Facebook's redesigns are a thing of legend. But a major one introduced a year ago that famously intended to prioritize large images and a sleek interface was apparently abandoned because it took users' screen sizes and quality for granted.
In a post on Medium, Facebook product designer Julie Zhuo rebutted a claim by developer and entrepreneur Dustin Curtis that the much-hyped redesign was ditched because it didn't project well for advertising revenue. Instead, Zhuo claimed, it came down to logistics.
"It turns out, while I (and maybe you as well) have sharp, stunning super high-resolution 27-inch monitors, many more people in the world do not. Low-res, small screens are more common across the world than hi-res Apple or Dell monitors. And the old design we tested didn't work very well on a 10-inch Netbook. A single story might not even fit on the viewport. Not to mention, many people who access the website every day only use Facebook through their PC—no mobile phones or tablets," she wrote.
With its large global membership, it would indeed have been narrow-minded of Facebook to champion a design that would have been virtually unusable for so many of its members.
[via Gizmodo]
