A lot of users hate the “new” Facebook UI. I admit, I was highly anticipating the new look for several months, but also couldn’t embrace it when it actually came out. I was among the minions seeking to protest this great injustice called the “new Facebook”. Why change a good thing?…but the better question…why give users a choice to switch back and forth between the old and new, rather than just forcing us to use the new? Does that mean that you guys aren’t really convinced about the new Facebook too? Are you guys just “testing out” this new interface as some kind of pilot program, and perhaps roll back to the old once you find users hate it?
I think Facebook users are confused. Case in point, as of today, 1,834,841 members in the “1,000,000 against the new facebook layout” group, 1,302,468 members in the “Petition Against the New Facebook” group, and 1,159,068 “I Hate The New Facebook” group.
Did Facebook shoot themselves in the foot by actually giving a users a choice in user interface options? What exactly was your goal Facebook?
Well, the above interview with Scoble and Facebook Mark Slee (lead project manager @ Facebook) answers a lot of the questions (props once again to Robert Scoble for the insightful interview). As revealed in the interview, the option to choose between old and new interface was not truly to give users an option (as evidenced by the eventual discontinuation of the old interface), but it was seen as a way to give user an opportunity to do A/B testing and see the new rich features built into the new interface that can’t be done with the old.
With this in mind…I tried the new Facebook with a renewed perspective to see the A/B comparison between old vs. new features. I was sold pretty quickly to the new interface. Through the noise of the masses, it seems that once again, Facebook has managed to help user’s rock.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
And POSITIVELY EVERYONE, but three Facebook-employed posers, on all of Facebook HATE this terribly designed hackjob called the “new” Facebook to its essence. This will be the death of Facebook from the definite outlook and the real reception of this that Facebook is trying to slick over so unsuccessfully. The difference between other recent changes, such as the MS Office and MacOS Leopard changes, and the earlier MySpace changes, is that they were at least usable, compatible and changeable. The “new” Facebook offers no such options. And for this, they will go the way of Corel, Lotus and Netscape.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I agree with your ultimate conclusion that the new one’s actually a more fully featured, more usable design. I take a stab at what the usability griping on the part of the petition wavers might actually be about at http://directreference.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-some-people-are-so-pissed-about.html
November 12th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
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