Los Angeles – Demonstrating a fresh sign of maturity through its UI design and better understanding of its users’ requirements, social networking humongous Facebook has just unleashed a couple of items that they say will improve user experience and allow them to better understand exactly what goes on inside the network: A redesigned Help Center and the complete rollout of the Support Dashboard.
Moving beyond the age old boring (and sometimes confusing) text links, we now see colorful buttons, the better to guide you around Facebook’s many resources for privacy, safety, bug-reporting, and expressing general outrage about the Timeline UI.
Check it out. Here is the old, sad, boring Help Center:
Image Source: (Venturebeat.com)
First up, the Help Center: The new help page represents major topics, highlights popular questions, and makes search navigation simpler. Also, the social networking giant has given it a major redesign that “is designed to get you the information you need in just a few clicks,” according to the company. The landing page now features six colorful boxes that display major topics — learn the privacy basics, see what is new on Facebook, report an issue, learn more about Timeline, review our safety resources, and discover games & apps.
The company says that these main topics can modified to suit each individual user based on how they are using Facebook and what they need to see. Different users can see more personalized options depending on how they use Facebook, according to a company blog post. For instance, if a user is not logged into Facebook, they may see details on how to create an account, or tips on resetting their password.
Below is the new, simplified, colorful, easy-to-navigate Help Center:
Well, that looks much better! The new design consolidates all Facebook-related meta-knowledge into six major topics for Facebook users. It also highlights a few of the more common questions users have, along with answers, of course. Along the left side of the landing page, various links, like Manage Your Account, Privacy, Sharing, Popular Features, and Facebook Mobile make it easier to navigate the site and find the right information.
In an emailed statement, Facebook chief privacy officer Erin Egan said, “Both of these tools aim to provide the people who use our service with access to the information they need from Facebook as quickly and as efficiently as possible. These resources demonstrate our commitment to transparency and our continued effort to ensure that the people who use Facebook can create the experience that is right for them.”
In addition to the new, improved UI, Facebook has also made one of their transparency features available to all users. The Support Dashboard, previously launched back in April, will now be an option for 100% of users around the world.
The Support Dashboard is accessible in users’ Account Settings. Also, the support dashboard helps you keep track of profiles and images you report as inappropriate or abusive; it looks like this:
The Support Dashboard is Facebook’s way of letting users track the progress of all the various reports they make — whether it be reporting a photo that you think violates Facebook’s terms, or a user profile that has been harassing you. Now, it is finally available to all Facebook users under the Settings menu. “From your Support Dashboard you can see when we review your report, what action we took and why we took that action,” we read this morning on the company blog. “We will also send you a notification when the status of your report changes.”
More importantly, “The redesign of the Help Center and the Support Dashboard are just two examples of our continuous effort to provide you with resources to help you better understand and use Facebook,” the blog said.