On the one hand, I really like the new collections organization structure that Flickr just added. It’s not perfect, but it’s nice to have more control over organizing my photos.
However, the interface is getting…well, cluttered is about the nicest way to put it. By the time I’m looking at one of my sets, I’ve got no less than five different sets of toolbar/breadcrumb buttons above the pictures!
- Line 1 (constant): The global account options.
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Line 2 (constant): The main navigation menu bar, where every option (save ‘Home’ and the search field) is a drop-down menu with more options.
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Line 3 (appears when navigating within collections): The ‘breadcrumb’ trail leading from the user’s main page to the individual set.
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Line 4 (appears when viewing your own set, not visible for other people): Set-level editing options. 3/5 of the items are dropdown menus.
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Line 5 (constant): Set-level view options, available to everyone looking at the set.
It’s getting to the point where it’s UI overload — which is doubly grating on a site that’s normally incredibly well-designed and remarkably intuitive to navigate through. By the time all five toolbars appear, not only does it push the photos (which, I believe, are supposed to be the focus of the site) pretty far down the page, but I’m starting to lose track of which options are hidden in which set of menus or links!
Additionally, while the breadcrumb navigation (Line 3) is a necessary addition now that Collections allow you to organize your sets and collections up to five levels deep, it feels kind of abandoned — just shoehorned in somewhere — and quite possibly easily missed. Since that breadcrumb line is the only indication that a set is part of a collection and might have other, related sets ‘nearby,’ it seems that it should be better and more obviously integrated into the overall design. Perhaps somewhere around the set title and Line 5? Over the title, or either under or integrated with Line 5?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what the best solution might be. This just strikes me as an area where there’s a lot of room for improvement.
I kind of agree, but I think you also need to keep in mind that a very large part of Flickr’s userbase have been members for a very long time. In my experience in using Flickr, the staff are very receptive to users’ comments. After all, it is a site for them. I wouldn’t doubt that users wanted more and more features. So maybe for this audience, they’re okay with it. However, I also agree that at some point, things can get out of hand. It may be that this is the best solution. User interface design is always difficult and not something programmers or developers are normally specialized in.
I am in complete agreement with this article. Photos are meant to be Flickr’s main focus – but there is way too much text and clutter around it. And the display size of the photos on the basic page view is way to small. It is sort of like a Windows take on UI rather than Apple’s. I have given up and am heading in the direction of creating my own site with my own interface rather than putting images on Flickr. For a photography website – it is nowhere near as intuitive as it should be. Not even close.