Read-write emphasis

Facebook is a ‘read-write’ platform. I go to it to get information (read), and share information (write). That said, I find posting a status update from the Facebook iPhone app can be surprisingly difficult.

When it is visible, the ‘Status’ button isn’t prominent (it is neither at the top nor bottom of the screen). From places in the app where it is visible, a single tap gets you to composing a post. However, typically I will not have left the app in one of these places and need at best three taps (back to top menu, News Feed or my name, Status Update). If I had navigated deep, and maybe brought up a modal view, more taps are required. Alternatively, I could remember the unusual swipe-on-the-navigation-bar gesture to skip to the top menu, then use two more taps to get where I want to be.

Compare this to Mail on the iPhone — another read-write scenario. The compose button appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen in all main views in the app. (It is not there in the ‘Edit’ and search modes, the move message modal view, and the compose view itself.)

My argument here is not that the Facebook iPhone app’s interface is bad; it is required to be more complex than Mail because it does more. I’m interested in observing how the designers have placed the emphasis when choosing between reading and writing.