On the Facebook Facelift
Recently, Facebook updated its layout yet again, which was followed by the inevitable wave of status updates complaining about how much the changes sucked. I'm a web programmer for a company that has a consumer-facing web application, and a large part of my job is creating parts of the user interface. I don't think that makes my opinion any more authoritative than the next person's, but I would like to share what I believe Facebook is doing wrong in its approach to changing their layout.
The massive rollout strategy just doesn't work. People don't like it when their favorite web application changes. Facebook announces that they're going to make huge changes, claim that they will be "better", and then everyone is just supposed to get used to them once they're in place. It matters very little whether or not the changes are actually "better" or not, and it does little help to argue that point either way. You're just forcing something on people that they didn't ask for.
The whole "let's change everything!" strategy makes me picture a bunch of nerds at Facebook sitting around trying to make work for themselves. In the absence of anything better to do, they decide to reinvent the way the whole thing looks. "Here comes Zuckerberg! Quick, look busy!"
Does this remind anyone of Microsoft Office, which changed drastically in layout and appearance in its 2007 version, but didn't seem to add anything of value to its functionality? They just moved the crap in the menu around, kind of the same way you'd move the food around on your plate to try and trick your mom into thinking you ate some it.
So what's the alternative to the "culture of looking busy", as seems to be the case at so many tech companies releasing (forcing) product updates onto their consumers? That would be the "culture of testing". The archetype example of a company that understands how to update their interface is Amazon.
The way Amazon looks today is much, much different than it was when it launched back in the early 90's. But most of those changes happened gradually, and weren't rolled out to everyone all at once. Amazon rarely releases a huge update to their interface and then forces it on everyone. Instead, they make small, incremental changes and test them to see how people respond.
This is called split testing, and if you have a web site, you can use something called the Google Website Optimizer (which is free to use) so that you can show half your users one thing and the other half something else. It might something small, like changing the background color of a "Buy It Now!" button between orange and blue, to see if one color makes people more likely to click on the button. You let the test run for a little while until you've gotten enough data to figure out which color is better, and then you set the button to the color that got the most clicks.
It makes the process much more democratic. In this way, Amazon can see how people respond to a change or addition to their site. If people don't like a change on a page or a new feature, the Amazon doesn't release it. Or they find a new way to make it work in a way that pleases customers.
Seems to me Facebook could do something like that, instead of shocking their users once a year with a bunch of changes all at once.
The massive rollout strategy just doesn't work. People don't like it when their favorite web application changes. Facebook announces that they're going to make huge changes, claim that they will be "better", and then everyone is just supposed to get used to them once they're in place. It matters very little whether or not the changes are actually "better" or not, and it does little help to argue that point either way. You're just forcing something on people that they didn't ask for.
The whole "let's change everything!" strategy makes me picture a bunch of nerds at Facebook sitting around trying to make work for themselves. In the absence of anything better to do, they decide to reinvent the way the whole thing looks. "Here comes Zuckerberg! Quick, look busy!"
Does this remind anyone of Microsoft Office, which changed drastically in layout and appearance in its 2007 version, but didn't seem to add anything of value to its functionality? They just moved the crap in the menu around, kind of the same way you'd move the food around on your plate to try and trick your mom into thinking you ate some it.
So what's the alternative to the "culture of looking busy", as seems to be the case at so many tech companies releasing (forcing) product updates onto their consumers? That would be the "culture of testing". The archetype example of a company that understands how to update their interface is Amazon.
The way Amazon looks today is much, much different than it was when it launched back in the early 90's. But most of those changes happened gradually, and weren't rolled out to everyone all at once. Amazon rarely releases a huge update to their interface and then forces it on everyone. Instead, they make small, incremental changes and test them to see how people respond.
This is called split testing, and if you have a web site, you can use something called the Google Website Optimizer (which is free to use) so that you can show half your users one thing and the other half something else. It might something small, like changing the background color of a "Buy It Now!" button between orange and blue, to see if one color makes people more likely to click on the button. You let the test run for a little while until you've gotten enough data to figure out which color is better, and then you set the button to the color that got the most clicks.
It makes the process much more democratic. In this way, Amazon can see how people respond to a change or addition to their site. If people don't like a change on a page or a new feature, the Amazon doesn't release it. Or they find a new way to make it work in a way that pleases customers.
Seems to me Facebook could do something like that, instead of shocking their users once a year with a bunch of changes all at once.