{"id":1249,"date":"2011-01-20T17:57:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T16:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2019-11-06T17:45:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T16:45:01","slug":"usability-fail-twitter-on-iphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/20\/usability-fail-twitter-on-iphone\/","title":{"rendered":"Usability Fail \u2013 Twitter on iPhone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week I have another small usability issue that would be incredibly easy to identify and fix with small scale user testing. This time it\u2019s with Twitter on the iPhone.<\/p>\n<p>Typically people read the oldest tweets first, working up to the latest ones. The app is made to support this, retaining your \u2018last read\u2019 tweet, so you can read up from there.<\/p>\n<p>Another feature of Twitter on the iPhone is, if you\u2019ve been away a while, your timeline will be missing entries. You\u2019ll see a tear, like in the picture below, and clicking this will download the missing tweets into your timeline.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<div id=\"attachment_1251\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1251\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1251\" title=\"twitter timeline\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/IMG_0507.png\" alt=\"Twitter Timeline\" width=\"320\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/IMG_0507.png 320w, https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/IMG_0507-200x300.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1251\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Downloading missing tweets...<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now the usability issue here is small but incredibly annoying. When the tweets download, you\u2019re presented with the latest ones first, and the oldest ones at the bottom. Completely the opposite to how people use the twitter app, reading the oldest ones first. Effectively this means scrolling down a list of potentially hundreds of tweets, looking for where you were before clicking the tear (which is not indicated).<\/p>\n<p>The workaround I currently use is behaviour that would be spotted straight away, and fixed, by usability testing. To prevent being taken to the most recent tweet, the user has to \u2018press\u2019 the tear, but then scroll down to hide it from view, before taking a tentative peek up the timeline after 10 seconds or so to see if the act has been successful.<\/p>\n<p>User testing would quickly identify this behaviour, and make it unnecessary by fixing the problem. Instead of showing you the most recent tweet when \u2018filling in the blanks\u2019 of the timeline, Twitter should take you to the oldest, hence not breaking the user\u2019s flow, and aligning with how the rest of the app works.<\/p>\n<p>Job done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I have another small usability issue that would be incredibly easy to identify and fix with small scale user testing. This time it\u2019s with Twitter on the iPhone. Typically people read the oldest tweets first, working up to the latest ones. The app is made to support this, retaining your \u2018last read\u2019 tweet, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-user-research","tag-bad-ux","grve-entry-item","grve-blog-item"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v15.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Usability Fail \u2013 Twitter on iPhone - Steve Bromley - User Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/20\/usability-fail-twitter-on-iphone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Usability Fail \u2013 Twitter on iPhone - Steve Bromley - User Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week I have another small usability issue that would be incredibly easy to identify and fix with small scale user testing. 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