ByeSpace
In the early days it was email and today it’s the online profile. It seems these days that if you don’t have a profile on a social network you don’t really exist, at least in regards to the Internet–even my dad has one. I’ve had profiles on too many sites to remember, many of which were before the days when we called them social networks.
“You Looked Hotter On MySpace”
I was a hold out on MySpace–due to its utterly poor design. As someone in the field of user experience I felt disgusted in myself for not only finally signing up to use it, but to also promote it. Don Norman had stated in his classic book, The Design of Everyday Things that we are to send a message to companies who make unusable products by boycotting them. I knew very well I was breaking this rule when I signed up. But much like the early days of email, when people would ask “What’s your email address?”, everyone started asking “Where’s your MySpace profile?”.
Salvaging What I Could
I did everything I could to make my profile clean, trim, and easy to use. But still, I could not bare to sit through some of the most obvious user experience design problems (e.g., clicking a link to a page that requires you to login, after login should send you to the requested page!). To compound such problems, the use of third party design layouts made profiles almost outright unreadable. Autoplaying profile songs, slideshows, autoplaying movies, animated backgrounds, and countless full resolution photos; it’s like a 13 year old girl’s scrapbook but fully animated with accompanying audio. I soon identified which friends’ profiles I would never visit again. Sadly, even my own sister was on that list.
The issue with MySpace though is that they truly see no reason to solve any of these problems. They are not in the business of providing any kind of enjoyable user experience or new innovative features. Just by looking at the constant marketing AD takeovers of the site you will understand MySpace’s true goals–a marketing mouthpiece. It is not a place for friends but a place for advertising executives.
Good Bye
I may no longer be up on what new movies Twentieth Century Fox is releasing or what new beverage I should be drinking, at least I will have ended that momentary lapse in judgment.
08 29 07