Facebook's Big Facelift

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The elements of the currently crowded Facebook profile page will probably be divided within separate tabs when the redesign goes live.

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It's an obvious response to a series of public missteps, such as the introduction of the news feed feature (BusinessWeek.com, 9/8/06) added in September, 2006, which drew immediate animosity from users. In March, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for missteps associated with last fall's launch of the Beacon advertising platform (BusinessWeek.com, 11/28/07). "In this round, we are focused on listening to users, gathering feedback, and giving users more control," says Geminder.

Designers to the Fore

Still, the site's designers are facing a milestone. A quintessentially Web 2.0 product, Facebook was an early cohort of sites whose growth has been characterized by developers and designers' willingness to heed users' desires when creating new features. Now the site may have reached a point where designers need to listen to themselves as much as the users. "Sites like this have evolved depending on how people want to use them, but Facebook is [so big it] may need to slow down and formalize its process," says David Armano, vice-president for experience design at Critical Mass, which has created sites for the likes of NASA and Mercedes-Benz (DAI).

"In many ways, the hallmark of the Web 2.0 movement is users' belief that 'this is our Web,'" adds Bruce Temkin, vice-president and principal analyst of customer experience at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., who says listening to feedback could be as important as asking for input ahead of launch. For her part, Geminder says Facebook's designers are engaged in the process, preparing smart changes rather than simply foisting them on an audience without allowing them to interact or push back. "Sometimes," adds Fahey, "a designer's job is to interpret carefully what may lie behind even cantankerous feedback." Users, in other words, may not appreciate all the ramifications of their requests, and designers must sort through the responses and apply what's appropriate.

And, as Temkin points out, it's hard for the designers of a social network to formalize too much of the user experience. While designers of, say, an online banking application can make changes purely in the name of usability, Facebook's designers must strike a balance between the site as a form of entertainment, on the one hand, and a useful tool, on the other. "If you take the fun out of Facebook, you've got a big problem," says Temkin.

In the end, the moves today could provide a blueprint for future high-profile redesigns at the company. In fact, if the site's designers pull it off, restoring simplicity while maintaining popularity, Temkin says the move could even become a test case for "what happens at the next level of maturity for a lot of Web 2.0 companies, writ large."

Vella is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.