes
She states it directly:

"The old design we tested last year would actually have been positive for
revenue."

~~~
xophe
No.

Neither the old design nor the design dcurtis mentioned are current.

But the current design is more similar to the old design.

~~~
kosievdmerwe
I'm not sure what you mean?

She is pretty clearly referring to the redesign from 2013 versus the design
before that.

~~~
swah
So what Curtis says is false? Then did he get this from?

"After an investigation into the problem by Facebook’s data team, they
discovered that the new News Feed was performing too well. It was performing
so well from a design standpoint that users no longer felt the need to browse
areas outside of the News Feed as often, so they were spending less time on
the site."

~~~
far33d
You're right. We should disregard a first hand account and instead believe
second or third hand rumors.

------
nnq
You don't even need metrics to figure out that, for example:

> The old design was worse for many of the things we value and try to improve.
> Like how much people share and converse with their friends. [old design:
> [http://img.svbtle.com/gpnggaky8d1gog.jpg](http://img.svbtle.com/gpnggaky8d1gog.jpg)]

The "only icons" on the left + "icons AND text labels" for
"Share/Like/Comment" \+ much higher text density on the right constantly shift
your thinking form "photo/visual" to "reading/writing", it mind-fucks you in a
very subtle way, so your brain ends up focusing on the only thing that makes
sense: (a) the overall visual structure (that was beautifully designed, I
admit) and (b) the photos.

If you want user engagement beyond the "click like" level you need to focus
people towards the "reading/writing/verbal" mode of interaction. Like, if you
have to read a button's label to know what it does, this puts your mind into
"reading mode" so the comment that immediately follows the link/button has
more chances of actually being read and of the people actually writing a reply
instead of just clicking a like and staring at a cute picture. They really got
this right (either through someone's insight or metrics, I dunno) with the
"Like Comment Share" links - getting rid of the icons pushed you more towards
"text/words mode" thinking, which is exactly the mode you need to be in to
actually post a comment, and a comment is more content so it will be a
positive feedback loop for even more and so on.

(Also, another obvious bad idea was the left bar - while theoretically good
for screen estate, it's essentially "mystery meat navigation" to
unsophisticated desktop users. Also it puts less focus on the Apps. Also by
putting the active contacts list in the bottom left corner pushes them out of
your mental focus.)

EDIT+: ...now that it really got me thinking of it, I can't believe how
_incredibly bad_ the "old new" design was. How did they even chose to deliver
that? It looked like textbook "design driven design", it didn't focus at all
on how the users think and what they actually do on Facebook.

~~~
kosievdmerwe
I think it's fairly easy to come up with reasons after the fact why a design
is bad, but it certainly didn't look bad and many people in the more tech
community felt it was better than the new redesign: in particular the guy who
wrote the article to which this one is a response to.

~~~
calinet6
Irrelevant. The tech community is not a representative sample of Facebook's
user-base.

And looking good and working well are two completely different things.

~~~
kosievdmerwe
> Irrelevant. The tech community is not a representative sample of Facebook's
> user-base.

Indeed they aren't, but who do you think designers interact with on a day to
day basis? I think that the tech community's thoughts are important as they
influence other tech people's thoughts and, therefore, might shift them away
from reality.

> And looking good and working well are two completely different things.

Again agreed, which is why using metrics is a sound approach. You just have to
make sure you're using the right ones.

------
peterkelly
Dammit... why did I have to read this article? I was just about to post a rant
in the comments of the original one about how evil and money-grabbing Facebook
is, and now I find out the final design choice was made for perfectly-rational
usability reasons that take into account the diversity of the user population.

How am I supposed to make myself feel superior now?

~~~
eevilspock
Did you feel the same way and take back your doubts about invading Iraq when
Gen. Colin Powell testified so convincingly to the world at the U.N. of the
impending danger of Iraq's WMDs?

What Colin Powell Knew and What He Said:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-
powell-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schwarz/colin-powell-wmd-
iraq-war_b_2624620.html)

------
shakethemonkey
#1 design flaw on Facebook: It should be dead easy to search my newsfeed. I
saw something yesterday, or last week -- there's no way to see it again. (If
there is, you've hidden this feature so well that you should get an award for
obfuscation)

~~~
Semaphor
Only real solution I know of is getting your data (it's JSON iirc) and using
some parser to search through it.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Graph Search? Works for me sometimes.

~~~
Semaphor
According to an article I found [0]

> Graph Search will now let some members uncover status updates, photo
> captions, check-ins, and comments.

Seems it's still not available for everyone, at least it doesn't work for me.
Good thing it's finally coming though.

[0] [http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-expands-graph-search-to-
le...](http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-expands-graph-search-to-let-you-
search-status-updates/#)!

------
rdl
One thing I hate is how all these screenshots are made with unrepresentatively
interesting posts and high quality photographs.

Show what the feed looks like with a news stories posted by a few people
(fortunately FB is now smart enough to coalesce them), a bunch of moronic
memes, one line stupid text, and a few long posts with ~100 comments with lots
of debate, and that's more representative of my facebook newsfeed.

~~~
cmelbye
Just open [http://facebook.com/](http://facebook.com/)? That design is being
rolled out to everyone right now.

~~~
cliveowen
Not to me. I don't understand why Facebook takes so much to bring changes to
European users. I use the English language, there's really no reason to delay
the rollout. I don't care much because I rarely use Facebook anymore, but it
still sucks.

~~~
NotOscarWilde
Slow rollout is a great tool for suppressing dissent (and discontent).

You likely remember that people were upset en masse with design changes of
Facebook. However, if you get a new style change and none of your friends have
it, your venting comment either gets lost or you won't write one at all,
seeing as nobody else complains. Then a second person gets the style change
and again, seeing no complaints himself, he is much more likely not to
complain.

I'm surprised this topic (complaint control through trickery) isn't addresssed
as often.

~~~
_mulder_
This is an interesting concept. Are there any relevant studies/articles of
this in practice, beyond the Anecdotal?

~~~
NotOscarWilde
So far it's been just a theory of mine. An interesting observation is that
Facebook can easily deny this concept saying that "slow rollout can prevent
excessive server stress", which is without a doubt true.

It seems to me that it is hard to test whether the random rollout just aims at
preventing server crashes or it has behavioural connotations as well.

~~~
WalterSear
I doubt that.

A slow roll out does allow you to catch the inevitable 1.0 bugs before too
much damage is done.

~~~
ddrmaxgt37
Yup. It can catch bugs. It also allows them to catch drops in numbers and
other problems. This is the main reason that the 2013 newsfeed design never
made it to anyone else.

Also, at least in the past, FB used to roll out redesigns to groups that were
relatively isolated from the rest of the graph like New Zealand.

------
codezero
I'm baffled as to why the experience needs to be 100% consistent across all
demographics.

Why can't Facebook adapt the news feed to be the best for each individual,
both content wise and design?

I have a 27" screen, why degrade my experience, as a minority when you are
completely capable of enhancing it. Enhance the 11, 13 and 17 inch screens
too, and let us all have the best experience possible.

The idea that the majority should be the only number worth optimizing is one
that should be completely dismissed.

~~~
rtpg
Because maintaining N different interfaces is hard?

No matter how big you get, coordination between products is a hard problem to
deal with (more social than technical).

~~~
codezero
Look, my view is this: it's not about maintaining N different interfaces.

Each news feed is totally personalized. This is done without having to worry
about maintaining "N" feeds, it's built into the system, built into the
approach.

Why is the design something that needs to be fragmented into buckets? This is
a broader choice, accepting that all users need to be on some defined path.

You can measure and improve metrics without being concerned about the
particular CSS file being delivered to each person.

~~~
kayoone
Because maintaining N different user interfaces is hard. No matter if the
underlying approach or data is the same, the user interface is different and
from that point on you have to take them all into account when you make a
change.

~~~
KhalPanda
They're already doing it with their numerous Facebook apps for different
platforms.

~~~
biesnecker
And it's hard.

~~~
KhalPanda
And they're still doing a perfectly good job of it.

~~~
untog
Presumably at a large expense.

~~~
biesnecker
Ridiculously large expense. And not always all that well -- it's just that
most people don't use most of the platform simultaneously on different devices
/ stacks / versions, so they don't notice.

------
UweSchmidt
No place on the internet feels so heavy handed in telling you what to do and
trying to influence your behaviour like Facebook. You can feel like they
frequency with which you are compelled to provide some missing information for
FB's databases is algorithmically fine tuned to how much you can probably
bear. It feels soulless, a site nearing the end of it's life cycle. I check
out my friend's photos almost daily, and not too many people seem to be
leaving, but no one's writing or posting anything personal any more.
Hesitation, distrust.

So, you can try to roll out a layout that makes the "News Feed all about the
content" (wtf?), but you can't design the love back in.

------
voicereasonish
The design is terrible. So much of the width is wasted with two sidebars that
are seldom used. "People you may also know"? Really? And big areas of grey.
Also don't get me started on the ridiculously persistent desire for facebook
to show you random stories "Top stories" rather than sorted by date, or the
ridiculously irritating auto-play videos.

People are dropping facebook. It's just becoming a worse user experience each
time they change anything.

~~~
nnq
> "People you may also know"? Really?

One of their objectives is to keep expanding their user base. This feature is
_crucial_ to be in a visible place on the screen. Also quite useful for users
that have just joined Facebook.

And about:

> random stories "Top stories" rather than sorted by date

It's a known fact that when you add randomness to the action -> reward
relationship, addictiveness _significantly increases._ (it's not intuitive,
but has been proven on everything from rats to humans!)

I stopped using Facebook "personally" some time ago, but I admit that they
know their shit and do it well. Whether they do it by brute-force metrics or
they have some really smart UI/X evil geniuses, I don't know, but it's well
done!

~~~
voicereasonish
That's the thing about tuning based on metrics though. You end up with a
product that the majority tolerate, but no one really loves.

~~~
nnq
Yeah, this is what you get if you use metrics to find a "common ground of
preference". But this is the primitive way of doing it. We already know the
better way to do this, thanks to things like Howard Moskowitz's research and
all the work done afterwards
([http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce](http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce)).

But nobody has successfully applied this to commercial UI/X design yet. Maybe
because people are not sophisticated enough to appreciate choice when it comes
to apps/websites. Or maybe because they are so overloaded that making them
make any choice actually scares them away and drops the retention/click-
through/interaction/etc. numbers. Then again, if would work, the company
successfully using this would get a monopoly in their field instead of
naturally sharing the user base with other competitors simply because the
users don't all like the same things. I kind of like the idea of having 4
different tomato sauces made by 4 different producers, the "letting the market
solve the problem" way, so I'm secretly glad the "better way of doing UX/I by
numbers" hasn't been well applied in software :)

------
k0
What is Responsive Web Design? How could it be used to enhance the UX and UI?
Why isn't Facebook using RWD? Real, scalable RWD? I must be way off base, but
their issues with the News Feed design are surmountable. Not impressed by
Julie.

I have never thought of FB as a bastion of design...and I have not yet been
swayed to think or see otherwise.

------
notdonspaulding
> _These people may not be early adopters or use the same hardware we do, but
> the quality of their experience matters just as much._

This speaks to the value FB sees in low-quality, high-reach experiences. Well,
this and the WhatsApp acquisition. It's a very mature and reasonable response
to Dustin's armchair speculation.

------
karangoeluw
It took me a while to realize that you work at Facebook. Maybe add a sentence
or two about that on top of the article?

~~~
ghayes
For those still curious, from the footer of the post:

    
    
      Julie Zhuo
    
      Product design director @ Facebook. Self-professed tyro and lover of food, 
      games, words. Follow me as @joulee or on  www.juliezhuo.com

~~~
chmars
OT: What's the meaning of 'tyro' in this context?

'Novice' as provided by [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/tyro](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tyro)
doesn't seem right.

~~~
ksk
It could be a short form for tyromancy (tyromancer?) said in jest.

------
saturdaysaint
Obviously, this could just be corporate PR disguised as a blog, but it seems
plausible when I consider how rarely I even go to www.facebook.com. For users
not on mobile (I'm imagining grandparents), an immersive photo experience
creates a nice experience but one distinctly unlike what most mobile users
(which is to say, most users) experience. I can see big laptop-screen filling
images deemphasizing text and overshadowing some of the utility that FB wants
to assume for users. It might seem daunting to share an update that you're
making tea for your granddaughter when you seem to be competing with your
relatives' screen filling, HD photos and videos. "Immersive" pictures might
make you less likely to check your events.

------
wudf
The new design delivers headlines that I can't highlight to copy. Pain in the
ass.

------
new_guy123
This follow up response is completely expected. No doubt, Justin's blog was
incomplete information. While I am still not convinced about how the ads
section got bigger, is it really so difficult to identify the user's medium?

I am using a mac book pro. My request header is yelling at you that I am. Your
argument makes no sense, if you agree that you know I am not suffering from
the lack of a scroll pad. What about that!

------
saddestcatever
Julie's argument wraps around the idea of "designing for the lowest common
denominator". In an age of responsive design, I find it strange that a tech
company wouldn't have the manpower to design arguably the most used website it
the world to give the best experience to different types of end users.

------
byroot
Funny how her screenshot is cleared of ads.

~~~
calvinlough
It also looks a lot cleaner because it only has 10 links on left side. I've
got 30 (a few of them I could probably hide, but lots of them I can't).

------
dsjoerg
It is so gratifying to hypothesize your existence, and then, like a high-
energy particle, here you are. (Hypothesized here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484795))

------
pxlpshr
Her screenshot shows 2 just ads while my stream shows me 7. My block of ads is
350% larger.

------
itazula
I never like it when people say they're doing what is best "for the people."

------
viacoffee
Just remember that this exists:
[https://www.startupvitamins.com/media/products/6/mark_zucker...](https://www.startupvitamins.com/media/products/6/mark_zuckerberg_poster_large.jpg?v2)

------
kemo
And what if providing different user experiences is the next thing Facebook
should aim towards? What if users would actually enjoy being able to choose
from different UIs? "Which one do you use?"

I am not referring to responsive web here.

------
watwut
If only google would learn this too and checked their new guis on smaller
screens once in a while.

------
veidr
Whatever's best for the farmers, that's what Monsanto does.

~~~
calinet6
Not all companies are equal.

------
mavdi
So their new design wasn't responsive? Am I missing something here?

------
Dewie
I just wish I could turn _off_ the news feed. Facebook is a great social tool,
but I'm sick of all the literal _status_ updates. I tried Facebook Purify but
their CSS ,trick didn't work.

[http://www.aesconnect.com/how-to-turn-off-your-facebook-
news...](http://www.aesconnect.com/how-to-turn-off-your-facebook-newsfeed/)

~~~
michaelrbock
You can!

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-
feed/hjo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-
feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd?hl=en)

------
forrestthewoods
Why is someone from Facebook making an official(ish?) statement via medium?
Seems kinda amateur.

And, maybe it's just me, but I hate links from medium because on HN they
strictly say (medium.com) with no information as to who they are. Much, much
prefer personal blog links where there is some context.

------
useraccount
Dustin Curtis is a horseshit peddler. I'm not sure why people still listen to
him.

------
davyjones
I don't really understand why this explanation was even warranted. People
looking from outside don't get the picture at all. Ergo, conclusions are
erroneous at best and malicious at worst.

~~~
calbear81
Professional pride is one big reason especially when it's not your average Joe
who is critiquing your design strategy.

