Bad Design: Fate or Negligence?

The recent redesign of Facebook (in addition to a client that simply insisted that I adapt his design for a Myspace page), has prompted some curious morbidity on my part. Admittedly, this whole topic of the beauty of social networking design is completely missing the point – the purpose of these apps is to drive traffic & ad sales, not to please the design gods with perfect padding and scannable page hierarchy… but that said, when mediocre design turns into bad design, at what point do little things like font usage and margins begin to harm the business goal of the site?

MySpace & the Shriek Heard Round the World

When Myspace first came out, web designers all over the world shrieked in anguish over a complete disregard for style, beauty, and page hierarchy (if comments are the central theme of the site, why are they nested on the bottom of the page, as if hidden?). When it was discovered that you could add your own custom CSS and HTML coding to Myspace to “customize” your own page, we cringed at what the masses of heathen teenagers would do with their newfound power, while we simultaneously harbored excitement at the idea that we could design our pages to be better than theirs.

This second emotion, let’s call it hope, was of course, false – in fact, there are few examples in the world that fit the phrase “lipstick on a pig” better than a well-trained web designer attempting to elegantly skin Myspace. The most successful designers were the ones that smuggly threw away all of MySpace’s styles and started from scratch… or of course, my favorite, which displayed nothing but a blank page.

Same Infrastructure, New Lipstick

Sadly, after several years of the same design (and promises of a revolutionary redesign), MySpace remains the same sad, bloated, overly-customizable social site that people grow out of the same way they grow out of high-school fashion trends. Sure, they have a new “Profile Editor 2.0″, but it amounts to a pathetic re-application of lipstick on a tired old infrastructure.

Greedy Tom & Executive Anti-Designism

The fact is that without an intelligent designer with veto power within the higher echelon’s of the company, you get what I’m going to call the “GreedyTom” effect (named after the supposed designer of MySpace). The effect goes something like this:

1. Programmer designs awesome functional app.
2. Designer is hired to make it usable, beautiful, and streamlined while removing bloat and implementing best practices.
3. Traffic soars on a wave of viral messages across the community.
4. Original programmer(s) can’t keep up with the megalithic site status.
5. Media mega-corp execs jump in.
6. Advertising is implemented in the most aggressive ways possible.
7. Users revolt.
8. Execs roll back 50% of the updates to appease the crowd.
9. Repeat steps 6-8 a few times.
10. Traffic dwindles on the site as users migrate to the next new thing.

Yes, I can be smug too. See how I removed step 2 because I’m talking about Myspace?

How Facebook Fixed It

Kidding aside though, this is actually quite similar to how Facebook started out as well. On the heels of user migration away from MySpace, Facebook began to pick up steam because it addressed the very reasons that ordinary people were beginning to hate MySpace:

• Facebook didn’t allow users to re-style pages. Ever.
• Customization came through plugins, widgets, and apps, which were all forced to adhere to strict design standards (sorta).
• Facebook carefully crafted a uniform visual experience that kept the noise (and advertising) to a minimum.

How Facebook Broke It

Then, in a feverish attempt to capitalize on the new user-base, the execs jumped in. First it was whispers of data collections. Then it was advertising. Then it was targetted advertising. Then it was company-specific pages where it used to be only people with an educational email address… the list goes on.

Fast forward to last week, when Facebook released it’s new design. Let me say first that I actually appreciate some of the functional things that they are trying to accomplish. The efforts of the Facebook team are admirable in that they genuinely seem to be trying to offer value to users & they did it in a way that respected their users. That’s all great, but it’s not what I’m griping about. What I’m griping about is the lack of concern for design standards on a site that was originall founded on design standards.

I won’t go into too much detail, but here was my first impression of the redesign:

They’ve taken up 120px of sidebar space for something that frankly, I’m not gonna use more than once or twice. Some people might use it, that’s cool. But allow an opt-out close button for this and they’d be golden – or better yet – make the filters a set of tabs at the top so I can ignore em if I want. Don’t be dumb Facebook.

(later) and while I’m ranting… there’s so many simple rookie mistakes across this redesign. Padding isn’t consistent. Border usage is all over the place (blue some places, lt grey others, dark grey in still other places). Font usage isn’t tightly controlled. Sure, I’m being nitpicky at the moment, but these tiny details add up the massive pile of complaints that people are submitting now. It’s not user backlash against the ‘new thing’ in this case; its backlash at a standards-less design move. Ok. End rant.

Ignore Design Standards at Your Own Peril

The lesson here seems pretty simple: adhere to the same design standards that you began with, especially when you’re rolling out major functional updates to a site. But what happened? Even through the most aggressive Facebook moves of the past, they did it with a certain grace and attention to detail that you really had to work at it to be provoked. This latest update was borderline-amateurish. It was as if the executive team had hired programmers to go to work without ever consulting a design team… or perhaps there was a designer on staff, but nobody listened… heck, I’ve even considered that there might be value in releasing ‘low polish’ updates to FB simply because it gives them press twice (first when they break it, then when they fix it). Who knows. The result is the same. Poor design in is released in a previously well controlled environment.

Fate or Negligence?

So what gives? Is it the crowd that ultimately drives executives into a fever that forces them to silence the designers on board? In my history of working with major corps, there are generally very good business reasons when a ‘good’ design decision is put to pasture… but this one leaves my head scratching, because frankly, they don’t stand to benefit. Ad space hasn’t been increased, no new functional powers have been given to sponsors, and they’re actually encouraging less clickthroughs as their new wall is ‘real time’. So again, what gives? Is it fate, or negligence?

Oh, and before I get the comment: “holy sarcasm batman! the redesign isn’t that bad!”. You’re right. My eyes aren’t bleeding – this is a philosophical discussion that begs a question about how a crowd pressures moves against design standards, and little more

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