Almost a year after Facebook announced a design overhaul of their News Feed, the social media giant finally started unrolling the new design to users on Monday.
In the months that followed the initial announcement, new designs were tested on users and were universally panned before being rejected altogether. Photos were made huge, the News Feed was separated into sub-feeds on the right-hand side, and profile pictures bore resemblance to what are seen on Tumblr. Facebook took user feedback into consideration, and developed an entire new and basic look.
The update will bring new icons, enlarged photos and Arial and Helvetica fonts to the News Feed, and will look very similar to News Feeds on their mobile platform. More subtle changes include slight new looks to the status bar and “People You May Know” section on the right. The search bar will also be expanded, and English language users can still utilize Graph Search.
Facebook-founded Creative Labs is intended for experimental products to test on the user base, and had a hand in this redesign. Their first product – Paper, which was initially intended as a News Feed update – came out in January.
The new design balances web and mobile viewing – while they hold many similarities to each other, they are still used entirely differently. Last year’s tested designs were entirely different, part of why it was panned by users.
Several users are experiencing the new look now, and will be rolled out to the rest of Facebook’s user base in the coming weeks.
