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Digg, the social news-aggregation and recommendation site, recently re-launched as version 4.0 to a storm of controversy coming from a significant number of long-term users. Reworking and relaunching a website with a new user interface design is a delicate matter. Usually the goal behind such an overhaul of the UI design is to make it more attractive and easy to use for the website’s users. Often, changes are done iteratively to optimize the GUI. When done right consensus should be that the new interface design is a marked improvement and should lead to an uptake by new users. The fourth iteration of Digg's user interface design takes a cue from Twitter and Facebook, something a number of social networks seem to be doing more and more of. And with good reason too! The popularity of both websites cannot be put down to a mere fluke. These two websites are busy setting the pace as far as conventions on social networks go. The revolt against the new interface design has already claimed casualties as Digg's VP of engineering was fired. The biggest gripe users have with the new Digg, in terms of user interface design, is the lack of the 'bury' button. Now users can only 'like' a news story but cannot 'bury' it to make the news story less popular. The reasoning behind the lesion of the 'bury' button is that users abused the feature. Now users have the option to either report a story, should they find it offensive, or they can 'hide' a story. 'Diggers' became attached to the bury button and as such removing it was bound to backfire. Another aspect of the UI design that users were attached to was the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. According to TNW's Alex Wilhelm the new up/down arrows are simply not endearing enough. Worse still, Digg's less popular competitor Reddit uses arrows, which gives Digg even less reason to incorporate such icons into its new user interface design. Another complaint was the lack of the 'Upcoming' news section which lowers “the ability of Digg users to craft the editorial line of the website, in effect neutering the people who tend Digg and give it its character”. Although the navigation is easier, the default homepage has been changed from 'Top News' to 'My News'. As of writing there is still no way to change that setting. Perhaps with a little time users will come to love the new 'My News' page. From a usability perspective, the switch to the Cassandra database management system has been fraught with bugs following massive uptime and reliability problems. Despite all the protestations Digg's future, it would seem, is still intact. They have had a number of revolts in the past already. When version 3 of Digg's user interface design was released they also received a number of complaints from users but over time a lot of the issues were resolved. It will be interesting to see how Digg will react to appease users. ==================== About the Author: ==================== Pidoco.com – Interface Design, Wireframing Software, Wireframing Tool, Interface Design Software, Interface Prototyping, Usability Testing, Wireframes Clickable Wireframes and Digital Paper. User centered design for improved user interface design or UI design .
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