First, photos felt much more vibrant on black and really stood out more against the background. We then made some big decisions based on our experience testing out these initial prototypes. We expanded the designs into a larger lightbox overlay that would enable more interaction as well as let users view larger photos if their screen resolutions allowed. The pop-up would enable users to keep their place in News Feed, and it could be very lightweight.Īlthough we liked the simplicity of the dialog, it didn’t leave any room for data about the photo, or a way to comment or tag.
Early on, we discovered that using a pop-up solved a lot of our needs. We began by experimenting with a few design concepts.
The JavaScript to load and cache photos and comment data was heavy it was pieced together over the years as browser technology evolved and requirements changed.Īn upgrade should improve upon all these areas and ideally create a more positive experience that would increase engagement around photo views, tags, comments, and likes. A standard practice was to view a photo, scroll down to read the caption and comments, scroll back up to page, and then repeat. Reading comments on photos was cumbersome. Not a big deal for the computer-savvy, but not a common practice for a large percentage of our users. Viewing photos from News Feed meant having to open multiple tabs or be forced to lose your place. Users were forced to refresh their browsers to view photos and comments. Images were slow to load, and sometimes hung indefinitely. We started by outlining the problems with our current experience: While Photos is one of the most core experiences on Facebook, with over 100 million photos uploaded per day, it’s supported by some of the oldest code in the system and was in dire need of an upgrade.īy redesigning the Photo Viewer, users now view over 5% more photos, equating to an increase in roughly a billion photo views every day. When we looked to revamp the Photos experience, we faced many challenges.