Today we had the chance to listen to a talk by Luke Woods, interaction designer at facebook. After doing a bit of promotion on working at a company where work feels still like working for a start-up, he talked also about how a couple of facebook-features work (which was for sure new at least for somebody...umm :) ) and a little bit what facebook's plans are for the future.
At one point Luke stated that one of their 'mantras' is "better done than perfect". I asked him if he sees any danger in that, getting the answer that this mantra was surely the reason for some of facebook's mistakes in the past, releasing features which where not quite there yet. On the other hand he told us that it gives people a more free and creative feeling of work, not being forced to reach a certain level of quality to see their ideas being realized.
Being asked for their design process Luke told us among other things, that they have a lot of iterative steps in the design team and even get feedback from 'Zuck'. I had the question how facebook implements their user's feedback into the development process, as 800 million users seemed to be quite a challenge as well as a big opportunity at the same time. As expected, at facebook there is quite a big user research department that takes care of those kind of things - but I am really wondering how the annoyance of user's about the frequent or forced changes are handled? I can't get rid of the feeling that facebook sometimes takes advantage of their so to say monopoly - people have the choice of accepting or quitting.
Actually I pelted Luke with questions, so I wanted to know if their is room for social networks beside facebook. In his oppinion their is - as networks like instagram or others are used by quite a few people, offering other services than facebook. Listening to what facebook is planning to be in the future ( a free base for even more applications and services ) it pretty much sounds like this will implement ideas like instagram, making facebook being the "mastermind behind the scenes".
As the subject got onto competitors, he talked mainly about 'secondary' competitors like TV's. They actually only have one thing in common with facebook: making people spend their time using them. So I asked Luke, if it was facebooks aim to make people spending even more time on it, and as it seems, that is something people working for the social network think about.
I use facebook, everyday, probably more often than any other web based service. I think it is a great thing to stay connected, share thoughts and keep being up-to-date on what happens in friends lifes. Social networks became a part of human society, as the car became one more than 100 years ago. Back then people were scared of cars, thinking they would never replace horses.
These days are exciting for interaction design, as upcoming issues do not only need visually appealing looks but deep thinking about societal, ethical and cultural issues as well. A lot of things will happen, that's for sure. Thanks for the inspiring talk!
