UX Observations: Facebook Photo View

Every time Facebook changes anything about their UI, it sends the masses into a tizzy, yowling for the way things used to be. I can’t blame them, really – people like familiarity, and if you’re going to change something they’re used to, you should have a really good reason for it. I don’t participate in Facebook bashing just for the sake of beating up the giant, but I do take a little issue with their new photo view.

The first red flag for me is that when this new view showed up for me, I had a hard time finding the close button waaaaay over there in the upper right hand corner. If I spend my days UX-ing stuff, and I have a hard time finding something, chances are… Even the arrow buttons are difficult to see, because there just isn’t enough contrast between the ghosted-out background and those teeny little boxes with baby arrows in them.

Also, I still have not figured out why the “Like” and “Comment” buttons are redundant in the lower left corner. Anyone have any thoughts?

My thought is that they could have greyed out the ghosted-out background, to give it a little contrast with the white box container for the photo. That way people would have understood that they were seeing an enlarged component of the background.

They could also move the close button, and both of the arrows, into the white photo container area, making it more clear how to see the next and previous photos, as well as how to get the heck out of there without having to call the National Guard to find the close button. If you’ve got a big screen, it’s a long way to the furthest reaches of the upper right corner to find that guy.

As for the “Like/Comment” buttons, I think one set is sufficient, and they look strange just sort of floating there in the lower corner of my photo. I still don’t really get that…