Comments on: Facebook, Lifelets, and Designer Responsibility

By: Steve Mills

Steve Mills — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:40:10 +0000

Its a very good point that the average user can only do on facebook what the provided controls allow them to do.

I think however that it is a fact of life that bugs will get through, and that it is up for the users and the designers to be diligent and spot them before they do any real damage

By: Zephyr

Zephyr — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:42:09 +0000

It’s the *design* principle “user in control”. If the design doesn’t clearly communicate what’s going on, and how the user can influence it, the user can’t feel in control.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:08:05 +0000

I think your mostly right and it is an opportunity for Digg and Facebook by selling their users information to advertisers, of course they are going to do it, their user base is huge.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:12:22 +0000

You’re right, Dave. Some aspects of Beacon were easy enough to spot. However, the overall landscape of testing, I believe, is getting harder for most issues, especially ones where an action happens over here, and a display changes (for lots of people) over there.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:04:14 +0000

“3. Some of the issues at hand are of such spontaneous nature that current practices in design evaluation (usability testing) could not have predicted them.”

For subtle points, this may be true. But the core issues with Beacon could have been predicted with by including privacy questions in those tests. Who wants to share, by name, with no opt-out, what they bought their friends for Christmas? Who wants banner ads to be plastered alongside their p2p endorsements? There’s a perception that the primary Facebook demographic is ignorant of these areas; that’s not what I’ve seen in my own tests.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:20:34 +0000

I observe that operators of online business units are indeed paying attention. Web development is becoming business development. More and more of my conversations with clients now have to do with business factors, not technical ones (whether graphical or IT).

As independent contributors have increasingly more control over web content, large publishers and web property owners necessarily relinquish centralized control. But I think it’s bigger than that – perceptions are changing about what users can expect (i.e. “user experience”), and competitive business owners adapt to stay ahead of the industry curve.

So, these changes appear to me to manifest a natural broadening of roles within a new technology space, and I don’t see this as “developers: with power comes responsibility.” It seems like these same changes occur as most new industries become competitive. And in this case the pain points are around privacy and accountability.

In the automotive industry, roles expanded over time to accommodate mechanics and detailers, designers and manufacturing engineers. Perhaps that industry’s pain points had to do with safety and now environmental impact.

A valid parallel?