Facebook. the social networking giant, has gone through growing pains of trials and errors to create the interface that people, and advertisers, love to use. To do that, on March 7th, 2014, Facebook redesigned its News Feed again.
The update of the new News Feed comes almost exactly a year to after the social network showed off its idea of a 'bigger' News Feed. The new design, which is actually a similar version of last year's News Feed, comes with bigger images and new fonts (Helvetica for Macs and Arial for PCs). These are meant for a better match for the mobile version that people see on their smartphones.
Facebook redesigned its News Feed back because the former version never had that much appeal to the masses. It was only rolled out to a fraction of its users, but almost all disliked it. Therefore, if your Facebook's News Feed doesn't look all that different to you, this is because you never received the former design.
As an addition to the new 'old' design, Facebook has scrapped the prominent box with the separate feeds, introduces a new "card" arrangement, bolder presentation for images; and a lighter and more simplified left-hand column that is now gray - changes that will give the desktop experience more parity with Facebook’s mobile apps.
The changes that Facebook made are entirely cosmetic. None of the changes affect advertisements, or how Facebook surfaces content to people.
Facebook wanted to take some time to really think them through. Over the year, the social network has been its taking time to listen what people think about the former design. And apparently, users found it difficult to understand what parts were working and what parts were not, and the changes were getting in the way of using Facebook.
One of the most common problem was on the left column. The dark-themed sidebar, which collapsed into a strip of icons depending on the screen size was just too confusing and a challenge for many people. People didn't have the space and needed to scroll.
"That's a particular design idea that looked cool but didn't help you get around the site," said News Feed product manager Greg Marra.
Facebook has also redesigned and simplified what were previously considered complex post types. If a friend commented on a post about a link that two friends shared, indentations - while accurate in terms of attribution - made things look really messy, Marra says.
On the changes to Helvetica and Arial fonts, Facebook is aiming to create something that feels more "like a system font" - it look a lot like the fonts already in use elsewhere on your computer. In general, the aim is to simplify the complexities.
Attachments will get their own space, with links presented in Georgia titles (a serif font). And shared photos will be full width, with multiple photos coming up as a collage.
Marra said that the things the company is evaluating how people use the site and where are they going. "We wanted to pay attention to qualitative feedback this time. It's hard to tell what’s working and what's not so we talked to people as we did the update. We put usability studies first."
Another noticeable change is that there is a big search bar at the top of the screen. English-speaking users will see a Graph Search bar, where they can type in queries. Non English-speaking users will see ordinary search results, like people, places, and Pages.
Facebook's News Feed, the main service it's giving, is far from revolutionary. It's not easy for Facebook to make changes when it has over 1.2 billion users, and seeking for more. This is one of the reasons Facebook founded Creative Labs, a new division tasked with building experimental products that are seen to be too progressive for its large user base.
Creative Labs' first product, Paper, is a fun and novel approach to News Feed that's far from what people had expected from Facebook's design team.
Facebook has learned its lesson: mobile and desktop are not equal. Last year's redesign was pitched as way to create a similar design on desktop and mobile apps.
"We recognize that while we strive for design consistency, part of that is recognizing that the way you use things on a PC is different from how you use things on your phone," says Marra, "but it's important that we cut these from the same cloth."