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New Facebook design: Thoughts?

21 points by ErrantX ↗ HN
So I see we get a new facebook design (yes, yes I know - but it is handy for my ex-Uni friends).

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.

Thoughts (purely the homepage here):

- somehow they have managed to compress the center part of the page. Every item seems twice as tall now

- 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).

- 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 have to click = not easy.

Every tweak strikes me as adding more clicks and more complexity.

Any more thoughts from a technical viewpoint (this is HN :)). Am I being too picky & thinking into the desing too deply? Or am in on the right track: have they messed things up?

29 comments

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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

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.

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.
chris24
There's also the 'show hidden posts' link at the bottom of the Facebook homepage, which has been a FriendFeed feature for quite some time now.
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.

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

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.

unalone
You can fix that in application settings.
karmaVS
As a user, however, I am extremely glad about this default.
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.

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.
dasil003
As a hardcore, super-engaged user they don't care about you. The point is not to cater to existing hardcore users, but to create new ones. If you're using every facet of the site as it exists, of course redesigns are going to be painful. There is simply no room to add stuff. All they can do is move things around, and this is hard when you have muscle knowledge of where things are.

As a casual user (former developer back in the goldrush days of mid '97), I immediately felt like I was getting more interesting information. That's just one opinion obviously. I'm not sure why you say less people will see a note... I don't see any evidence of that. But clearly it seems things are simplified and content is fresher, these two factors can only benefit them with their target audience.

I will agree with you that the new design needs tweaks. They do need to bring back enough configuration to suit the power users needs. Overall though column arrangement of Filter Buttons, Firehose, Highlights strikes me as a move in the right direction engagement-wise.

prawn
I'm not a Facebook user but from the pictures I've seen, I expect that this is about getting corporate messages in front of users more easily. They've recognised that the threat from Twitter is that people are engaging well by following business accounts and are more receptive to corporate messages as a result - that's incredibly valuable if you're the conduit. Had they not done this, I think they risked losing a lot of business interest to a growing competitor.
jfarmer
Good point and I agree that this move is at the very least a shot across the bow of Twitter and FriendFeed.
ErrantX
Not sure I wuold agree. Certainly I think they made a mistake with the design changes.

Before this update I checked my newsfeed fairly often (4 or 5 times an hour) and it was usually updated.

Last night after the change I saw maybe 2 or 3 new additions in arond 2 hours (even though I was hanging out on specific friends profiles and watching their new content from there). A lot of stuff never made it to my feed. :(

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.

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)?

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.