|
University of Washington graduate student Parmit Chilana worked asan intern at the social networking giant last year, and, during hertime there, interviewed Facebook engineers and design specialiststo learn about how they build and deploy new features for theservice. Chilana discussed her report, which she co-authored withother researchers at the University of Washington and Facebookitself, at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference onHuman Factors in Computing Systems, being held this week in Austin,Texas. Facebook has an audience that would make user bases of even thelargest software products seem small in comparison, Chilanaexplained. As of latest count, the social networking service hasover 845 million users. And it is an audience as diverse as itlarge: Facebook supports over 70 different languages. About 80percent of its users live outside of the U.S. and Canada. "Even if only 1 percent of the users were dissatisfied, that wouldstill represent close to 10 million users," Chilana said. "Mostsoftware companies don't even have a user base of 10 million users.So you can imagine the impact of [Facebook's] design choices can beenormous." While its users may grumble about periodic privacy infractions orbuggy new features, Facebook has largely been able to continue toincrease its user base and keep them involved. About 50 percent ofits users log on every day, and interact with more than 900 millionobjects that Facebook stores on their behalf. Chilana sought to identify what perceptions those in charge ofFacebook's user interface held about what makes for a successfuluser interface. She interviewed 17 Facebook employees -- softwareengineers, product designers and product managers. She queried themabout the decisions they had to make when launching a new productor feature and asked how decision choices fit in with the company'sbusiness priorities. Chilana's work "is one of the very first studies of Facebook's[design] process," said Wayne Lutters, a computer science associateprofessor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, whomoderated Chilana's talk. Only recently has the company "slowlystarted opening its doors to outsiders," wishing to learn moreabout its development process, he said. As a baseline, Chilana used the generally agreed upon principles ofgood software user interface design, as espoused by John Gould andClayton Lewis in a 1985 paper " Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think ." Gould and Lewis stressed iterative design, a focus on usertesting and user-focused design in general. While many product designers tend not to be aware of suchprinciples, Facebook relies heavily on such ideas, Chilana found."Over half the interview participants explicitly identified userexperience as a key factor in driving design on Facebook," Chilanasaid. Facebook also values iteration. One engineer told Chilana that thecompany "will just try to get something out there, make sure it isreasonable and then iterate on the design based on how people areusing it," she said. "Design is hard," another designer told her."Just doing our best with very smart people, we screw up plenty." This approach is not always easy given the size and variety ofFacebook's user base. One engineer told Chilana that "once you getaway from the core features, it is not necessarily obvious thatthere is a magic way that a feature could work in a way thateveryone can find value in it," she said. Engineers often have todesign for the least common denominator, she said. Many proposedadvance features don't get implemented because the adoption ratewould be too small to make the work worthwhile. Engineers cannot simply rely on intuition. Early on in thecompany's history, Facebook engineers added many features on thepremise that if they thought the feature would be cool or useful,so too would the users. The company is slowly moving away from thismindset, Chilana said. New features, such as a photo upload button,must be equally intuitive to a 90-year-old Mongolian grandmother asto a 14-year-old Brazilian soccer player, one engineer toldChilana. Even with user satisfaction in mind, Facebook designers are notafraid of implementing a cutting-edge feature that fulfills thecompany's long-term vision of what a futuristic social-networkingsite should be like, even if it causes short-term dissatisfactionwith users. When Facebook introduced the Timeline format last year , for instance, some users complained that it was clunky anddifficult to use. One engineer praised the company for not being afraid of makingchanges even if it causes some dissatisfaction. In some cases, suchas the controversial Timeline, Facebook will give users the optionto update to a new feature before rolling it out across the entiresite. This works to minimize the disruption caused by the newfeature, as well as giving the company engineers more time to tweakthe design. Despite its size, Facebook faces the "same frustrations" that otherorganizations do when trying to design good interfaces for theirusers, Lutters said. "It's a very familiar tale, even if the stakesare much higher." "It's a positive affirmation that they are doing the thingseveryone is else is doing to stay current, relevant and focused,"Lutters said. "If there is a secret sauce, she wasn't able touncover it." Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technologybreaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson . Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Zeltiq Coolsculpting Machine , Elight Machine Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Cavitation Vacuum Slimming Machine.
Related Articles -
Zeltiq Coolsculpting Machine, Elight Machine Manufacturer,
|
