I use Facebook more than MySpace for some things just because I think Facebook is more “adult” — the real name thing, more people from work, et al. More often than not, i’ll update my status over there and really don’t use MySpace for that work kind of thing, because, well, I view it as more as the local bar where Facebook is Starbucks where you discuss work and business.
However, uploading photos is a bear, and it demonstrates a real need for examining the taxonomy and labeling of a site. I ran into this over the weekend when I had some professional photos taken of me. I wanted to upload one so I didn’t look like I walked in from the prehistoric period and I had just invented the mouse wheel.
Upon arriving at your home page, there’s an application called Photos that shows everyone’s photos (which is where I clicked first, figuring, hell, I’ll manage my photos in the place where it says Photos). You can select Photos of Me, you can’t upload a photo. You can create a photo album, but there’s no link to says, “Upload Photo, Yo.”
I unless have a serious need to add 1,000 photo albums to my profile without any photos, creating a new photo album is completely useless to me. I would guess that 80 percent of the users have less than 20 albums, tops, so the importance of creating new photo albums is overstated, much like my demise.
(Props to Jason Hewitt for pointing out my overzealous use of Yo.)
I click on my name on the top right corner, and I arrive at editing my profile. I see a number of links front and center:
Maybe if I go to my profile, I can find something?There’s an Add Photos link there, but because of the labeling and taxonomy (it’s under the Wall tab), I think I’m adding photos to my Wall. Why would I do that? I just wanted to upload one photo and replace my profile photo. It has nothing to do with my Wall.
But wait, there’s more!
I hovered over the profile photo accidentally and saw an edit picture link. (Never mind there was no way to know that I could even edit the picture — that was an interesting surprise.) I was able to click on the photo, and it showed me a number of photos I could select, but I couldn’t upload photos from there either.
Note the frustration level growing, but alas the treasure hunt continues!
I click on the Photos tab, and I see my albums, but I still don’t see a place to add a photo. After returning to my home page by selecting the back button on the browser, I figured out the Post a Photo was how I added one. When I did figure out how to upload a photo, the default action after I had figured out how to add a photo wasn’t that, but of creating an album:
And once a photo is up, figuring out how to change the album requires a fortune teller. Can you tell me where I can move the photo to another album is?
Frankly, managing photos and albums shouldn’t be this hard, but it illustrates how labeling and placement within a tab selection is very, very important. I shouldn’t have to take eight or so clicks to get where I want.
I had no idea for months where I could upload the photos, and since this is one of the main features of Facebook (Face is in the name, for god sakes), ease of use for managing photos is important, and I could spend one day with their developers to change it. If there is a Photos tab, that should make it very clear than you can upload and manage photos from that Photos tab, and it’s difficult to find to with Facebook, because it’s under Wall.
Placement of tabs and other links an taxonomy is very important, because there’s an implied meaning of what a link does depending on where it sits in the taxonomy. Here, I had no idea that the Post a Photo wasn’t just to The Wall, but to my profile. I’ve had friends ask how to upload photos (some of whom are Information Architects themselves!), and they couldn’t figure it out either.
It makes much more sense to me to put some of those links under Photos than the Wall.
(And seriously, someone at Facebook should be looking at the usage logs and have figured this one out, already.)
MySpace does a great job of handling this feature in its new interface, why can’t Facebook?
As a side note: I’ve messaged Mark Zuckerberg about this article — let’s see how long he takes to respond.
Let’s bailout the GM’s of the world while we let the tech companies suffer. Ha!
Stolen from VentureBeat.
You’ve solved the problem!
You’re implementing Drupal, SharePoint or something else that’s a “content management system”, and you’re getting the client involved in creating the content. One problem — getting them to use the content management system is impossible.
Seriously, I’m all for putting power in the client’s hands, but they have to be prepared for that power, and most of the time the person “given” that power has many more things to do than edit content in a website or extranet.
Here’s a few more truths about content management system and how they affect clients.
All clients love the idea of editing their own site, but have no idea what it takes to create content. It means sitting down, opening up Microsoft Word and actually putting thought into the words that you are going to write. And that’s a lot of work, and they usually have no one on staff to do that task. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients wanting to edit their sites because it’s been sitting for months, and they’ve forgotten the password.
Once they get in, they usually get out as quickly as possible, and ask you to add the photo or make the change.
Having that power and using that power are two different things, and many a time the client just throws up their hands and expects the company that implements the CMS to add the content.
What to avoid? Write in the contract that you aren’t responsible for content until you are responsible for it when the client is footing the bill.
Some CMSes, like SharePoint and SilverStripe, are straightfoward to use and for the most part don’t require extensive training to get the ball moving; within five minutes of each, I can train someone on how to add a page, how to edit content, and how to upload files.
Some of the other CMSes? I would never want my mom opening up Joomla.
Ever.
The reason they’ve brought you in for the project is not only for your design skills, but for your technical skills. The reality is that most companies small enough to want to go open source are also too small to maintain a site if it gets much further than changing out some text because their staff isn’t technical enough. Open source doesn’t mean free, and that free sometimes comes with technical overhead.
What to avoid? Put in time for training. A lot of it.
When you use “free software”, you sometimes get what you pay for, and the client will never understand why you’re using it, other than, “you’re billing me for this, why doesn’t it work?”
The open source CMSes are what they are: developed by programmers that have a love of developing software, but sometimes do things their own ways or they aren’t thoroughly tested. Some clients don’t understand this, and figure the CMS should be bug free right from the get go.
Whatever system you select, explain to the client there’s going to be an upgrade path, and associated costs with it. This may mean some kind of maintenance deal in the future that’s like dependent on the upgrades coming out.
What to avoid? Have a very real conversation with the client about what open source means, and explain to them all software is buggy. Seriously.
The client is fully engaged, learns how to use tool in a way cavemen learned how to use fire, then “burns” themselves the first way through.
Bob down the hall in accounting can barely spell information architecture, much less construct one, and a single workshop over an hour isn’t going to give someone enough training when some of us have been honing our craft for years. It’s about planning, and poor planning for some CMS implementations can be death for user adoption. Or, how’s your company intranet holding up?
What to avoid? Book an information architect all the way through the project. If they are engaged, they can give the guidance needed for the site, and it will save time and money in the long run.
Yeah, yeah, I’m going to catch up — it’s been chaotic the last few days.
While I’m getting my stuff together, here’s a great post over at FreelanceSwitch about web design projects that can easily be applied to user experience projects.
So I finally did it: I broke down and got an iPhone.
I like it a lot (more than I thought I was going to like it), and can definately see the koolaid drinking Applesters going gaga over it.
A few things i’ve noticed about it:
It’s definately better that the Motorola Q i’ve been using. Any thoughts?
I’ve been receiving inquiries about posting jobs here. Because of this, I’ll be posting new opportunities every Monday. Some of them aren’t pure User Experience, but they do have some kind of User Experience or Open Source slant to them. If you see anything here, or are looking for a job, send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com. Recruiters, also send along a note, I’d like to offer the blog as another channel.
An international entertainment company is looking for a contract UNIX or Linux Systems Administrator with four to six years experience to join their systems administration team. The company produces entertainment properties for the web and mobile networks, and is looking to fill this position in the mobile division.
The position is contract.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact