Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

It’s easy to forget just how quickly Facebook has risen since bursting onto the British scene (as a measurable force) in the summer of 2006. It may now hold 45% share of the market but with its drastic overhaul of its user interface will it manage to maintain this share?

I’ve recently taken my first look at the new Facebook design and I’m instantly unsure.
Firstly the interface is much wider. Looking at the positioning of the columns on the homepage I can’t help but feel it’s unbalanced. I’m not sure I like not having a border to contain the news feed section in either. I like the changes to the navigation – I have to agree that it does offer an easier set of route options.

Moving to my profile page the first thing I notice is that all this new white space has been irritatingly filled with two sectioned off adverts on the right hand side. Their new prime position on the actual profile page simply means these ad’s really stick out – great for advertiser, really irritating to me (even though I admire the targeting intelligence).

One clear advantage I have found is when looking at ‘application addicts’ profile pages. These pages have resorted back to a loadable page, just like pre-application days. On saying this, to my dis-appointment they have removed the ability to write on your own wall, which was always fun to mock as newbie Facebooker’s learnt to use this feature.

I really don’t like the fact that they have combined news feed updates with ‘the wall’. I think this subtracts from their attempts to simplify the interface, and simply makes its look messy. I’m not really sure what advantage this gives, when the homepage is specifically for this purpose?
There are a few aspects of the new design that I think will really enhance the users experience of Facebook, but overall it’s too much too fast. Look out for petition groups and campaigns to restore it to the original design!

A very interesting article on Usability News has been published quite recently entitled Web 2.0 ‘distracts good design’ which raises a very interesting point:

As web 2.0 technologies become more mainstream, there is a clear risk that in turn this will result in poor usability practices and user experiences

A parallel that I can draw from this is based on my experience as lead user experience designer at Littlewoods Shop Direct. Having worked as an offline print designer for 3 years, when I started work in the e-commerce team in 2000, I was able to gain a solid understanding of the differences between offline and online design. During the next 6 years, as the web become more popular, more offline graphic designers and agencies made the move into the online arena, but in the rush to produce exceptional online design work, focused on highly visual and creative solutions rather than the user experience and whether the site is usable.

On the 1 hand there are lots of examples of how web 2.0 can be used to provide compelling, rich and user friendly solutions, a large selection which can be seen over at the SEO Mozs’ web 2.0 awards.

On the other hand I do agree with the Usability News article (and more specifically Jakob Nielsen) that we will see executions of web 2.0 functionality and interaction which unfortunately fails to provide good user experiences.

As yet the current wave of web 2.0 sites have been developed using highly talented user interface designers alongside strong technical developers, but I don’t think it will be too long that the same technical developers will be asked to develop solutions from less experienced ‘print-to-web’ designers who perhaps have less groundings in the principles of good usability and user experience.

Personally speaking (through PRWD) I am starting to work on projects which will benefit from web 2.0 developments and user interactions (with a complete focus on the user experience), and I look forward to sharing these on this blog.

As a business and personal user of Google Analytics, along with being a user interface designer, it is great to now be using the new Google Analytics interface, which has been given a significant user interface redesign.

The amount of data that is recorded by Google Analytics and is therefore made available through the interface is vast, which makes both the information architecture and user experience of this interface critical to the software’s success.

For SME businesses I would thoroughly recommend considering implementing Google Analytics into your site, especially if you currently have no user friendly and multi-leveled way of accessing statistics to your site visitor behaviour.

There is already significant articles on the subject of the new Google Analytics interface, so rather than re-inventing the wheel below are links to my most relevant and useful articles reviewing the new interface:

• Avinash Kaushik, an independent consultant and now working for Google as an Analytics Evangelist, provides his view on the 1st 5 things you should do when using v2
• 27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed on Mashable
• The Google Analytics official blog

Hats off to the user interface designers and information architects responsible for the new interface!

A very worthwhile and interesting user interface gallery has recently been promoted by Thomas Baekdal, a Change Advocate and an Information Architect.

The gallery is the work of Chris Messina of Citizen Agency, and 1 quote summarises why this gallery is useful for myself and I expect other user experience and interface designers:

“Reuse, recycle, but don’t reinvent the wheel unless necessary”

by Brian Christiansen at UI Engineering.

E-commerce Design Patterns

Following on from this quote, the term e-commerce design patterns, defined as follows by Mike Baxter, the director of Sales Logiq:

“E-Commerce Design Patterns are a distillation and summary of best practice, that can be applied quickly and effectively to create a variety of specific design solutions”

This area of user experience and usability is one in which I will be posting about in much more detail during the coming months. This is a result of my 6 years experience as lead user experience designer at Littlewoods Shop Direct, designing key e-commerce pages such as homepages, category pages, product detail pages, shopping baskets and personal account areas, along with complete checkout redesign projects, one of which I have produced a an e-commerce conversion case study for checkout case study over at PRWD. This experience from 2000-2006 has provided me with extensive awareness and knowledge of how large blue chip companies are (or not) adopting e-commerce design patterns, and I look forward to sharing these insights here for you to read and comment on.