Twitter's New UI - My Take

So, twitter has recently launched their new UI claiming a constant user experience on all the devices, be it desktop, mobile or tablet. It’s indeed a big leap forward and I am glad for this. Being a devotee of Twitter who ritually go through all the tweets every single day, I realized that in this pursuit of omnipresence they actually have deteriorated the experience in some aspects. Let me bullet out these issues:

1. Every time when I logs in Twitter, I scan through my time-line to identify the tweets with links. And, am sure most of the users does the same. Earlier, links in twitter were simply shown in blue, which has become a standard across with the evolution of web. But, in the new Twitter UI, everything is grey and links just looses their identity. To make it even worse, on mouse over, tweet actions (reply, re-tweet, favorite) comes up which are again in grey and produces extra noise .
2. It’s my age old complain to Twitter that they don’t have any feedback mechanism with the help of which user could identify which tweets are read and which are not. It’s only after going through few tweets that I feels deja-vu and realizes that I have already read these tweets last time. Even a demarcation line between the tweets of 2 successive login sessions will solve the purpose.
3. New UI has also removed the highlight of tweet on mouse over. In an interface, which is a collection of similar looking component, mouse-over highlight is must because it gives user a visual feedback of his current location and helps him to mark that component from the rest of the bulk. Removal of this feature has further decremented the legibility of tweets.
4. I am little doubtful about the redone of Twitter branding. Twitter logo is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is just this subtle treatment on the bird in the middle of the header. Being a user, this brand-less screen does not convince me enough that I am inside an authentic space.

Will keep on updating this article as and when I come across any issues, which I think should be discussed. Next article will talk about the features that are genuinely good in this new UI. Till then, bye !

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