In the last month or so, the New Facebook haters seem to have been less active, and therefore less obnoxious. I think this has happened for at least two reasons (not that you didn’t think it wouldn’t happen):
- People realized when you receive a FREE service, especially on the level of this kind of software, complaining about and threatening the company really doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s like a homeless guy throwing a tantrum because they changed his favorite soup at the Community Kitchen. Really it is.
- People adapt. They get used to things. They get over things. (Thankfullly.) This is why I was almost giddy to fill up my Jeep Grand Cherokee for $2.959 a gallon on Friday evening. I still remember when, as an 18 year old, gas started to go up, and it was costing me a whopping $29.00 to fill up my Nissan coupe. (Now it costs me over $60.00. Thankfully I’m not mowing grass anymore for a living.) My point is, as things change around people, those people adapt or evolve to meet those challenges.
Now for the axiom. The above information was even more free than the info to follow.
- In the battle of creativity versus usability in design, it is vital that usability runs the show.
First of all, I can’t ever recall anyone (EVER) telling me how great they thought the original facebook design was. Sure they LOVED using it. Duh! you always prefer usability over creativity. (I’m going to retract “always,” because I can already think of some situations that disprove that.) The ironic thing is, (typically) when a Web site design is out-of-the-box creative, the more cutting edge it is, oftentimes usability is a few steps behind. The truth is, it is much easier to be conceptually creative than it is to deliberately practical.
Example: Flash is cool. Sometimes, it’s jaw-dropping. But when menus start floating and the page starts spinning, usability becomes like the loose paper in the back seat when you’re driving with the windows down on a sunny afternoon. It’s forgotten and often lost. Here are two sites where I think this has happened. I only say this because I’ve tried to USE both of them. To be fair, I thought they were extremely cool the first time I visited them, but if I had to go there again and get vital information, I would be slightly frustrated from the start. To be fair, both of these organizations were aiming for “Web environments,” not just an info-driven site. Again, these sites are both cool, but you can see that usability was not el primo priority.
- Case Study 1 — “Floating Menu” — Visit site.
- Case Study 2 — “Rotating Site” — Visit site.
At the end of the day, Facebook doesn’t offer us any new insight. It simply reveals what is already true from a different angle. Consider yourself “axiomized.”
