Does twitter need another redesign?

There are a lot of discussions going on lately about the redesign of twitter home page. Some people like the design, some criticize it. My overall opinion is that it doesn't tell enough what twitter actually is. I love twitter. This home page isn't twitter.

There are several things I noticed instantly:

A - As regular twitter user, I don't think this is an adequate tag line. At least I wouldn't connect this tag line to the activities I perform each day on twitter. For instance, if I want to see what's happening right now in the world I will check out some news site.

B - This large search box has too much emphasis and suggests that this site is some kind of search service, which twitter isn't (as far as I can see).

C - This confused me at first. I guessed these are popular tags, but wasn't sure about it until I saw the burried heading "popular topics by the minute, day and week". The icons were not helpful at all. Besides this, there is a question mark that reveals a description about these topics. Having help for this area implies that you didn't provide a clear way to show off information. Also, in my opinion, what's popular this minute is irrelevant.

D - "Sign in" is often mistaken for "Sign up". I think "Log in" would be better for this link.

E - I like to see benefits of signing up to a service. Imagine you are a new user, coming first time to this page. Why would you signup? To search? To read about some topics? I am afraid it's not good enough.

These are just a few of possible usability issues with new twitter home page. But what I really want to know is what do you think about it? Would you change anything?

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Ivan Kolarov 10 Aug 2009 #

All of things that you are noticed, are moving twitter away from its original idea (what are you doing right now?) to new vision they created. I think I read something about it on TechCrunch it is all about "following the pulse of the whole planet" or something like that... in that manner I can understand A, B, and C...

Anyway great observation!

Daniel 11 Aug 2009 #

I think some of what you're seeing is intentional - they're trying to re-brand somewhat as a 'search engine' for current events. The idea being the constantly updated twitter will be more relevant for short-term subjects than Google. Whether that's a _good_ idea or not is debatable. I agree with 'E' - they need to have some 0 friction 'Share' option. I'm thinking a single textbox with two buttons - search and share...

Dennis Eusebio 11 Aug 2009 #

I kind of agree that A, B & E are really more in line with their new strategy.

Janko 11 Aug 2009 #

Thanks for your comments! Yes, it's probably the result of the new strategy. What I am afraid of is that many great features we use everyday are buried behind this home page. Maybe it's tome for twitter to evolve to something else. Maybe there will be more changes, we'll see.

Dan 11 Aug 2009 #

What you're seeing here is an attempt by Twitter to adapt their site to match what it has become. What I mean by that is; Twitter started out as a simple "Say what you're doing" sort of rolling bulletin board. Up until the recent changes, the site reflected this purpose. Now, however Twitter is fundamentally more than that. It is the absolute bleeding edge of unofficial event coverage.

People don't just look at what their friends are up to... they look to see what's going on in the world. Take the death of Michael Jackson for instance. The first tweets regarding his death came in to my twitter feed before the BBC had even said a peep. The big-wigs know this too. A high level executive decision was made at the time of the Iran elections to postpone maintenance work that would have brought the service down.

So to answer the question: Does Twitter need another redesign? - Yes it does. However the flaws you have pointed out with this one are valid. The search box is too prominent and the call to action is a bit ambiguous and unclear. Hopefully we'll see some tweaking to make the homepage a bit more coherent in the near future.

David Millar 11 Aug 2009 #

The one thing that I absolutely despise the most is hiding the log-in form from the user. Stuff takes a while to load at work, and I don't want to have to wait until the JavaScript loads to allow me to see the log-in form. I wish Twitter would just leave it there.

Other than that, I really don't care about that page since all I use it for is to log-in on Twitter, but I think instead of letting people pick from popular keywords, Twitter should have open the 5 most recent tweets from a specific topic - Twitter employee picked of course to avoid abuse.

Dan: Good points, twitter definitively evolved from ''what are you doing" and some tweaking should help them in their goals.

David: Recent tweets on homepage sounds like a good idea - having real examples of twitter instead of list of topics.

matt 11 Aug 2009 #

I think their redesign is well suited for their new idea. I do think the "sign in" language would be better suited as "log in" perhaps. I also think the bottom "popular topics" area is a bit confusing to a new user. As a first time user, I would be confused by the syntax right off the bat, and they do not appear to be links right away either. THe icons are not extremely clear, and that fade effect on the right is very annoying, as it is limiting the clickable area for the links.

anyway, i think there is room for improvement!

also, that transparent tooltip for the "?" icon is annoying for the text, as it seems to be getting the transparency as well, making it appear "white" over certain words, depending on the background behind it.

Romeo 11 Aug 2009 #

Good annotates, especially C and D, B problem is little disputable.

I have often problems with "sign up" and "sign in" (my English is not very good). But this problem has a lot of sites, well-known sites like youtube. "Log in" is really better solution.

Marko Randjelovic 12 Aug 2009 #

You make some fine points here. I don't care much about the Twitter homepage because I am always logged in and don't see it. ;) But they should've done a better job none the less.

Robert Fisher 12 Aug 2009 #

I don't really use the twitter.com website, so I am not sure about the issues outlined above. it is so easy to stay connect to twitter externally.

Dmitry 13 Aug 2009 #

I think in the case of Twitter they don't really care whether there is any persuasive marketing on the home page, or indeed much information about the service, simply because of the way they market themselves. You don't come to the Twitter homepage by clicking on an ad--they don't advertise themselves--you come there because your friends are using it, or you've seen it on TV. That means you already have some idea about what the service is, and by now you probably just want to sign up and try it, so they go ahead and provide a big sign up button right there on the right.

As others have said, the search bar then follows with their vision for what Twitter is--being able to tap into the pulse of the world and see what people are talking about or what they think about different topics. I guess a lot of people and businesses would use Twitter to do 2 things: 1) post their own messages and communicate with others and 2) monitor their brand--see what people are saying about them. So the search + sign up combo caters for both of these needs. If you use Twitter externally from an app, you can just use the search bar to quickly get information. If you have an account you just log in.

What do I think? I don't particularly like it. Actually, it does look "nice", but it doesn't seem to have any coherent branding. Buttons are styled differently and have different colors. The background blues used are not the same light blue shade as we're used to with Twitter--it's now a darker, paler blue that has appeared from nowhere. Maybe this is the new palette, but I think the iconic colors are that blue in the logotype and the light blue/white colors that come with the default Twitter background.

Janko 17 Aug 2009 #

Thanks for the comments. Although general opinion is that people (especially existing users) don't care much about their homepage it's good to see some opinions.

Dmitry: Thanks for your opinion. I have to agree with you that the way they market themselves is probably the key point here. Still, as regular twitter user, I think their new home page doesn't reflect my experience adequately.

Ivan Minic 23 Aug 2009 #

I think it is cute. A nice improvement, but I believe it needs to be better.
Good points ;)

curls 27 Aug 2009 #

The bits at the bottom confused the jingles out of me, so did the search, something inside me wanted to start searching for things ala google

Joe 07 Sep 2009 #

I agree on the usability side of things here. Twitter needs to make some changes in terms of outlining the benefits to new users. The search facility is rudimentary at best but I've found in terms of a basic keyword search it pretty much does the job in terms of finding other people with similar interests to follow. However I think the main benefit of Twitter as you rightly say is not whats going on in the world (I too would use a news site for this)... but keeping up with those you are already following in terms of specific interest groups and friends/business aquaintances.

Joe