6 ms·

Do minuscule changes like these actually have any impact with users? To be honest, I was struggling to notice any difference in many, if not most of the before

Do minuscule changes like these actually have any impact with users? To be honest, I was struggling to notice any difference in many, if not most of the before/after screenshots. I just can't see a typical user appreciating the change, or even noticing. There's clearly a lot of difference between all the icons, but even then they're all clearly Facebook. I would almost expect the arbitrary icon changes to confuse users more than the consistent style would benefit them.

robszumski 12y ago
My biggest takeaway is not the small visual tweaks to the typeface, but the thought that goes into how each team or sector of the company needs to consume and produce downstream assets based on this redesign work. The guidelines/communication about this change is the main outcome of this work. For example, the discussion on the flexibility for various radii, reversibility and styling to match a platform's style means that downstream designers or developers don't have any ambiguity on how to adapt the favicon to their needs. Flexibility and freedom to customize are first-class, not afterthoughts.
kak9 12y ago
At FB scale, a very small percentage change in user engagement/behavior/etc is very meaningful. So guessing it does--but wouldn't necessarily extrapolate it to what small startups should do.
justinph 12y ago
Yes. They telegraph consistency, reliability, and deeper thought. The clear relationship that the type and all the icons have to each other looks planned and substantial. Typically, these are qualities that brands want to convey.
- jlarocco 12y ago
  I'm not so sure. Are there studies or anything? Facebook got pretty big and they're just now doing this, and mainly because one guy is spearheading it. I have a hard time believing Facebook's user base or revenue would be any different if they consistently used a certain sans-serif font.
  - hbosch 12y ago
    No, these changes are not new. They are years old. The small changes over time are someone imperceptible in tiny chunks as they become applied over time, this may be true. But to question their value? To the visual design and branding industry, that's like throwing down the gauntlet. There are teams of people dedicated to shaving milliseconds of latency off of page loads. They might speed up the entire site by 15-20ms in a year! That's amazing! But do Facebook users care? The answer is probably actually "no" -- but it's not important that users notice or care. In fact, these kinds of changes are judged in their success by users actually not noticing and simply getting a better experience whether they know it or not.
    - jlarocco 12y ago
      > But to question their value? To the visual design and branding industry, that's like throwing down the gauntlet. I don't see the problem questioning the value. If I'm paying somebody $150k a year to design stuff for my company, and they're spending the time making imperceptible changes to fonts and deciding whether the bottom of the 'f' in my logo should have a 3 pixel border or not, I think it's fair to know why they're doing it and what they're expecting to achieve. I never said design isn't valuable. I was specifically questioning the trivial changes this guy is making. Is he really earning his salary making imperceptible font changes? Making a page load faster is actually noticeable by users, but it's a red herring, because that's not a component of "visual identity," and it wasn't even mentioned in the article. Something more substantial than, "I'm another designer, and I think it's valuable," would be nice.
      - dnch 12y ago
        They're doing it because that's part of the job. All of those "trivial changes" combine to give users the perception of completeness, cohesiveness and value. When broken down into exacting detail, it's easy to dismiss them as imperceptible; by themselves, they mostly are. But the cumulative effect of these decisions leads to the perception of a better product. Compare and contrast a MacBook Air with any one of the cheaper knock-offs. They may pretty much look the same, but the Apple product has an intangible sense of being worth more. The same thing goes with cars—sure, they all have the same basic design, but put an Audi next to a Lada and you can immediately tell by looking at them which one's worth more. That's the value of visual design.
moeamaya 12y ago
Even if you ignore the improvement in overall brand consistency, as a general workflow it’s a huge win. It’s basically a design framework for a large team, no different than React is a UI library for manipulating the DOM. But as others have suggested, there’s a subtext to a UI that is not immediately logic based, and this is where a coalesced design sensibility has a strong impact. Visual affinity is constructed through a base need, and there are billions of background calculations happening to resolve this before your conscious kicks in. Saying that each change is minuscule is a first level pass at something that while useful is ignoring the full depth to the mental model of comprehension.
ianstormtaylor 12y ago
Instead of assuming that the changes that many, many visual designers advocate for are arbitrary and worthless, try assuming the opposite, and then finding comparisons that might explain how these kinds of changes could be valuable. Is it valuable for programmers to discuss and refactor code to maintain a consistent casing pattern? Is it valuable for writers to edit books to make sure they use consistent language throughout? Is it valuable for industrial designers to iterate on the amount of tactile feedback a dial gives? Is it valuable for musicians to continue to tweak their guitar until they get it to just the right tone for a song? If none of those ring a bell, keep looking until you find a craft that you feel you have a strong control of, and then find the equivalent comparison. I guarantee one exists for every craft. It's very easy for people unfamiliar with a craft to belittle refinement as useless, but only because they have an underdeveloped sense of the impact of the craft on how users/readers/listeners make decisions.
- pestaa 12y ago
  Excellent comment. As I understand it, they mostly did this for themselves. A change of one pixel doesn't concern any user, but it communicates the pride you take in your work.
  - currysausage 12y ago
    > As I understand it, they mostly did this for themselves. Wouldn't say so. All these people do the best work they can - the average consumer might not consciously tell the difference, but they will notice carelessness, at least subconsciously. Companies spend loads of money on Corporate Fonts. Most consumers will tell you that they can't tell apart Arial and any other sans-serif font; yet many companies decide that a proprietary font is a vital identity asset. Doesn't that say a lot about the meaning of typography? The Siemens Sans font [1] is particularly fascinating: It is a very subtle modification of the ubiquitous Frutiger font [2]; most people would probably tell you that even Frutiger looks like Arial too them. And yet, Siemens spent loads of money on Siemens Sans Global, a version that "includes all of the world’s major script systems". Personally, I think that Siemens Sans is maybe the most beautiful sans-serif font ever designed. See for yourself: Do you feel a difference? [1] https://www.urwpp.de/graphic/pdf/SiemensBooklet.pdf https://www.urwpp.de/graphic/pdf/SiemensBooklet.pdf [2] http://www.identifont.com/show?LY http://www.identifont.com/show?LY

robszumski 12y ago

My biggest takeaway is not the small visual tweaks to the typeface, but the thought that goes into how each team or sector of the company needs to consume and produce downstream assets based on this redesign work. The guidelines/communication about this change is the main outcome of this work. For example, the discussion on the flexibility for various radii, reversibility and styling to match a platform's style means that downstream designers or developers don't have any ambiguity on how to adapt the favicon to their needs. Flexibility and freedom to customize are first-class, not afterthoughts.

kak9 12y ago

At FB scale, a very small percentage change in user engagement/behavior/etc is very meaningful. So guessing it does--but wouldn't necessarily extrapolate it to what small startups should do.

justinph 12y ago

Yes. They telegraph consistency, reliability, and deeper thought. The clear relationship that the type and all the icons have to each other looks planned and substantial. Typically, these are qualities that brands want to convey.

jlarocco 12y ago
I'm not so sure. Are there studies or anything? Facebook got pretty big and they're just now doing this, and mainly because one guy is spearheading it. I have a hard time believing Facebook's user base or revenue would be any different if they consistently used a certain sans-serif font.
- hbosch 12y ago
  No, these changes are not new. They are years old. The small changes over time are someone imperceptible in tiny chunks as they become applied over time, this may be true. But to question their value? To the visual design and branding industry, that's like throwing down the gauntlet. There are teams of people dedicated to shaving milliseconds of latency off of page loads. They might speed up the entire site by 15-20ms in a year! That's amazing! But do Facebook users care? The answer is probably actually "no" -- but it's not important that users notice or care. In fact, these kinds of changes are judged in their success by users actually not noticing and simply getting a better experience whether they know it or not.
  - jlarocco 12y ago
    > But to question their value? To the visual design and branding industry, that's like throwing down the gauntlet. I don't see the problem questioning the value. If I'm paying somebody $150k a year to design stuff for my company, and they're spending the time making imperceptible changes to fonts and deciding whether the bottom of the 'f' in my logo should have a 3 pixel border or not, I think it's fair to know why they're doing it and what they're expecting to achieve. I never said design isn't valuable. I was specifically questioning the trivial changes this guy is making. Is he really earning his salary making imperceptible font changes? Making a page load faster is actually noticeable by users, but it's a red herring, because that's not a component of "visual identity," and it wasn't even mentioned in the article. Something more substantial than, "I'm another designer, and I think it's valuable," would be nice.
    - dnch 12y ago
      They're doing it because that's part of the job. All of those "trivial changes" combine to give users the perception of completeness, cohesiveness and value. When broken down into exacting detail, it's easy to dismiss them as imperceptible; by themselves, they mostly are. But the cumulative effect of these decisions leads to the perception of a better product. Compare and contrast a MacBook Air with any one of the cheaper knock-offs. They may pretty much look the same, but the Apple product has an intangible sense of being worth more. The same thing goes with cars—sure, they all have the same basic design, but put an Audi next to a Lada and you can immediately tell by looking at them which one's worth more. That's the value of visual design.

moeamaya 12y ago

Even if you ignore the improvement in overall brand consistency, as a general workflow it’s a huge win. It’s basically a design framework for a large team, no different than React is a UI library for manipulating the DOM. But as others have suggested, there’s a subtext to a UI that is not immediately logic based, and this is where a coalesced design sensibility has a strong impact. Visual affinity is constructed through a base need, and there are billions of background calculations happening to resolve this before your conscious kicks in. Saying that each change is minuscule is a first level pass at something that while useful is ignoring the full depth to the mental model of comprehension.

ianstormtaylor 12y ago

Instead of assuming that the changes that many, many visual designers advocate for are arbitrary and worthless, try assuming the opposite, and then finding comparisons that might explain how these kinds of changes could be valuable. Is it valuable for programmers to discuss and refactor code to maintain a consistent casing pattern? Is it valuable for writers to edit books to make sure they use consistent language throughout? Is it valuable for industrial designers to iterate on the amount of tactile feedback a dial gives? Is it valuable for musicians to continue to tweak their guitar until they get it to just the right tone for a song? If none of those ring a bell, keep looking until you find a craft that you feel you have a strong control of, and then find the equivalent comparison. I guarantee one exists for every craft. It's very easy for people unfamiliar with a craft to belittle refinement as useless, but only because they have an underdeveloped sense of the impact of the craft on how users/readers/listeners make decisions.

pestaa 12y ago
Excellent comment. As I understand it, they mostly did this for themselves. A change of one pixel doesn't concern any user, but it communicates the pride you take in your work.
- currysausage 12y ago
  > As I understand it, they mostly did this for themselves. Wouldn't say so. All these people do the best work they can - the average consumer might not consciously tell the difference, but they will notice carelessness, at least subconsciously. Companies spend loads of money on Corporate Fonts. Most consumers will tell you that they can't tell apart Arial and any other sans-serif font; yet many companies decide that a proprietary font is a vital identity asset. Doesn't that say a lot about the meaning of typography? The Siemens Sans font [1] is particularly fascinating: It is a very subtle modification of the ubiquitous Frutiger font [2]; most people would probably tell you that even Frutiger looks like Arial too them. And yet, Siemens spent loads of money on Siemens Sans Global, a version that "includes all of the world’s major script systems". Personally, I think that Siemens Sans is maybe the most beautiful sans-serif font ever designed. See for yourself: Do you feel a difference? [1] https://www.urwpp.de/graphic/pdf/SiemensBooklet.pdf https://www.urwpp.de/graphic/pdf/SiemensBooklet.pdf [2] http://www.identifont.com/show?LY http://www.identifont.com/show?LY