LinkedIn.com redesign communicates less with more
I like to browse LinkedIn.com from time to time to see what people are up to, the state of the hiring market etc. I have always liked their design, and the occasional tweaks are usually good. Their latest attempt to redesign the recommendations UI, however, is confusing and less effective in two ways:
The new design is subtle and clean, and more information is available, but it actually makes the information less self evident. In HCI terms, the design lacks what is known as affordance where the function of an object (in this case a link) is intuitively known by it's characteristics. In the case of (1) it's the visual characteristics (traditional affordance). In the case of (2) it's what I would call the "affordance of proximity" (which may or may not be a phrase already in use - I'm sure it is). In my notes for this blog I jotted down "quote Edward Tufte, but I can't find anything appropriate, and I've gone a bit off Jakob Nielsen lately. 06:19 PM, 05 Oct 2006 by Mark Aufflick Permalink | Comments (0) 
|
Archive
November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 Notifications Request notifications
Syndication Feed
Recent Comments | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
in the headline box of someone's profile, I see: "profile", which means the profile telling me about the person; "connections" which means the connections that that person has (again - information about the person); and "recommendations" which I assumed meant recommendations for that person (ie. more information about that person). Instead it is recommendations that that person has made about others - which reverses the meaning of the other two tabs. Not only that, but when I did click it, the design doesn't make it clear that it is the other until I am part way into reading it.