jmacofearth's posterous - Filed under 'user-centered design'

Facebook "Friends" Fail - Somewhere Someone Is Working On Facebook's UX by John McElhenney

But where that person's efforts are going is probably the ADs. (I'm not saying the ADs are good, I'm just saying they are not working on the UX and UI of Facebook.) Because they keep making changes to things that WERE previously working and they mess it up. [And of course the ultimate irony, is I am going to post and promote this on Facebook itself. Betcha $100 I don't hear a word from any of Zuckerburgs folks. I didn't last time... Heh heh. Perhaps they're working on it and don't want to tip their hand. Perhaps!]

The biggest MISS for me lately has been the "friends" status views. How do you get back to seeing the updates and not the "what they updated?" Okay, so Facebook has added Lists. Great, but they suck. Here is my view of my "close"list. Why oh why aren't they showing me the latest status update from my "close" friends?

facebook groups

A friend recently opined, "It's clear that the people work ON Facebook don't actually USE Facebook or they would not make such stupid changes." Well put.

Okay and here's All Friends. Same problem. I am clicking on "FRIENDS" to see their status, not to see if or how many lists they are part of. This is just BAD BAD BAD. UX FAIL.

facebook friends

But still the #1 UX FAIL on Facebook today is,

... drum roll from wipeout please ...

facebook-friends-recent

The "Recently Updated" Friends Status page and guess what. Not a single STATUS is available.

You can see what parts of FB they updated but not the updates. It's this kind of shoddy UI and UX that makes me less and less likely to open Facebook at all. With recent API loving twittertools like Seesmic Desktop, Twirl and Tweetdeck, you may never have to open your Facebook page again. Unless of course you like the games or you want to browse someone's photos.

Does this kind of BAD DESIGN make anyone else MAD? It's like following a HUMMER in rush hour traffic. WHAT'S THE POINT! #@!&*?

@jmacofearth

permalink to uber.la: http://bit.ly/facebook-UI-2

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A Facebook UI Exploration - Simplify Simplify Simplify

facebook design sux

[Update: The slideshare team just promoted this presentation to the front page of the DESIGN section. wOOt! ]

In an effort to call my own BS, I am presenting an unsolicited UI exploration of the Top Navigation system on Facebook. We all know they are working on the design, with mixed results. And we ALL need them to do a better job of simplifying all the options we have, because Facebook is getting confusing to use, and that is not a good thing.

Yesterday, I was attempting to update my "status." This is the heart and soul of Facebook interaction and I could not figure out how to get the site to let me paste a URL as part of my status update. Every time I had a URL as part of my "status" the Facebook smart-interface would pull possible icon images from the link and give me several choices to pick from. All good, except when I completed the transaction the "update" went to my [Wall] and not to my [Status]. I tried a number of times with no success. At one point I was able to force Facebook to not look-up the URL and post the status as a raw URL. But I could not make any comments along with the URL to describe why it's part of my "status."

So this is an epic fail of UI, where the interface designers attempt to make the process easier and more interactive, BUT they break something else in the process. So as I posted "The FaceBook UI UX sux." on my facebook [Wall] I will now share a small bit of UI advice with Mark Zuckerberg and company. They didn't ask. But I can ask them to fix the Top Nav. Fair nuff!

[This presentation is posted on Slideshare.net as a downloadable PPT presentation if you want to look at or reference the orginal. CC - Attribution Only.]

facebook-simplified-1