I follow my RSS feeds on Google reader. I like it for the basic simplicity of it and for the complicated options it enables me to follow.
Today I got a first look of what a “share item with note” looks like:
As you can see - the Image is very small and not really clear.
So, I thought it’s me…
I tried going for the extended view (I use the list view):
What did Google do wrong?
Google enabled users to share an item (was able before) and add a personal aspect to it (note).
Google transferred a social element - Identity (a picture that represent me), that is very common on social websites and implemented it poorly.
A common method for creating user interfaces is copy the familiar.
In order to create a feel of familiarity UI practitioners copy from real life, or from digital elements that most users known before or still using.
So Google wants to become a social network, but why represent it with a 10 pixels on 10 pixels picture?
5 comments ↓
I don’t think the matter of interest is the quality of an image. What important is that it is possible to identify the person. Like phone calls that transfer only quality needed to identify the person on the other side of the line and not for hearing music.
Usage for images is increasing the accessibility, images, especially faces are recognized faster than text. For additional information look for pictorial address books.
Another aspect is security, currently there are several mechanizes that use images of the sender to eliminate spamming and emails frauds.
@Noam, the ability to recognize a face from an image require minimum size and quality.
Images are great when their goal is served, but when a image gives no immediate feedback it serves only as noise.
They should have done it in BETA first. =)
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