The Blochhead: Bloch is the New Black!

It dawned on me this morning. The biggest trouble that I have with social media is sorting through the sea of information. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, or any other stream of networked posts and status updates, it’s easy to get overloaded by a mass of diverse topics presented by various voices. I immediately thought about my parents and how they have been slowly getting into social media, starting with Yahoo! then Facebook. I wonder… if I have trouble- as someone who has grown up with computers and used them since I was five, owned a Palm in college, a Windows Mobile user, social media enthusiast, etc.- then what about people who are “on the fringe” (so to speak) of SM? There definitely are those who get frustrated with their experiences, despite a reasonable amount of effort to make it work. I think about not only all of the time it’s taken me to sort through information but also to organize it in a way that makes sense to me, and I realize what a tremendous effort I’ve had to undertake! Sorting through information is truly a life-skill that starts developing in childhood and eventually extends into many aspects of adult life.

Not exaclty social media, but unreasonably complicated nonetheless

I am a huge proponent of user interface (UI). This interest partially developed from my experience with Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software: Pro Tools is the industry standard but I also use Digital Performer. To me, the UI is the final frontier in technology, and ultimately what determines much or most of the success of a product. Features are great, but if you can’t use it easily who really cares enough to commit to using it? Probably only a niche, and if you have a niche product (and the niche can accept an un-refined UI) then that’s fine. But for the “average” technology user, it’s gotta be easy to use. Our lives are busy enough that sure we maybe smart enough to figure it out, but we’ll lose attention if it doesn’t happen with a certain amount of ease. I don’t know a whole lot about Facebook Lite but I would have to imagine that the creation of this variation to the main site is closely related to some of these thoughts. I have to admit, I kind of prefer it to the normal Facebook UI sometimes….

Everyone has their own personal tolerance level with “ease of use.” I think this is where some of the generational gap that I am proposing comes in. I would include other social, lifestyle, economic, and more factors in holistic view.

I know that for companies the balance between UI and feature-set is always in question, or it should be. I think that in many cases, features seem to take precedence over UI, and I am sure this contributes to some failure of social media sites.

Random though: If I was the mouse in Dumbo, able to induce the power of suggestion to leaders in social media while they were in REM sleep, I whisper in their ears to tell them to seek a better balance and offer options to allow for a more broad range of users. Finding the right option is another issue…

Image by StephenVanDyke on Flickr