Interesting take on Twitter’s UX from people who would know.
Twitter’s UX: Separate the hits from the geekhacks – (37signals)
By extension, this means URL shortening and attaching pictures should be more functional, which sounds agreeable until you get to the design.
Facebook takes a literal approach to “what are you sharing?” by adding types (e.g. status, link, photo, video, question) which is something we did in the last version of Connect.
Types are great until you aren’t providing one, or people share something without an easy fit.
In other words, by offering to do more for the user, you also offer to do more when you’re not doing enough, which leads to madness and messy design.
On the other hand, Twitter’s sparse UX can be confusing, but is flexible enough to support hacks that become new UX.
Anyway, interesting food for thought. Eat and comment.
“If you don’t understand how Twitter works, this product is not for you.” – comment from some guy named Ian
I wish I had time to list all the things wrong there. But I’m still giggling about the tranny bass player.
Twitter’s executives have been saying “it’s too hard to get started with Twitter” for over a year now. Tough to debate that point. The usage patterns show that most people start and stop for an extended period before becoming true users.
This is a weird departure for a team like 37 Signals. They usually preach simplicity, but in this case, they want clutter? Or maybe they have a solution.