Facebook Design: Re-designing our registration page — Choosing the simple solution
Re-designing our registration page — Choosing the simple solution
Often the role of a product designer is best described as janitorial. I recently had the pleasure of cleaning up one of Facebook's most important pages — our registration page. The requirements of the page changed over time, leading to a lot of inconsistency and duplication. Changes to the page were made piecemeal — support for platform one week, public profiles another week, invites the next. The result was a complicated interface for something that should be simple.
The re-designed version is decidedly simple. The new design is unremarkable, boring, commonplace. It's so simple that the initial design took about 30 minutes — most of which was spent debating different header treatments. The new design is only worthy of remark because it was incredibly effective. We saw a noticeable increase in our registration rate compared to the old page.
The re-designed version is decidedly simple. The new design is unremarkable, boring, commonplace. It's so simple that the initial design took about 30 minutes — most of which was spent debating different header treatments. The new design is only worthy of remark because it was incredibly effective. We saw a noticeable increase in our registration rate compared to the old page.
Re-design of our registration page
As designers, we often pursue radical departures from simple. We search for a solution that re-thinks everything. That thinking is valuable — it lets us jump ahead and discard tired thinking when appropriate. But the solution that anyone could have designed, the simple solution, is usually the best. The hard part is choosing it.
Props to Lex Arquette for helping me build the new registration page. The simplest designs are often the hardest to build right.
—Rob
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Lex Arquette