A quick look into the new orkut interface
Posted in Information Architecture, User Interface — one comment.
I just received the invite to try the new orkut interface, and decided to write something about it since my blog’s focus is Information Architecture.
At first view, I didn’t felt a big change. The colors are the same, the structure changed a little bit, and everything is where it was before. That is something I like and dislike. Some of the changes and user interactions in the new orkut are very similar to Facebook, like invite friends to an application or even send them invites to try the new orkut.
Check out the major differences between the new orkut and the old one.
The user interface changes
The first thing I noticed is that orkut added the Google bar at the top, with the links to “Web”, “Maps”, “News”, “Groups” and more. This is nice, now I feel that I’m using a Google service. And also there is a new, easy, and fast way to access my orkut Settings. The old interface simply added it way down in the left column, very hard to find.
I loved the way they fixed orkut’s bar, now I can quickly find my Scraps, Photos and Videos with just a mouseover on the logo. And finally I have freedom with a bigger search input and it is also possible to search within orkut and the web – using the Google Search service of course.
It’s possible to change colors, tell what I’m up to, see suggested friends by orkut, check what’s new within my profile and follow my friend updates. Nothing new so far.
User interactions and Information Architecture
The first feature I used was “Friend suggestions by orkut”, it’s a cool way to find friends within your network without searching for them all the time. And here is the first big issue: I sent a request to friend and nothing happened. Weird. After some clicks I realized that the friend I was trying to add had reached his friends limit, but where is the error message?
OMG, something is really wrong here. I lose a few seconds trying to find the error message, and it was all the time at the top, and not next to the add friend action so I can quickly know what is going on. Weird…
Now my friend requests and testimonials are hidden in the “What’s new” section, with some ambiguous actions. To check a sent testimonial I can click on “{friend’s name} wrote you a testimonial” or in the word “view”, they do the same thing, opens the testimonial. Do I really need two ways to see the testimonial? I don’t think so.
So that’s the quick look into the new orkut interface. Please let me know what do you think about the changes.