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Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

daringfireball.net

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Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#11

Post by jpd »

natemartin wrote: post #2

This is fascinating... apparently users are just typing "facebook login" into google, clicking on the first link, and getting very confused as to why they're not actually on facebook. How can you design a web application that is usable by people with this level of computer knowledge? Should one even try?

Answer: You can't, and no, you shouldn't try. You have to assume your users actually have the ability to get to your website before you can worry about what they do when they get there.

Sorry, but this whole thing is a whole new level of idiocy I had not previously encountered: Even my mother (whose sole computer skill is that she can get to amazon.com to buy gifts for people) would be able to determine whether or not she was at amazon after searching Google and clicking a random link.

My God! RWW isn't even BLUE for heaven's sakes.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#13

Post by dmix »

jolie wrote: post #4

D'oh... thanks for the link. The more "Facebook login" text that links back to RWW, the more of these confused/angry comments we're gonna get. Don't you love SEO? o_0

It would be pretty difficult for RRW to out-rank Facebook in organic search results because of linking.

Constant news articles are another thing.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#14

Post by lt »

I have to admit that I used to do that in Firefox, back before I switched to Chrome.

Firefox address bar used to make it really convenient. It did a kind of "feeling lucky" search, taking me directly to the first result if it was the "right" search result, or to google's search otherwise. I don't know how google determined if it should display a results page or not but it used to work very well. I stopped caring about bookmarks and and memorizing URLs and just used keywords to get where I wanted.

Of course it's silly for really popular pages like facebook, but it worked fairly well for pages I used to visit ocasionally.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#15

Post by patio11 »

natemartin wrote: post #2

This is fascinating... apparently users are just typing "facebook login" into google, clicking on the first link, and getting very confused as to why they're not actually on facebook. How can you design a web application that is usable by people with this level of computer knowledge? Should one even try?

You relentlessly simplify. You collect data and look for errors or opportunities for misunderstanding, then eliminate them. You tell people how to succeed with the app three times. You make the defaults close to success. You aggressively segment your users, giving the hard stuff only to those that can handle it. You provide an easy way to talk to you and pipe that straight to the dev team to automate or eliminate responses to the common issues.You implement game mechanics and award people features for learning or mastering other features.

This is not trivial but it also is not impossible. Trust me if my users can do it then yours can too. Help them succeed and take their money for it.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#16

Post by jpd »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

My current primary business is IT consulting, which really means that I spend most of my time working face-to-face with people that have trouble with computers and technology in general. So, this kind of behavior isn't news to me. In fact, I've tried often to convince the tech-savvy that most users have problems like this, and I've never been all that successful. The RWW "Facebook login" is great from this standpoint…

I'd imagine if your food came with instructions on how to cook them you, as a poor cook, would at least know enough to read and follow the instructions. I can't cook worth a dime normally, but I can follow directions in order to make Mac & Cheese or Ramen.

I daresay, if something I am not familiar with pops up with an error message, I would at least read it!

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#17

Post by lucifer »

natemartin wrote: post #2

This is fascinating... apparently users are just typing "facebook login" into google, clicking on the first link, and getting very confused as to why they're not actually on facebook. How can you design a web application that is usable by people with this level of computer knowledge? Should one even try?

It is not possible.

Look at the interfaces exposed by any general public machine/gadget outside of computing, and the layers of abstraction that the consumer needs to grasp.

Automobiles are one of the rare gadgets that expose an internal system layer (the engine) and right there you clearly see a divide between the users who can only interact with the general purpose (simple wheel, pedals, key, gear shift) interface, and the automotive geek ("grease monkey") who also has a clue what's going on under the hood.

As soon as any sort of symbolic interaction is required (remote/vcr programming) you again lose a whole chunk of the population that simply can not get it.

A "consumer product" has to be an appliance, not a general purpose computing machine, hosting a general purpose operating system, hosting a general purpose application (web2.0 browser), hosting yet more general applications.

The fact that the "farmville" crowd even manages to get to interact on the web (and leave hysterical comments on RWW) is by itself a major accomplishment of the geek set! ;)

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#18

Post by isleyaardvark »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

My current primary business is IT consulting, which really means that I spend most of my time working face-to-face with people that have trouble with computers and technology in general. So, this kind of behavior isn't news to me. In fact, I've tried often to convince the tech-savvy that most users have problems like this, and I've never been all that successful. The RWW "Facebook login" is great from this standpoint…

"But, she's totally lost on Facebook."

Is that really so bad, though? I don't know about anybody else, but I've never liked the Facebook UI. I always thought it was a confusing mess. Lite Facebook is about as close as they've gotten to something user-friendly.

Granted, that's a bit different from the ridiculousness involved with the RWW post, but they're already trying to log in to a confusing website that has been changing it's interface recently.

Re: Daring Fireball: "Facebook login"

#19

Post by silvestrov »

jpd wrote: post #16
thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

My current primary business is IT consulting, which really means that I spend most of my time working face-to-face with people that have trouble with computers and technology in general. So, this kind of behavior isn't news to me. In fact, I've tried often to convince the tech-savvy that most users have problems like this, and I've never been all that successful. The RWW "Facebook login" is great from this standpoint…

I'd imagine if your food came with instructions on how to cook them you, as a poor cook, would at least know enough to read and follow the instructions. I can't cook worth a dime normally, but I can follow directions in order to make Mac & Cheese or Ramen. I daresay, if something I am not familiar with pops up with an error message, I would at least read it!

Problem is, most cook books are dreadful. They leave out all sorts of important details, and assume you are a master cook.
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