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.
Facebook is sitting on tons of cash. If they cannot attract talented designers then they are in trouble.
Design is very important IMO. You think the majority of fb users will say 'oh look at those nice features'? I bet you not, they'll say I like Facebook or I don't like Facebook because that's how they feel. Design highly influences the user's feelings.
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.
"Facebook is more concerned about making the platform look good than how it actually performs"
This has been a universal problem that I've observed in most tech companies i've worked with. Hyper-focus on the optics and less on the content / results.
I dont know if its a by product of giving front end design equal / greater weight than back end design / analytics or something more systematic like the apple design influence. Maybe both. Eitherway seems like websites are getting easier to look at, more clever, and less useful all across the board.
Users complain every time, and they tend to always feel nostalgia for a year and a half ago. You can follow the Facebook redesigns from the various groups Facebook set up, and it tends to be that they miss the one that's two editions old.
Right now Facebook's in a position where they don't have to change in order to stay up top. Their design is pretty tight - tighter than any other site - and they've got enough of a monopoly that people don't feel the need to switch over. Their real competition comes from mobile sites like Loopt, and those are still a pretty slim set of the market right now.
Part of me thinks they're innovating just to appeal to product sales. Another part of me thinks that some of the people up top at Facebook are innovating because they really think they're breaking ground. I'd bet it's a mix of the two.
They haven't added any fundamental innovations that Facebook hasn't already implemented.
This is an example of the worst kind of design, where the designer has gone through a self-absorbed process of moving around and resizing elements that Facebook created through years of experience with real users.
First of all, Facebook is not just engineers. Believe me, they have plenty of interfacers designers, and they are masters of UI. Very very few sites have the kind of depth and subtlety that Facebook has built in its recent iterations.
What the users say about their opinion of the new design is completely irrelevant. Users who are used to something will always resist change that removes something they are used to. The proof will be in the usage statistics. Eventually Facebook will saturate the market and at that point they may end up with more to gain by maintaining some level of familiarity. But for now I think they are making the right moves to increase engagement, and I believe the numbers will bear me out.
People always hate the redesigns. Then, three months later, they revolt against the NEW redesigns because they love the current one so much. Facebook's kind of abusive like that.
They also usually cycle between adding new functionality, and then stripping down the designs to its essentials. This is more of an Essentialist design, which I like; I've been waiting for a redesign since their last one added all the weird things.
I'll be interested to see how well this redesign is received by Facebook's users. Their last redesign was--from what I heard among the Facebook users I know--not terribly appreciated. Hopefully this added functionality garners more than a collective groan because it's definitely important for Facebook to continue innovating and staying ahead of or at least keeping up with competitors.
I'm very surprised that people haven't noticed that Facebook really screwed up certain aspects to the redesign and instead keep trotting out the "users don't like change" excuse. There's "disruptive" and then there's "poor design decisions".
Their redesign reminds a lot of google plus, which incidentally was used by many communities because it was convenient and relatively uncluttered.
i dont think people can get excited by this anymore though. Facebook is in a decline trajectory thats going to take a long time. The friends networks have become stale, and people are learning to move to other platforms. Like all other facebook's redesigns, this will create a massive backlash when it launches, but unlike previous times, it will most likely be seen as an excuse to quit the site.
Facebook UI changes are designed specifically to make you frustrated .. frustrated enough that you spend time getting to know the new UI (spending more time on the platform), but not over frustrating so you stop using it.
I doubt this went live without it going through hundreds of focus groups to find that sweetspot to maximize every user's value as ad revenue.
The new design is not objectively awful. Already I'd say about half the people I'm friends with are big fans of it. It's more condensed and more efficient. Don't wave about words like "objective" unless you're prepared to use them correctly.
This site's been in place for less than a week, and it was rolled out day by day. People's reactions are typical. Last time the backlast lasted for 2-3 weeks: we haven't seen a full 7 days yet.
By the way, it really is quite irritating trying to have a conversation with you, and having you state "obvious opinions" as fact ("Then you weren't around for the last redesign, which people hated.").
How else should I put it? I've used Facebook for 3 years, and every redesign sees the exact same 2-3 week pattern of people hating the redesign, people forming around groups to complain, and then the dislike subsiding.
The funny thing is that a lot of these websites get re-used. Some of these groups keep getting new users but are two years old.
So you know what? When you go about saying things like "objectively worse" and talking about a supposed level of vast complaint that doesn't actually exist, the first reaction I'll have is to wonder if you've been paying attention for the last three years. I'm sorry if that irritates you, but my initial reaction is to give you the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to assume that you're saying stuff when you should know better, so I assume instead that perhaps you're just new to Facebook.
Future will tell, but I do think this is a good strategic move by FB.
FB is now seen as an app for old people and not fun at all, and probably one of the reason is because of how it looks. With the new design, things are more shiny, and the product now looks cool. How a product is perceived has a big influence on how people use it, (for example why people use snap when they can send the same videos on insta).
I wouldn't be surprised that this is a beginning of a lot of changes on FB
This isn't notable. There are always redesign changes. This is just the first major redesign happening at a time when the tech world thinks hating Facebook is fashionable, so it's echoing more.
The reasons why Facebook doesn't improve its horrible interface have to do with incredible technical bloat, and their userbase being stringently resistant to change. It's the type of person who won't start using something else until what they have doesn't work at all anymore. I predict an exodus if they tried to modernise.
Even so much as flattening out some of those beveled edges and gradients would be enough to throw people off.
"Ugly and messy" doesn't have to be a part of the equation when what you want is "dense." It's possible to have minimal, clean, dense design. With lots of buttons and features, beneath a simple UI.
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.
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