Twitter began to launch its new interface a week or two ago. Not everyone has been fortunate enough to test it out, but many users have already made the switch. Since the announcement, I have checked my personal Twitter account everyday to see if I am one of the lucky ones. I am still waiting for it on my Twitter page, but I have been able to use the new interface on other pages I run for school organizations and for my client at my internship (just got the new Twitter there today). From what I have experienced so far, I give it a big thumbs up.
Twitter developers have made a lot of improvements that will change the way we can use the site. I feel that popular Twitter dashboards such as TweetDeck and HootSuite influenced some of these changes. Twitter has to keep up with their features because I know that for a while I was not even logging into Twitter because I enjoyed tweeting right from my desktop on TweetDeck.
On the new Twitter, you can now get details about every tweet separately on your page, such as who retweeted it and who responded to it. From the same window, you can view a full profile of every user who tweeted at you without leaving your Twitter page. Also, when a link to a picture or video is in a tweet, you can now preview them right from the same page. These are just a few of the new additions. The new layout is very user-friendly.
What caught my eye today that I didn’t know before is that the new layout of Twitter is designed after the Golden Ratio. For all of us who don’t remember middle school math like myself, this is what the golden ratio is. Yeah, doesn’t make much sense to me either.
The Golden Ratio in nature…
Cool, right? According to Twitter’s Creative Director Doug Bowman, “To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didn’t leave those ratios to chance. This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is wider, your details pane will expand to provide greater utility, throwing off these proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise.” As a designer, it is inspiring to see how much thought was put into something that seems as simple as a Twitter design. Every detail was placed in a specific way to make the Twitter experience an overall better one for all users.
According to Mashable, this is how users are reacting to the new Twitter so far (survey has only been live for an hour)…
Have any of you been lucky enough to get the new Twitter yet? What do you guys think? Let me know!
Nick Schweers
Digital Media Chair
PRestige Agency 