I came across this Wall Street Journal piece today about Facebook design lead Soleio Cuervo, more commonly known as the guy who revolutionized the way we dole out compliments in the virtual sphere (and more increasingly, in real-time, too) and measure social currency.
How um, romantic?
In other words, he’s the guy behind the Facebook “like.”
Before I say anything else, I would like the record to reflect that I am avid “liker” myself. To paint an example, my friends poke fun at my habit of “liking” even the comments, photos, and status updates that I post.
Well, what can I say? The “like” knows no limits! If I like it, I “like” it!
Going off that thought, it was only natural for me to be a little curious about how this ultra-likable feature came into being, pun intended and all. In the end, what I was most surprised to discover was how much introspection, trial and error, and deliberate thought went into its development. To sum it up…
- Cuervo is painstakingly meticulous with his work. He draws out his 16-by-16 px images one dot at a time in Photoshop with one window of the image zoomed in so he can see his microscopic work-in-progress as a series of big boxes. I assume this is how he achieves the 80′s Atari video game look. Homeboy is serious about his craft!
- To get a more holistic view, Cuervo takes a screenshot of different pages on the website and zooms out so he can visualize patterns from a “bird’s eye” view, so to speak. Because “people experience Facebook as a whole,” he reasons. Fair enough.
- The article deems Cuervo “a student of the airport.” People expect to navigate the airport with ease; in the same way, Facebook’s design hones in on simplifying the user experience, enabling people to squeeze in the most activity with as minimal effort as possible on their part. In that respect, smart, effective UI is more than just “looking pretty.” It’s about understanding user patterns, ergonomics, and even a bit of human psychology.
In summary, it seems like the process of designing the UI at Facebook is essentially a matter of being able to visualize the website at both the micro and macro levels, identify and integrate functional design based on user patterns, and generate clean, crisp work. Mix that in with a little bit of creative ingenuity, and there you have it–something to like for a good time to come!
What do you think about my cheesy puns? Like ‘em?
