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Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

dcurt.is

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

#151

Post by XorNot »

Pacabel wrote: post #133
duaneb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the things that inhibit our use of programs, icons are surely the least because after you've pressed them a couple thousand times, I hope you still don't forget them. Text takes up a lot of space.

What you're saying about icons is true, but only if we're talking about desktop software that has major releases only every few years, or software that otherwise uses a very standardized and common set of icons. That isn't what we see with most web apps these days, including the major ones. There's continual change, including the icons that are used, where they're positioned, and what happens when they're clicked on.…

Also the trend is wrong. Old mobile devices needed icons. But then you have a 1920x1080 screen on a new mobile device, you can read and distinguish truly tiny text quite easily (I'm finding a lot of websites are much better in desktop mode on my S4 these days, for example).

Text works just fine in most applications, because the shape of a particular word is itself iconography.

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

#152

Post by dsernst »

Geee wrote: post #63
colmvp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people (including myself) just need the feed. I personally preferred the clean approach because outside of Events, I never need the left navigation. Now it obnoxiously takes up a segment of the page and the main content in the center feels tight especially with the bigger typography.

On the contrary, I don't need the feed at all. I use just the messaging features. I never post on the feed and everything I share is in the private or group messages.

Recently I installed this "Kill the News Feed" Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo... Now I waste way less time.

Maybe you'll like it :-)

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

#153

Post by ampersandy »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #21
waterlesscloud wrote: post #19

What I take from this is that Dustin Curtis plays Farmville and is a member of a shadowy group named "secret group". Actually, the question of the piece is a good one. It's really about what you're optimizing for. As every halfway decent manager knows, you get what you measure. Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make. So, in this case, do you measure user engagement ti…

> Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make. Sounds like we should be measuring our decisions about what to measure!

It seems like you said that disdainfully/sarcastically, but if you had metadata about thousands of experiments and the ability to do a meta-analysis on that data; wouldn't you? It seems like a great opportunity to identify potentially destructive trends in the way your company runs experiments.

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

#154

Post by ampersandy »

ignostic wrote: post #121
steven2012 wrote: post #79

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easier to use. After it went live, though, this decreased the number of ad clicks by a significant number, and the people in charge hurriedly reverted all the changes back, since they needed to make their revenue numbers in order to make their bonus. When you are s…

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard . Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will a…

To be fair, revenue could have kept growing with the old design; you still don't know if you've achieved more with the new one!

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

#155

Post by sidcool »

I might be acting like a devil's advocate, but don't the metrics reflect user behavior? And it's perfectly fine if they tune their UI for revenue. They are not missionaries, but they are visionaries. They need money to keep the innovation going.

I am not a facebook fan or an affiliate, and I do resent few of their design decisions, but earning money is well within their framework of morality.

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

#156

Post by wisty »

ignostic wrote: post #121
steven2012 wrote: post #79

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easier to use. After it went live, though, this decreased the number of ad clicks by a significant number, and the people in charge hurriedly reverted all the changes back, since they needed to make their revenue numbers in order to make their bonus. When you are s…

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard . Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will a…

> Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing.

Hows that working for Yahoo now?

Actually, that's kind of disingenuous. Google optimises for less clicks per user, because Google is a site for people who want to get stuff done.

Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters. And unlike Yahoo, I can't see it ever transitioning to anything other than a time-waster.

Time-wasters are basically unprofitable (you're getting clicks from people who are looking to kill time, not find a new insurance policy), but that's what Facebook is. Unless Facebook wants to become the new Linked-In (and they don't - Linked-In just doesn't have the market cap), they just have to be a better time-waster.

If Facebook had a lower valuation, they might be able to move to a position where their focus was on serving people doing stuff, not wasting time, but they can't.

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

#157

Post by MichaelGG »

debt wrote: post #83
Kluny wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like they realize that reading English is kind of tough, so they give you a whole new language to learn, which doesn't help at all.

I think it's done to more easily deal with internationalization. Instead of making the design fit the translated text, just remove the text altogether and stick with just the icons.

For accessibility, they still need the text. So only hassle saved is the minor one of designing a bit larger to fit languages that need more pixels.

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

#158

Post by dionidium »

wisty wrote: post #156
ignostic wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard . Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will a…

> Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Hows that working for Yahoo now? Actually, that's kind of disingenuous. Google optimises for less clicks per user, because Google is a site for people who want to get stuff done. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters. And unlike Yahoo, I can't see it ever transitioning to anything other than a time…

Hows that working for Yahoo now?

Is that supposed to be snark? I realize they're not fashionable, but Yahoo is still quite successful.

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

#159

Post by couchand »

benstein wrote: post #143
benihana wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that the fad dies out soon I wouldn't hold my breath. I think a lot of the reasons we're moving to icons instead of text is because sometime in the next ten years, the majority of all internet traffic will originate on phones, and phones don't have nearly as much real estate to devote to labels as desktop screens do.

Show me a "Save" icon that doesn't _still_ look like a floppy disk. Until then I'll take my text labels.

When Stack Overflow recently released the new top bar no one could figure out the Inbox icon. I guess office desks don't have inboxes anymore, either. I'm really curious what the next one to go will be. The standard trash can??

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

#160

Post by joulee »

I worked on the design of the desktop Facebook News Feed. Just posted a response to the article here: https://medium.com/p/ed75a0ee7641

Actually, the older version of the design we tested would have been positive for revenue had we shipped it. But there were a number of other issues that made it harder for people to use (which also resulted in them liking it less.)

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