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The New Facebook News Feed: A UX Breakdown (zachtratar.com)
13 points by ztratar on March 8, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 24 comments



Sorry, completely off-topic rant but for an article about UX, TFA is on the crappiest-UX site I've ever seen.

First, half the page is dedicated to a head shot of the author. And then, to make matters worse, scrolling is completely broken. I spent several seconds swiping my trackpad in frustration, unable to understand why the page was refusing to scroll only to realize you can only scroll if the cursor is on the right side of the page. Permalinks are broken/non-existent, too.

Frankly, the entire site (from domain name, to ginormous headshot, to half the page dedicated to "about myself") screams narcissism.


I agree. I'm actually about 80% done with a redesign that follows a good f pattern and is mobile/tablet friendly. Sorry about the problems guys and thanks for the feedback. Aside, any feedback on the content of the article?


Later on HN... "zachtratar: A UX Breakdown"


On the plus side, the bizarre site ux is because he's trying to do something novel, and not due to negligence, like the source of most of the internet's bad ux.


Thanks! When designing the site previously I felt the need to do something fancy to make it stand out. In doing so I purposefully ignored some common rules and even forgot that most people have small screens, this making my picture awkwardly large.


Your picture is awkwardly large on my 1920 x 1080 screen.


I could not get to reading the article because of the ginormous headshot. Too distracting.


Also, I'm not a narcissist. In my experience, it's best to give constructive feedback instead of slander.


We all are. It's just to different degrees and how we harness it - ie attributes such as self pride/confidence (positive narcissism) vs arrogance/grandiose (negative).

Narcissism is getting a more bad rep due to today's over sharing platforms (and for valid reasons), but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss/defend from the label.

You may not notice it, but outsiders can see it more easily (ie: headshot taking half the page). I notice you even took the time to shop in an artificial background for your headshot. Just these lil bits that add up.

As for the article content, I'm surprised you went for a UX breakdown without using the product (or do you have beta access?) Visually I like the redesign, but not knowing how the menus work, actually using the product and knowing that the announcment page is full of carefully curated photos, it's hard for me to comment and compare.

Edit: OP said wasn't shopped - I stand corrected.


Well thought out and I partly agree. The background actually isn't photoshopped. There was a blue curtain at a career fair booth.

My analysis is purely from the shots and common behavior patterns among other web apps.


Also, unrelated, but: hell I hate those round portraits. What is this, everyone suddenly forgot how to square?

Goddamn kids and their trends this days...


Completely unusable website for me running a relative recent version of Chrome on an older Ubuntu. Scroll functionality completely broken.

The irony isn't lost on me.


A small UX feedback on your website - I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't scroll with my mouse and realized that it was because my cursor was over the left side of the website with the headshot which is separate from the article.


That will be fixed soon. Thanks for the feedback!


there is no way i can begin to read your article with your ginormous head shot staring at me.


Agreed. This is what it looks like after a double-tap zoom on iPhone: http://i.imgur.com/wy6kGiJ.png


A bit disconcerting to say the least.


Don't like my face?!?

But yeah, I'll be changing that soon.


it's ok to put your face on the homepage just dont do that in every pages or use a reduced version. what happened to content hierarchy ?

avoid fix elements especially when they are half the screen wide. I mean UX is a fancy stuff , but common sens should tell you that what the users wants to read is your article , not to see your face.

all this ux ui stuff is bull... if you donyt know your basics.


Also, once I clicked the link to your About page on the left, the only way to navigate back to the post was to refresh the page...


Does anyone else have 3 scrollbars on this site?



This is hilarious


That guy´s face is frigin huge!




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