An open post to @twitter about UXD: Dear Twitter, I do not heart you, but sometimes I star you!
The power of icons and intent, when trends negatively impact design.
There was a significant effort by the team behind the latest social media trending topic, Twitter’s removal of its star icon with the ‘new’ heart icon. Akarshan Kumar (@akik) announced in the Twitter blog post of November 3rd how he could not contain the excitement about the change and update.
Aki says “You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.” Isn’t fave similar to heart? Perhaps he didn’t ponder enough. Is Twitter a tool where people come to like stuff, or is it a platform where people follow, keep track of trends, bookmark stories, highlight articles, acknowledge comments, favorite images, or collect and pin tweets?
“The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.” — Aki
I want to know what was the test Aki and his team followed? how did they frame the statement mentioned above? Let’s not confine emotions, meanings and intent. I am sure the star icon has a broader scope and can be less constrained than the star icon, which is quite the opposite of what Aki indicated above.
Twitter has been a social media platform that people use in different ways than they use instagram, facebook, or vine. Each of these online networks have their application, the minute that they all start to resemble each other, it makes me question whether it is a good time to just use one and stay with it, because why to keep three networks that are very similar and offer nothing unique?
Design teaches us that intent and function should guide and direct form. I ‘star’ things when I feel a story, tweet, post, article or image is interesting, when I want to learn more about someone’s thoughts whether I agree, disagree, like, love, hate or appreciate it or not. A heart is a very unidirectional icon, not as broad, and many times it just feels wrong to use a heart because the intent is not at all what the icon indicates.
Finally, trying to bring youth to the platform by using words like “adorb” or “LOL” is disingenuous, and feels like pandering its audience.
If Twitter and its team want to bring a more complete solution to all of its network including Vine, I strongly would consider LuckyCharms’ idea behind their funny post image of a tool that can allow you to select the many shapes of the charms!
