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The New Facebook Design Sucks

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Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#91

Post by rikroots »

miki123211 wrote: post #52

One thing I love about new Facebook is the accessibility. As a blind user, old FB was close to unusable, the consensus in the community was to use mbasic.facebook.com, which lacked a lot of features and was designed for (keyboard based) feature phones. The new FB works much, much better, and I personally switched to it a long time ago.

I hadn't thought about the accessibility improvements in the new design. When I was forced to switch I went directly into Grumpy Old Man mode and spent the next couple of days moaning about it. Then I got over myself/it and went back to admiring other people's pet photographs and trying to start fights with poets.

Change hurts, but life still goes on. I'm glad the FB changes has been beneficial to others in ways I was too self-centred to notice at the time.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#92

Post by stanrivers »

reaperducer wrote: post #43
stanrivers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow this is interesting / something to remember for my own life. So basically, they might try something out first in [small country] and if it works go to [medium country] and then if it stills works roll out to everyone?

This has been how companies have worked since forever. In the 19th- and mid-20th centuries, all of the big advertising agencies handling consumer goods were headquartered in Chicago (many still are). They would test products by introducing them a couple of hundred miles away in Peoria, Illinois. If the items were well accepted there, then they were rolled out to the rest of the country. It's where the expression, "Bu…

This makes complete sense - I just had never thought about it - Obviously, had thought about testing things in a smaller market, but for some reason my brain hadn't mapped that to software / websites / etc.

And props for history less on "But will it play in Peoria?"

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#93

Post by dorchadas »

twostorytower wrote: post #3

The reality is while there's a vocal minority, and that it may be subjectively worse, the design was absolutely A/B tested and performed better in whatever KPI's Facebook chose as their goals (such as ad revenue, session length, engagement metrics). That's the simple answer. Full disclosure: I haven't logged on Facebook much in the past couple years.

All I know is this change has made it even easier for me to quit, so I'm thankful for it!

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#94

Post by colecut »

RandallBrown wrote: post #79
colecut wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ability to easily filter/unfilter users from my feed is a much more user-friendly solution to that problem.

It's not that simple is it? I want to see the photos my crazy aunt posts of her family and dogs, but I would love to not see the alt-right political memes she also posts. I can do this already to some extent by simply blocking certain sources that she's reposting from. It's harder to do when the content is copied and pasted.

I would rather deal with the occasional offputting post than with the completely non-chronological mess FB has now that will decide which friends' posts I don't see at all seemingly arbitrarily. Right now I deal with both.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#95

Post by MagnumPIG »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #50
Nextgrid wrote: post #2

Less information density = more time required to read the same amount of content = more "engagement". This is the exact same reason behind the algorithmic timeline: since you can't easily tell whether you've reached the end (up to where you left off last time), you keep scrolling more, thus more time spent and more opportunities for ads to show up. This trend will continue until users revolt against this by refusing…

Facebook isn't designed to look good or even be usable. It's designed to make money. I have some faith that Facebook's redesign isn't losing them a ton of money, or they would've reverted it. It's probably increasing the KPIs they're trying to target.

All these metrics are very short-term and the user dissatisfaction builds up over time. It makes sense for everyone involved (the short term is all that counts for investors and CEOs), but I personally can't wait to see Facebook eat itself.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#96

Post by forgotmypw17 »

snazz wrote: post #25
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #18

These unwanted forced design changes will be one of the main drivers of everyone off-platforming to their own social network.

"Everyone" meaning a few people who care more about the social network's design than communicating with the people who use it? I find it very hard to believe that there's going to be some kind of mass de-platforming event that leaves Facebook a ghost town. Maybe because of changes to political content policies, but definitely not because of UI changes. Snapchat has gone through a number of major, controversial redesi…

It begins with those who have the know-how to do it today, and they are bringing their friends and family, and the acceleration is exponential.

Look at Digg: two-fold cause of 1) UI changes, and 2) user perceptions of centrally controlled, biased, and influenced information flow.

Digg was thought to have unbreakable critical mass.

Now, Reddit and Facebook are both going down the same road, with user-hostile UI and opaque information sourcing.

People aren't dumb, and they've already noticed and made up their mind about it. Now they're just looking for somewhere to jump.

I recently interviewed two kids no older than 20 for a user study. Not techies. One of them doesn't use Snapchat for privacy reasons. Other one thought about it and said, "I don't know why I use it, because I know that it's not really private." I didn't even prompt them with any questions about privacy or control, I was just doing a cursory "what apps or social networks do you use?"

More and more people are saying, "I know it's crap, but I'm on there because everyone else is using it." It means they're already looking for another place to go.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#97

Post by dingaling »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #96
snazz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everyone" meaning a few people who care more about the social network's design than communicating with the people who use it? I find it very hard to believe that there's going to be some kind of mass de-platforming event that leaves Facebook a ghost town. Maybe because of changes to political content policies, but definitely not because of UI changes. Snapchat has gone through a number of major, controversial redesi…

It begins with those who have the know-how to do it today, and they are bringing their friends and family, and the acceleration is exponential. Look at Digg: two-fold cause of 1) UI changes, and 2) user perceptions of centrally controlled, biased, and influenced information flow. Digg was thought to have unbreakable critical mass. Now, Reddit and Facebook are both going down the same road, with user-hostile UI and op…

> Digg was thought to have unbreakable critical mass.

Nowhere near it. Digg peaked at about 40 million MAU in 2010. That's two magnitudes less than Facebook.

Facebook adds a Digg-equivalent to its MAU every month.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#98

Post by TeMPOraL »

nooyurrsdey wrote: post #77

If there is one reliable thing in webdev, it's users complaining when something is redesigned. Give it a week and everyone will have gotten used to it.

It's been months now. It still sucks.

(I'm surprised to see this being called a "new" design, I've been using it for ~half a year now, and the switch was optional for a while before that.)

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #86

Yeah, it really does. It's so cramped I feel like I can't read it most of the time, and browser zoom doesn't help at all. I still don't even understand what the "stories" are exactly? When I've clicked it was a complete waste of time. That showed up earlier though. The notifications on the right are simply not readable due to cramp and wrapping over three-ish lines, like a table with columns way too narrow for the co…

Stories are a port from Instagram, which is a copy of a Snapchat feature. Basically like "status message" in good ol' IMs, except a) made from pictures or videos, and b) self-destructing after 24 hours.

I personally hate them as a concept, but that's because I generally don't like transient things on the Internet. Given their popularity, however, I'm guessing that more than half of photo sharing activity on social media is through such self-deleting broadcasts, leaving no trace and no ability to catch up on it. Which is probably why the platforms like it - it exploits FOMO to keep you checking the app every day.

Re: The New Facebook Design Sucks

#100

Post by oblio »

MagnumPIG wrote: post #95
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook isn't designed to look good or even be usable. It's designed to make money. I have some faith that Facebook's redesign isn't losing them a ton of money, or they would've reverted it. It's probably increasing the KPIs they're trying to target.

All these metrics are very short-term and the user dissatisfaction builds up over time. It makes sense for everyone involved (the short term is all that counts for investors and CEOs), but I personally can't wait to see Facebook eat itself.

Techies keep waiting for that and they keep falling upwards:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/277963/facebooks-quarter...

Facebook will not eat itself for a very long, long time. Their corruption of various nice things in life will be with us for many decades.

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