Creating the Best Experience on Facebook

от Christina Holsberry 02 март 2009 г. в 12:11

At Facebook, we think it's important to listen to the people who are using the site, since you are our biggest fans, experts and critics. We're dedicated to making sure your feedback is incorporated into the decisions we make in order to create the best experiences for you and your friends on Facebook. We want to take a moment to thank you for reaching out to us and describe how we integrate what you have to say into our product decisions.

We receive and read a lot of emails from you, but they only represent one piece of the puzzle. We often run product testing sessions, which involves bringing people who use Facebook (and sometimes even people who don't use Facebook) to our offices and watching them use or talk about the site. By seeing people interact with new features, we can better understand how others might engage with them and pinpoint any areas that need improvement. Sometimes, we even use a technology called an eye tracker, which helps us understand what people are focusing their attention on and more importantly, what they may not even be noticing.

With eye tracking, we can measure what a user is focusing on as he looks at different parts of the Facebook Home Page, ranging from red to green (red being the areas that he is looking at the most).

We also established an Advisory Board—a trusted group of people who routinely provide their thoughts on new and current features. The members were selected based on their involvement as contributors to our product preview pages, which we've used in the past to show exactly what's changing on the site ahead of time. For instance, when we were planning to launch changes to Facebook's design last May, there was a Page where people could find information and submit feedback. In some cases, we also invite smaller groups of people to test products over an extended period of time. This way we can focus on understanding how people use them as part of their normal routine. The process isn't one-size-fits-all, and normally, we use some combination of these methods to understand what will work best for people using the site.

Sometimes, your reactions make us realize that new features still need additional work from our design and engineering teams. Other times, you've led us to develop new features. For instance, we've heard that it can be hard to find friends when people first join Facebook, which is why, in addition to constantly improving our search feature, we also created People You May Know and the Friend Finder. They are both focused on helping you find your friends more easily.

We're always trying to make the site better, and in order to do that well, we listen to you. If you're interested in participating in our product testing efforts, learn more here, and if you'd like to join our Advisory Board, submit your information here.

Christina Holsberry, Manager of the User Experience team, is awaiting your feedback.