My feelings on Facebook’s user interface evoke memories of interacting with that overly nice, very popular girl in high school. You’re never quite sure how you should actually feel, and quite often, you walk away completely confused. A case in point of this confusion is above— I suppose by having a checkbox that’s checked, one could argue that you’re forcing people to be aware that their information is being submitted to who-knows-where. However, I think the dissappointment in believing that you can uncheck the box, and then finding out it’s not an actual option, is far worse. First, it gives the user false expectations and destroys their mental model of what a check box can be used for. To add icing in the cake, everything in Facebook is comprised of these “applications” now, so the message gives this slightly Orwellian feeling that you must comply, or be shipped off to the leper colony of app-less facebook dwellers.

Finally, I enjoy how there’s no mention anywhere of how this information is used, or why they need it…

[Imagine a link to facebook here]

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This entry was posted by Dave Pitman on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 9:05 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.