[grinich]

This is a geek's response to an incredibly well-designed product.

What bothers me more is the blanket sarcasm and disregard in your comment. An incredible team spent years working on this, sweating every detail. Isn't that worth investigating, rather than taking cheap shots at the icon design or voiceovers? Even the Dropbox app has an intro tour.

There's a lot of great stuff in Paper.

[cfinke]

I disagree that it's "incredibly well-designed." Extensively designed maybe.

What bothers me more is the blanket sarcasm and disregard in your comment.

I downloaded it and tried it. I added topics to my Paper, tried out all the features suggested in the intro. I tried to read my friends' updates. I found it tiring to have to concentrate so hard to consume information from the tiled layout that is much more appropriately conveyed in a list, like in the main Facebook app.

An incredible team spent years working on this, sweating every detail. Isn't that worth investigating, rather than taking cheap shots at the icon design or voiceovers?

Great teams occasionally spend lots of time making something that doesn't succeed. Cuil. Color. Facebook Paper.

If you disagree with any of my specific criticisms, I'm happy to discuss them.

[moogleii]

* Do you find Facebook's iPhone app too easy to understand and navigate? Try Paper!

Ha.

* Is the type in Facebook's iPhone app too easy for you to read? Try Paper!

Didn't find Paper's type difficult to read.

* Are you tired of swiping down on Facebook's app and wish you could do some swiping left and right? Try Paper!

Ha. As if the original app didn't have horizontal swiping.

* Do you enjoy losing your place in your newsfeed when you tap on a story to read more? Try Paper!

As far as I could tell, the cards at the bottom maintain their order after you dismiss a story. It even has its own scroll bar position indicator.

* Do you enjoy voiceovers reading text to you that is already printed on your screen? Try Paper!

Didn't have my headphones on, didn't notice them.

* Want half of your iPhone screen taken up by distracting images unrelated to what you're reading? Try Paper!

The top half are headlines. There's not much to read there. The bottom half goes full screen once you tap as well.

[tern]

The issue with "incredible teams" at companies like Facebook is that they subscribe to ideological frameworks that lead them to make decisions that make sense internally, but not so much externally. You see evidence of this in their overuse of keywords like "disruptive", "delight", "intuitive", "natural", "flat", and "gets out of the way", all of which no longer mean anything specific. As if this is not bad enough, because they have a total monopoly on attention, their ideologies then go on to condition the expectations of their users, who are pretty much everybody. Only the trolls, cranks, geeks, and stubborn intellectuals who are by nature suspicious of externally imposed ideology perceive this, which is why you – and employees of Facebook – should listen to them, albeit with a grain of salt.

That said, I agree that the expert skill evident in the design of Paper and other Facebook mobile products is something to behold and worth appreciating for what it is on it's own terms. Just don't drink the Koolaid.

[moogleii]

"The issue with "incredible teams" at companies like Facebook is that they are indoctrinated into ideological frameworks that lead them to make decisions that make sense internally, but not so much externally."

To be fair, this sounds pretty Koolaid-esque as well. But you know what? Sometimes Koolaid is just a refreshing, sugary drink.

[msutherl]

You're right – I changed the wording to sound less like a conspiracy theory. Indeed nobody is exempt from ideology, but it is important to be aware of it. Interacting with people outside "the system" is one way to do that.

[samstave]

Disclaimer: I have not, nor shall I ever use paper.

But I did have a bit of a chuckle at your comment only becuase I am reminded of all the self-back-patting that quora did where they were touting their site design as incredible and what not, and told anyone who disagreed that quora was the pinnacle of design that they were just too stupid to know great design when they saw it.

Facebook suffers from an incredible technical cancer; the belief that every single thing they do is the best way to do it and that they're all so damn smart! Facebook needs humility.

[shock-value]

Sure, it's well-designed because you say so. At least try to counter the myriad actual issues that the person who you responded to listed out, or come up with some design innovations made by this app to make your point.

I'll just say that I agree with every point cfinke made (and I'll add that even more space is also wasted when displaying status update which don't have photos associated with them). If it took a sizable team 'years' to make this app, then what a lot of time and talent wasted.

[MartinCron]

This is a geek's response to an incredibly well-designed product

The notion that geek's somehow can't make critiques of "designed products" is dismissively painting with a very wide brush. Would you dare say that men or women or Jews wouldn't be able to muster an informed opinion on something?

[weixiyen]

As a Day 0 user, I pretty much agree with the OP. Will check back after a week, but yeah, it's a pretty jarring first time user experience and if it wasn't from Facebook and didn't come with this much hype, I don't think I would be using it tomorrow, along with many other users.

One thing to keep in mind though is that they are likely gathering usage data and will adjust the product accordingly, so we should at least wait for some version updates before giving out the final verdict.

[natch]

Such an incredible team should be able to come up with an original name for their app.

[EricMuller22]

While we're talking about voice overs, let's talk about the one that actually matters - try turning on Voice Over mode and navigating the app the way a visually impaired user would. It is completely and utterly unusable.

[pkinsky]

>What bothers me more is the blanket sarcasm and disregard in your comment. An incredible team spent years working on this, sweating every detail.

I'm calling bullshit. What makes the team incredible, aside from their product being at the center of a Facebook PR blitz?

[aaronbrethorst]

Google Mike Matas and Loren Brichter for starters.

[pbreit]

I'm not a geek and I find the concept weak and the design weaker. And I think geek opinions are worthy.