I don’t pretend to know everything about user interface design. Really, I don’t. I may have read a paragraph of the assigned reading from the ginormous UID textbook when I took that Final Project course for my AS. Still, I am a user, so I have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Changing things over and over again, people, does not work.

It took me longer than normal to get used to Facebook. Things were organized in a strange way and I didn’t understand why I had to create a Page instead of just starting another account for different things. Once I got used to it, though, I liked it. I pushed for us to use it at my morning job. I became accustomed to the differences between my profile, my Pages, and my Groups.

And then they changed Pages.

I had to learn how to use them all over again, and quick, because not only do I use Pages for my Letters of Love, but I also use them for my morning job’s company. Still, they were easier to use and I liked being able to update their statuses.

And then they changed the home page’s UI. Completely. I didn’t know how to access my Pages or my Groups. I could only see my friend’s updates. I had to use the toolbar — which I rarely use and think they could just do away with — to go to my Pages.

My Pages whose UI’s were changed, again.

Not majorly, mind you, but just enough that it threw me off a little. The status update seems to have copulated with the Wall. They’re now the same thing. I don’t see what the point is, because now when you write on your Page’s Wall, your status changes. I don’t want my status to say hi back to so-and-so.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that UI’s are going to change. Usually, though, a design/development team makes those changes because the old UI wasn’t working. It needed to be better. It needed to be more comprehensive. I think the old UI could have been a little better, but they didn’t have to change it completely. They could have organized things a bit better instead.

Anyway, they had better be careful. If they keep changing things around like this, they are going to alienate their users. People are creatures of familiarity; if things keep changing too much, Facebook may lose a big chunk of their users because they got fed up with having to relearn how to use the site over and over again.

I’ve already had to learn twice. I’d hate to know how many times older users have had to relearn it.