“This photo has people in it.”
Seriously, where? Oh, shit, now I see them! The trick is you have to roll your mouse over the photo to see them. Duh. I should have read the instructions first. I feel kind of stupid now, but I guess I shouldn’t. That’s why guide copy is important - so users don’t have to hunt around for proverbial needles in the haystack of complex and confusing user interface design.
This weirdly obvious guide copy* strikes me as the likely output of a design review wherein puzzled Yahoo! managers searched the depths of their collective experience in earnest, wondering desperately how to alert users that people depicted in a photo have been identified. Never mind the millions of users already familiar with Facebook’s tagging feature. Never mind the already-established convention of mousing over a photo on Flickr to see notes. New to no one else on the planet somehow managed to remain new to the decision-makers on the Flickr design team. I seriously don’t get this.
Honestly, I don’t know whether to think the Flickr team is being cute here or not. So much of the site’s user experience is stand-out abominable - a bonfire sacrifice to the gods of chaos - that while I like the new feature, I can’t help but sense this as a few cynical sprays of kerosene at an already hopeless user experience conflagration.
*This post has words in it. Move your eyes over the post to see them.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned lately that I love Geoff.
