Hot answers tagged social-interfaces
13
Breadcrumbs Rock!
And I think you have a personal bias against them rather then making a clear observation about their use.
I notice none of the big players (StackExchange, Facebook, Google, YouTube) use breadcrumbs.
StackExchange uses tags. Those are like breadcrumbs, but it's an associated way rather then structural.
Facebook uses AJAX inplace ...
11
I do not think this is a secret design. Actually, this is a principle that may be inherited from newspapers or magazines:
It would be impossible to read articles if they had not that three or four columns layout, just because your eyes would lose on which line you are reading and which is the next to read. This minimizes eyebal movements while reading.
...
11
The three lines represent a menu as several links stacked on top of each other. If not already a convention - it is very close to become a cross plattform convention representing a menu. Take a look at this image search on Google: mobile menu button, and see that this is the most used representation for a menu on a mobile device.
And looking closely this is ...
6
The majority of responsive websites (such as Starbucks, Facebook or Path) use the three horizontal stripes icon. An alternative could be the grid icon (depending on how you decide to visualize your menu items) or the three horizontal stripes of different lenghts with a dot, representing “table of contents”.
This article lists some interesting solutions: ...
6
Science: I've read a study last year, saying that the younger generation is unable to differentiate between communication channels: they do remember what did they send to who, but they just can't remember how did they send it.
A quick informal survey on 25-35 year old power users (geeks, hipsters, you know, what friends shall a developer have?) confirmed ...
5
I think it depends on how you have organized your site's data structure. If your site presents information that is hierarchical in nature then breadcrumbs can help navigate 'up' a level to similar data from a leaf node.
of course, it's possible to organize some data into a hierarchical manner even if it isn't necessary.
Nowadays though, sites are trying ...
4
If you're talking about a big pop up as soon as a user loads your site, I would completely advise against it.
Unexpected pop ups associate themselves to bad advertisement practices and would most likely frustrate users.
I would much rather see a well presented header with a "learn about us" button or an introductory video.
4
If you need it to start, you need it ALL the time -- none of this "upon launch" nonsense. Not everyone will find your site at the same time, and what's a good intro before will be a good intro later.
The real question you should ask is "Do I need [X] to explain the service?" If so, you're going to need it all along, and it's just a matter of whether or not ...
4
In my experience breadcrumbs are useful on sites that have some depth in the page hierarchy. The trail shows where the user is in the site hierarchy. Not only that, it also reveals nearby possibly-related content. Third, it's good for search engines so they understand where in the site they are, and can show context of search results.
Use of a breadcrumb ...
3
Here is my opinion about the layout and why it works.
First, we as humans tend to read from left-to-right/right-to-left. We all know that.
Long line lengths are bad for reading, but that doesn't necessarily apply to youtube, unless you enjoy reading the comments while listening to the video.
Even if we take into account our reading direction, that doesn't ...
3
I don't suppose this is a question that will see definitive answers unless we wrangle designers for the sites you mention. In response to the three questions, I would venture "yes", "yes", "no", but I would also propose some other possible explanations not represented:
We're talking about user experience, of course, but a designer is a sort of user. We ...
3
While there some usability concerns around line-lengths, I think there are two main reasons why this layout is so popular.
Design control. Designers have much more control over how the website will look using the popular fixed-width, centered layout as page elements will not move around or change size at the mercy of the users browser window size.
Ease of ...
3
If you are only going to show it to them, then it is fine to show it. If someone has signed up with a facebook account, they would have already agreed to allow you to see their profile pic.
If you are going to make it publicly viewable, then it is not okay to do it unless you get explicit permission from them first. You could by default not show it and ...
3
Clippy's problems:
1) Invasive
2) Visually unappealing
3) Lacked UI integration with any of the other Office features
To make it better:
1) Have Clippy be an obvious feature that can be enabled or disabled. Preferably the first time you run the program (and not with every new session).
2) Instead of randomly appearing and floating in the document, make ...
2
I think this paper may give you the answers you are looking for:
http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37843.html
Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+
Abstract: Online social networks have become indispensable tools for information sharing, but existing ‘all-or-nothing’ models for sharing have made it difficult for users to target information to ...
2
I don't like the use of tabs, because tabs imply different content in each tab. When you merely change the sorting, you see essentially the same content or data-set, only in a different way.
This might be a little old-fashioned, but sorting or filtering is intuitively controlled with radio buttons, or even dropdown box, in case the sorting is changed ...
2
Any system need to follow simple rules, without cognitive load of any kind - which make me think you're comlicating things. Tha last option is the worst, since we don't want one link to open two pages (comment page and link page). That would scare user off and possibly also make a few browsers thinking you're using dark patterns. Remember the endless popup ...
1
Even if facebook and other popular sites use the 3 line icon and that should be enough to think that people will understand its meaning.
I would say that if the access to your menu is important you should use a link labeled something like "menu".
In facebook for example the menu is secondary as the most important thing in its mobile usage is the post feed.
...
1
Something similar to Benny's answer
Mobile Settings Button
However, that three-liner icon (as suggested by Benny) is more popular and intuitive
1
Personally, I like breadcrumbs or their equivalent and can think of two immediate examples where I use them a lot.
1) searching for a product from the Amazon homepage, going through a couple of other steps and arriving at a list of products with breadcrumbs showing me where I am
(even though I didn't get there via that route). The breadcrumbs allow me to ...
1
First of all, I feel that breadcrumbs are still a part of web design and still in for most of us. You mentioned in your post about the big players not using them anymore. I agree that they are not used by larger sites, however those sites have way more familiarity and traffic than the majority of us get. People are more used to those iconic interfaces and ...
1
What I think is that portal style sites created with categorized "pages" are "out". And breadcrumbs are gone with them. Take this 5 month old site, http://qz.com/ (This is an example, not an endorsement of the UI). They roll through their entire content on essentially one page.
1
I was wondering if using something similar to soundclouds timeline based commenting system but for copy based posts is a sensible idea.
I think the point of having those in soundcloud is justified by the idea that it is really hard to refer to a certain point of time in the track just by the time in seconds. The system visualizes the comments' context.
...
1
Something I have noticed with Facebook logins: the more permissions you ask for the less people will use it. A permissions access box with 5 items is more likely to be aborted than one with 2 items.
Also you already mentioned the risk of users feeling the site is intruding on their privacy by showing a picture
So the question then becomes, is the benefit ...
1
You have to ensure that users feel in control of their profiles on your site, regardless if they use Facebook to sign in or not.
Whenever you are deciding on displaying a profile image, consider the appropriateness of the situation. For this application, is the profile image going to be seen by other users? Some users may not want their Facebook picture ...
1
Some Background
Integrating chat and email is a good idea if undertaken properly. You can either have someone chatting to someone else online with the instant messenger feature, or having someone chatting to someone else offline, and prompting the user to send an email afterwards, as email can be easily retrieved from an email client.
Think about Google ...
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