Monday, February 08, 2010

Open Letter to Facebook After Another UI Debacle

I sent this to facebook after I was was "upgraded" to their new UI (user interface); I post it here in hopes others will send similar messages. Each time they change things, they annoy millions of users. If they would adhere to some basic, proven ideas, they could make far more users happy without a lot of wasted effort. If you agree with these, please send a similar message to Facebook. Feel free to copy and paste this with an "I agree", or just point them to this blog. Or send your own suggestions. Merely complaining about the current UI won't likely help. File your suggestions via the page at http://www.facebook.com/help/suggestions.php (which was much easier to find via google than via facebook).
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Instead of deciding every few months what users want to see on the home page, why not just give the users control?

First, under account settings, let each user decide what they want with a list of feed checkboxes, something like:

What I want to see on my home page:

[x] Statuses
[ ] Application notifications
[ ] Game notifications
[x] Photo notifications

and so on for everything that can show up. (Note: Selections in the above example are not meant to be defaults, just what I, personally would select from that subset.)

Secondly, every category should be available on the left hand menu. You removed the "Statuses" choice among others, which has annoyed quite a few users.

Thirdly, bring back the ability to arrange those choices on the left. I have no use for applications or games, so I would prefer those to be in the section that is not displayed unless I click on "More". But I would like to see Notes up there (among others).

I suppose you could tie the checkbox list and the left hand menu together, so that those checked would appear in the top section, and those unchecked would appear in the normally hidden section.

The top menu mechanism needs to stabilize. I don't care if submenus are rollovers or appear on clicking, but pick one and stay with it more or less forever.

Along those lines, the top menus should have submenus wherever possible. For instance, the Profile menu should have a submenu listing the tabs that show up on the profile (Notes, Info, etc.) to let you pick the first tab you want to see at a given time. Messages should have a submenu for Inbox, Sent, Compose, etc.

Finally (for now), please get rid of the minimum screen width requirement. There are still people using monitors with less horizontal resolution than you require, who hate having to scroll. Netbook users, in particular, are going to loathe this. I am currently using my backup monitor (width 1280). My daughter in law is using something similar. We both hate this "feature". Pick the minimum, reasonable space you need on the side[s], and use whatever is left for the remaining content.

Thank you.

Miles O'Neal (and scads of others, based on his current, Facebook home page)