Whatever goes up, that’s what we do • Hacker News Board

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#31

Post by apalmer » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

There are metrics and then their are metrics. If a new design causes the amount of money the company makes to go down... then its not a 'good' design by business standards.

And its more rational to say here are concrete numbers clearly affecting the bottomline vs well our 5 experts think this design is better so we are sticking with it.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#32

Post by Soarez » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:49 PM UTC

It's ok as long as you're sure you're looking at the right numbers.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#33

Post by mikeg8 » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

mkbrody wrote: post #12

Culture is internal marketing. The numbers are what really matters.

> The numbers are what really matters.

To survive, yes. To make the the deepest impact, no.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#34

Post by wrongc0ntinent » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:52 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #4

Of course, because money is the only criteria that is important to any business. There couldn't possibly be anything else, like a sense of mission or purpose, that could inform decisions.

There is only one core product that Facebook has. It's not a platform for anything other than that. Any new features must pass that test, and the implementation of this one didn't.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#35

Post by nedwin » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:53 PM UTC

Speaking of numbers going up, I'd love to hear how Svbtle is going these days.

Don't seem to hear much from the inside since the funding announcement over 12 months ago...

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#36

Post by calbear81 » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

... or that beauty doesn't necessarily convert better. We've seen this time and time again with sites like Craigslist and Ebay and recently 42Floors wrote about a similar experience when experimenting with radically different search result treatments.

I really do like the new treatment and I think they should have gone with this and figured out how to recover the revenue stream later. Given how much Facebook traffic is going to mobile instead of desktop, this wouldn't have a large impact over the long run.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#37

Post by modeless » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

This article makes one big unstated assumption: that users wanted the news feed to change. In fact, users didn't want the news feed to change. Users hate change. And when I say that I don't mean that users are stupid and hate good things. Users have good reasons for hating change that's forced on them: it reduces the value of their previous experience and requires extra time and effort on their part; effort that they'd rather be spending on things they actually care about.

Users didn't want the news feed to change, and the users were right.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#38

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:56 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#39

Post by colmvp » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

apalmer wrote: post #31

There are metrics and then their are metrics. If a new design causes the amount of money the company makes to go down... then its not a 'good' design by business standards. And its more rational to say here are concrete numbers clearly affecting the bottomline vs well our 5 experts think this design is better so we are sticking with it.

There can be a difference between good design that users prefer vs. good design that aligns with business goals.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#40

Post by notahacker » Thu, Mar 27, 2014, 9:59 PM UTC

The alternate design isn't "performing too well" by not telling you which of your friends are online to chat with, like the current version does. It's just decluttering, and relegating that important function to one of many miniscule, unlabelled icons. It's not "performing too well" by rendering links in the same colour as body text, and making the search function look like a header: it's just making them subtly less obvious, which matters when your users are in the hundreds of millions and some of them really aren't that savvy. (Possibly it matters even more with casual users who are web-savvy, in that you're missing an opportunity to encourage them to search by prominently positioning the sort of medium white box that makes them think about searching)

Whatever is cleanest and most elegant is not necessarily the most user-friendly design, never mind the optimal design from the point of view of user engagement.