When usability is useless

A common mistake in social apps is to design usability with a common conventional objective - efficiency for task fulfillment. Indeed, efficiency is the central theme of the mainstream productivity tools (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet, google search, nextag price comparison, etc.). However, usability merely for efficient user experience is useless in the context of delivering rich social experience because now we live in the web.

Facebook in early days was an CRM (collegemate relationship management) tool. In the sense of usability, the user experience was comparable to enterprise CRM (customer relationship management). The site was designed for efficient task fulfillment in profile management, friend management including a workflow for add-friend request and approval, and an inter-friend messaging system. The social experience, unfortunately, was relatively poor comparing to rival myspace until facebook embraced many third-party mini-apps. A significant number of popular facebook apps are dedicated to delivering social experience (e.g. X me, food fighting, SuperPoke, etc.). These very sociable time wasters have nothing to do with efficiency but actually destroy the productivity in user experience, making the usability for efficiency and productivity totally useless.

SuperPoke at my facebook profile page.

Conventional usability might be inadequate in describing social experience for social apps. In addition, we need to emphasize sociability aspect and create a more human web environment to live in.