I always though that the whole "humans are creatures of habit" thing was a little overstated. Then Facebook changed it's layout and people went CRAZY! This was the second time in about a year that Facebook reformatted the page, it was also the second time that the majority of people vocalized how angry they were. We get used to things. We know exactly how far down a page we have to scroll to see the information we need. We know where to click and often without even thinking navigate ourselves from one persons pictures to another interests to a list of our "friends" birthdays. When grids change suddenly we are lost. It would be like changing all of the street signs in your hometown. Despite knowing everything you have no idea where to find it. To me a big issue with the new Facebook is the lack of consistency. It is so difficult to see a person's photo albums because sometimes they are on the homepage and sometimes they are not. Also your homepage can easily become cluttered with people posting on other walls. It is once again easy to forget people's birthday because they are in the lower right corner rather than the upper right. The real problem though is not with the new grid, it is with the fact that we had become so accustomed to the old grid. We knew exactly where to look and click and now we have a whole new grid to get to learn to navigate. I find the new grid, specifically in the "photos" section VERY difficult to navigate. There is no sense of hierarchy and it is frustrating for a user to feel so "lost" in the page. Also the left side of the page has an excess of white space, wheras the right side seems cluttered. The lack of balance is annoying to look at as a user. I dislike the new grid, but I'm sure it will only be a matter of time until i get used to it and will be sad to see it go when yet another new one is introduced.
2 comments:
I think you have some really good points. People do get very attached to things, expecially facebook. Personally, I agree with everyone and think the old facebook is better. Maybe they should stop messing around with it!
I agree with your point about hierarchy, and thats what I hate most about the new layout of facebook. I think the last change they made was warranted, but I feel this change was them trying too much to make it user friendly by making every different wall post, picture comment, and status update look the same. The information updates too fast, and if you don't go on until after all your classes at 6 at night you miss a whole day's worth of stuff because you see EVERY update. Maybe I'm too addicted, but I like to see all of what happened that day. I don't however, care about a lot of those people and now I have to see every wallpost! It's the worst on birthdays! Yeah I definitely need to get off facebook.....anyways I think you brought up some good points!
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