Nine reasons why Facebook has terrible usability.

Sunday, 02 May 2010 17:51

One of my standard comments Facebook is "Facebook has the worst usability on the planet". Ok, I'm exaggerating, but here's why I think Facebook is hard to use (and therefore ripe to be knocked off it's perch)

Don't get me wrong, I use and recommend Facebook to friends, family and clients but from the perspective of its design and whether it's user centered, I have issues.

Definition: A design is user-centered if it can answer "yes" to the question, "If I come here to do X, can I accomplish it quickly without much thought or effort?"

1. Stop changing things already

I'm not adverse to evolution, but the changes seem random, are often unannounced and don't always make sense. And quite often I have to dig around to find where they've put things or do a bunch as stuff as a result (like check my privacy settings).

2. Where are my friends?

Sometimes I want to look up what so-and-so is doing. But they don't post updates as often as others, so I'll have to go looking for them. I suppose I could search for them. But to get a list of my friends I have to go to my profile, click on the number of friends I have and scroll down the list in the pop-up. There is a link from my home page that says 'friends' - and I expect that to take me to a list of friends - but it doesn't.

3. Fans vs likes

I still don't know how to find the pages I used to be a fan of but now 'like'.  And that's a dumb change in itself. Cynically I know why they've done it....it's part of their strategy to take over the web but I don't have to like it. And semantics matter in usability.

4. Top news vs Most Recent

There is a distinction - Top News shows you what is 'the most interesting' content and Most Recent is real time updates.  Who defines what is 'most interesting'?.  Presume it's those status updates that get the most comments and 'likes'.  But that is going to be different across groups of people.  It's insulting to presume that we're all clones that find the same things interesting.  And to add insult to injury, the 'Most Recent' page is called 'News Feed'.  Good one.

But the real reason this is on the list is that just about everyone I know doesn't know the difference.  Explain it to them and they'll just look blank. 

5. Where's the Help?

Have you noticed that to get help you have to scroll to the bottom of the page?  Helpful that. As are their very succinct explanations. As is the auto-load of more posts that pushes the footer down another screen. You can also find help under Account.  But my husband thought there wasn't any Help.  Enough said.

6. Whoops - don't make a typo!

Cause you can't edit your updates.  So if you make a innocent spelling mistake you either have to delete the post and start again or live with it.

7. Privacy

Facebook's privacy settings are hard to understand for the average punter, and default to being less than private.  Maybe not a usability issue per se - unless you care about your private information.

8. My Mum and Dad don't understand it.

They signed up easily enough and then got stuck.  And my folks are not techno-phobes.  You shouldn't need someone else to explain to you how to use it - should you?

9. Logging out

Ok it's only one extra step:  Account>> logout but somehow it just feels unnecessary.  Maybe they don't want me to log out?

You could argue that people should explore and get to know how Facebook works on their own time and steam.  On the other hand, Facebook has aspirations to rule the web and is so wide-spread that its almost a household name.  With that comes some responsibility.  Or not - but lookout for someone to come up with something smarter and more user-centric. 

Tell us whether you agree/disagree.......