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Facebook is what church and bathing used to be: a daily, comforting, familiar ritual. And so it’s not without cause that people go nuts whenever it’s redesigned. But if you thought Timeline was radical, check out this (unofficial) prototype.
The mockup, by Australian art director & designer Fred Nerby, drops the vertical look we’ve been using for over half a decade, takes a sledgehammer to it, and then rearranges it in a series of tiles and panels, swimming and flipping around each other like a cross between Windows Metro and—dare I say it—New MySpace. But in a good way.
A few lovely things stand out immediately: it’s gorgeous, taking the big graphics of Timeline and making them bigger. Bigger images are almost always a good thing. The experimental design also splits your news feed into an enormous panel with your close friends, and a slimmer set of dispatches from the rest of the social riff raff—a sorting process Real Facebook still doesn’t make very easy. It’s also a widescreen beauty—using this on a tablet would be a joy.
On the other hand, a redesign this sweeping would probably result in the collapse of severa world economies from the sheer amount of whining from Facebook’s ultra-conservative users whining in unison. All one billion of them. But it’s still fun to pretend. [Fred Nerby via Abdel Ibrahim]
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Facebooks approach has become increasingly linear – it is now easier than ever to keep track of when a post was made, and how it relates to you. This redesign would go in the complete opposite direction, and ‘free’ the post style. Unfortunately, the reason Pinterest and the new MySpace really don’t appeal is because I like the Timeline approach; I like to know when stuff was done, and to have things ordered consistently. This would go against a simple UX.
I quite like it, however, it would be confusing to most – I’m pretty sure I’d get lost a couple of times with it. Also, I don’t actually know anyone who has photos which are good enough to make those huge spaces seem worthwhile. Even those who are good at photography have the annoying friends who tag them in terrible photos.
If Microsoft buys Facebook, it will look like this.
This all looks very well and good when you are able to hand pick the images that display. The actual imagery you’d see on comparison on a real feed would be much more disappointing.
Yep lots of duckfaces, instagram shots of meals and out of focus drunk shots. Or maybe that’s just my newsfeed?
Its pretty, but FAR too complex; I think theres a reason why FB go with the streamlined vertical approach. It avoids information overload by bombarding the viewer with too many things to see.
God no, if it looked like that i’d use it even less than I do now. Why is everyone so obsessed with making everything look hideous like Metro?!
Very fresh and appealing – although, if they were to introduce a new layout like this I think they would definitely need to keep the current layout as an option!
Expect to see the windows 8 tiles become the new web style for 2013
Yep couldn’t agree more – this looks great and Facebook needs to get with a more modern interface asap. People will whine as always but then they are about Windows 8 and if we listened to the whiners we’d all still be using DOS 3.3
When you grow up you will find the world is interested in debate and critism for without it we learn nothing and you wont either.
Facebook is like a supermarket, they have to rearrange the shelves every few months to keep the experience fresh and flog more canned beans. It will indeed probably carry a Win 8 look this year but will move on to some other fashion next year. Got to keep it interesting for the plebs.
In absolute terms the Win 8 interface is a crock of shite on a large screen with a mouse and keyboard but is fine for smartphones. Expect increasing criticism until they give a multi window desktop interface back to business users.
Well you did hit the nail on the head there – Facebook is a place for holiday snaps, bitchiness, self-promotion and chatting. I think the ‘plebs’ took it over long ago so naturally market it towards them. Make it shiny and pretty to use. It isn’t at present.
Agree with you that Win 8 ‘metro’ is not my preferred interface although a few of the apps are useful for news reading but not much else on the desktop.
As to usability, well I have no problems with Win 8 as I use it pretty much the same way I did Win 7 with everything on the taskbar or desktop shortcuts. As I said, the ‘metro’ side of things – well, amusing so far but not sold for non-touch purposes.
I do however stick by agreeing with the OP about Win 8 tiles being the style of the year for the web as many of my clients are asking for their implementation for both desktop and web. Nothing wrong with going ‘fisher price’ as someone has called them before. Surely simple interfaces are what it is all about?
This looks siiiick. I’ve always thought facebook looks meh at best. I’m sure it would take a bit of getting used to, but actually this interface looks like it could work a lot better. Ah well, back to reality.
No. Unless the title was rhetorical in which case ignore this comment.