In order to develop a successful Social Network you have to give your potential users what they can handle. If you surf over the internet you will find a lot of usability principles, we have just complied some of them with examples in order for you to understand how users move and connect inside Social Networks. Remember that when developing or modifying a site or social network you have the possibility to increase usability on every aspect of the it, we really consider that as a right move in direction of developing a better web. The ‘usability improving process’ is based on a lot of talking, testing, research, listening, developing and re-developing… it’s not an easy way to go, but with no doubt, a really convenient one.

Let’s start with considering the existing conventions on the web as it exists today. Most of this aren’t written conventions but they refer to the things everybody knows, they’ve used the web in general or some of the most popular networking sites. You will see the main example bellow: The Search Button. It’s logic: when you don’t know a site, you do not know how to move inside it the first feature you will use to guide yourself is a Search Button, there is no difference here with a social networking site where you will need to find people ASAP to start taking the best of it.
Here we have some images…


MySpace, easy to find your friends or favorite bands.



Elgg platform has the search field by deffault at the top menu bar.



Institutional sites also applies to this convention as the CNN site does.


If you give it some thoughts you will find that kind on conventions on every site…
A home with a big SIGN UP at the right….


(As at Digg, Facebook and Twitter)

or a icon well known by every visitor


(Like Wordpress, Elgg and Flikr uses the RSS button)


Another important usability resource for social networks (and every other site) is to give hierarchy and an effective use to the different kind of links. You know you have several technics to give more or less importance to a link on our site. You can use a button with a contrasting color as the ‘signup!’ buttons we’ve seen before. Or you can use a text link with almost the same color than the background for the opposite purpose. There are several links you might have and you probably don’t want them to have the same relevance. Let’s take a look at some examples…



At Delicious.com they don’t want you to log out, because you have to stay logged in in order to bookmark your sites, but one of the most powerful tools they have is the search engine, so here you see… they empower it! Saving a new bookmark is the main activity on this site, but it isn’t something you will usually do from the web so they just placed a link with some coloured background, probably just in case.



Here you have an example from Elgg default theme, where you will see the ‘post it’ button attract more attention than the ‘view all’ text link. If you want people to interact and add information to the site, then the submit button will have to be really easy to find.




The opposite idea works for those links users won’t use every time they visit the site. Using almost the same background color will help that links to ‘hide’ and only be found when a user need them and search for them, as the ‘Settings’ link.


As in every action there is a reaction, on a social networking site there should be also a ‘Feedback’. Users should notice that the content they submitted is uploading or a button they pressed has being pressed. In the matter of text links, here is also a good idea to show whether the mouse is over a link or the next one before clicking it.



Here you see some images of the pointer selecting links. A colored background is an easy and common resource, but you have to make it look different from the already selected link!


Youtube and Elgg loaders give you the certain that something is happening!


One last, but really important rule is to show only what really matters. A page full of information is difficult to read. In order to guide to your users to do what you want them to do inside your site, you should avoid any distraction or give the properly information at the right moment. A good example we all know is the Twitter feed, where you see only the tweets an who posted them and once you roll over them, you see more details and options as ‘Reply’ or ‘ReTweet’ as we see in the following image.




Ok! That’s it for today, I hope you liked this general analysis and you’ll give this points a chance!


Lucila.Campos@condiminds.com