Managing User Expectations
There’s been quite a backlash from the Facebook community recently about Facebook’s latest UI change. One thing I learned recently is when you push out new features or change existing features, you don’t want to bunch too many of them and release it all at the same time. It creates too much of a dissonance in user’s expectation and mental model. Here’s why.
Users hate learning to do the same thing differently
Once you learn to do a task a specific way, you hate to relearn it especially if the value proposition is not understood within the first use. Users develop a mental model in how things should work. When you drive a car, any car, you have the same expectation that the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals are in the same place. With today’s technology, you could actually build a far simpler design. Why not have a joystick to replace your steering wheel, brake and accelerator? On technical merits it sounds like a great idea. But in reality, it creates a major dissonance in people’s mind. It requires too much of a leap. Users are lazy, myself including. We hate to learn a new interface to achieve the same thing.
Users expect the same behavior from the same action
This pertains to the output of doing the same task. Ask any car enthusiast and they will tell you every car brand has its own distinct personality. The steering wheel, clutch, brake and accelerator may be the same for every car but the output is different. BMW focuses on a “harder” ride but greater responsiveness and “feel” of the road. Mercedes focuses on a “softer” rider but greater appreciation for refinement. Then there’s front-engine vs. mid-engine vs. rear-engine, front-wheel drive vs. rear wheel drive and a plethora of other factors that define a car’s behavior despite the same user interface. But here’s the kicker. Your devoted users, your loyal fans, follow your product just as much for your product’s personality as the product itself. Harley Davidson riders demand the same exhaust “wroom” sound despite the fact that their current engines no longer produce that signature. Die-hard Porsche 911 fans demand the same rear-engine slight over-steer bias because that’s where the “fun” is.
Coming back to Facebook, it is the latter issue that is affecting current users. The newsfeed still works as promised but the personality of the feed has changed. In their bid to compete against or be more like Twitter, Facebook pushed for a more real-time feed. So you get status updates faster. But what you loose is the signal-to-noise ratio. Facebook’s previous implementation, while not real-time, aggregated information better for you. Pictures and mundane updates like who friended who were better grouped under a single heading. This lack of aggregation and also lack of ability to control what comes through, is a major dissonance to many users. In the first release of their redesign, you had no control on what you want to see from a user. All you had was “hide”. This pissed me off greatly because while I may not be interested in the gazillion twits from a user, I may still want other types of updates from that person. Fortunately Facebook brought the ability to hide by application in response to the wave of “quiz” applications that have overtaken newsfeeds recently.
What people will need to get used to now is the fact that Facebook has skewed their bias from intelligent feed aggregation to real-time feeds. In other words, it is behaving more like Twitter, and less like a friend who helps you make better sense of your feed through intelligent grouping. With the amount of publicity and love that Twitter currently is enjoying in the limelight, I believe this move is here to stay.
Colin Wong lives with his wife and three kids in the always sunny, never rainy wonderful land of Seattle.
