This is my final paper for the graduate course “Advanced User Interface Design” at Bentley University. I was lucky enough to get in on this course, even though I was only an undergraduate exchange student and I got a 3.7 (A) in the course.
The abstract for the paper which is called “The User Interface of FriendFeed” is as follows:
“The purpose of this paper is to give a qualified answer to the question of whether or not the interface of FriendFeed is bad. A subjective opinion is not adequate as a criteria for determining the quality of the interface, so various theories are applied. With focus on the “Likeâ€-function while still evaluating the interface as a whole, I apply theories on Metaphors, Glanceability, Ambient Information and Affect. Furthermore, to determine the efficiency of FriendFeed as a social network, theories on Groupware and Distributed Cognition are being used. The paper concludes that while the interface may be perceived as aesthetically unpleasing, its purpose of transferring positive emotions and involving the users is fulfilled.”
Basically, I try to give a qualified answer to whether or not there is some sensibility behind the design decisions they made when creating FriendFeed’s UI, and it really is well thought through. The contextual awareness for the content posted is superb, and the “Like” function serves its purpose fantastically well.
That being said, I still don’t like the service and think it’s too much of a conflict between my RSS-reader of choice, Google Reader, and microblog Twitter. It can’t really figure out what it wants, and is not nearly intelligent enough to really serve me those juicy posts I want (I don’t know exactly what I want either, so I don’t blame the FriendFeed-team, but computers in general and my attention span of a millisecond in particular instead).
The whole paper is embedded below: