Isn't that the point though? What you don't want is exactly what facebook is trying to offer: A different home screen experience. How is having too many experiencial options a bad thing? Is curation the problem? Is the default home screen app so good it should not be touched?
I think facebook are onto something saying that the home screen is the heart of the phone and that it currently presents the information the wrong way round.
The home screen at the moment is very similar to how the first facebook app worked. It presented you with a grid of icons to choose from before you could interact with content. The switch to news feed first worked well there and I don't see why the same logic shouldn't work with the entire phone just as well.
Though seeing as facebook is only a small subset of my sources of interesting information, I could see this bringing to the table competing home screen 'apps' that incorporate more from your world than just the apps that facebook own.
This is all very nice from a design point of view. But from a User Experience point of view, it's horrible. Each screen is totally different, there's absolutely no consistency between views.
I would like for things to go back to minimalist and simple. After all, the human brain can concentrate only on one thing at a time, so why show 20 different things on a page, when you could make the experience so much better with just what's essential for you in that very moment?
Facebook is a social network where you can view info about what your friends are doing. A good UX needs to do only that, and nothing more.
I think overall the design and implementation is quite impressive. However, the feeling I got when I installed it last night was that it limits my phone's experience (ie., no widgets, etc). So while I can see Facebook Home appeal to hard-core FB users (ie., especially younger ones), I don't think it will appeal to everyone. But that's not necessarily a bad thing if the target is the hard-core FB user. I'm sure over time FB Home will get better and likely appeal to more people and it extends its capabilities.
And what if providing different user experiences is the next thing Facebook should aim towards?
What if users would actually enjoy being able to choose from different UIs? "Which one do you use?"
One of my go-to examples is http://www.gov.uk. Obviously a very different site to Facebook, but the way it combines the content from hundreds of individual sites while still making it easy to navigate is impressive.
To be fair, Facebook's UX is always going to be a bit of a nightmare just due to the sheer volume of disparate features stuffed in - the 'iTunes effect' as I've just called it - so the move to focused apps for specific features is probably a good thing.
To be not so fair, I get the suspicion that the UX is left deliberately confusing in places, especially the constant rearranging of privacy settings, to get people to share more than they would otherwise.
- "The interface fundamentally determines the behavior" and this thing has a real great interface. I just don't see how this could be integrated into the facebook home screen (newsfeed).
- I wonder how long does it take google to copycat this thing.
For people spending their days on Facebook it might be an improvement. It does sound like a huge addon though and I agree that it'd probably be best to make most of that non-default.
That’s not the point. The point is that UI changes can be done to large audiences if you want to, regardless of whether it’s good or bad. I’d actually argue that the fact that FB’s “improvements” are actually user hostile is an even stronger case that user friendly UX improvements can definitely be done.
I have to agree, in fact I wonder why would they even bother marketing it as a way to share and collect stories instead of proposing it as a more visual alternative to the main app.
I have the feeling that at Facebook they tend to half-ass things, like Home or the redesigned Newsfeed. They release an half-baked product and then let it rot for months with sporadic under-the-hood updates (I actually wonder why the hell every single day the main app needs a 10MB update to do what yesterday could do without problems, but that's for another time).
That would be a valid point if it was a redesign of the facebook app - you can't say that here though, because it's not a redesign of an existing "Facebook Home" app, it's a completely new product.
I think Facebook has too many features now as compared years ago. Before, it's easier for users to navigate the app or the site. Some people are also migrating to other platforms.
I can already hear our customers ordering page enhancements that show an arrow or a bubble pointing somewhat in the direction of where that FB button should be in the current visitors browser.
We know that problem with the "Add page to your home screen" button. Of course, it has to disappear when the user opens your website from home screen. And god forbid Apple changes anything - like releasing an 8" tablet.
If we'd always get what we wish for, live could be so easy. And boring, probably.
Please give more specific reasons than "it's bad." What's wrong with pointing out UI elements to new users? For what it's worth Facebook does this routinely with UI changes.
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