My instant reactions to the new Facebook redesign (#facebook)
First impressions matter. So, in that vein, I just clicked open my Facebook profile, and here’s my immediate reactions:
- Like the new featuring of games and apps in a much more visible space. Much better than the grey bar at the bottom which people couldn’t see.
- Dislike the disappearance of Lists. I use lists quite a lot to see what’s going on in my various groups of friends. It strikes me that Lists could sit where “Friends Online” is. Friends Online could be easily integrated on the right with the Chat window. They’re nested too far inside the interface now.
- I like the Games and Apps dashboards. They seem a little confused (some games turning up in Apps) and I care less about who’s playing games as much as finding actual games to play. But still, on the whole, not bad.
- Really dislike the placement of the search bar. No matter how they push it, Facebook isn’t really a search destination. Its new position feels forced.
- The messages, notifications etc area seems a bit cluttered. It’s because of the dominating Search bar. Does it really need to be that big?
- The consistency of the interface when accessing Events or other stuff is nice. It only goes one level deep though.
- The left sidebar feels visually just a little dominating. It’s a bit too wide, and the central column of content feels squeezed.
All in all, it’s ok. It’s nice that the apps have more visibility, but overall it feels compressed and not entirely friendly to use. The worst part is the insistence of pushing search front and centre when it doesn’t really feel like it’s the primary reason to use Facebook. The de-emphasising of lists is disconcerting, and the split attention of online Friends is somewhat jarring.
