I still can’t believe Twitter gives me no choice but to see partial tweet-streams from the people I elect to follow.

If the allegation was that most people didn’t want the functionality and didn’t know how to get rid of it (usability issue), Twitter could at least have just switched it off to all users, and then let the complainers get it back by changing their own settings…

I agree that a user experience would be a great asset in situations like this.

First, I am *really* persistent when I want something, bordering on bossy if I don’t realize it. I guess that’s why I have consistently owned my own business or worked as a manager, though, so it’s worked out for me.

Second, I am not usually attached to “one way only” of doing something. I am attached to fixing the problem if I perceive there is one, but will drop it (till later) if users don’t struggle or it is not a genuine priority right then. I also believe there are easily 5-10 different ways to do something in a user interface, and so if the solution I propose at first is not the best one for various reasons, I have no problem continuing to brainstorm and collaborate with my team, developers and managers until we’ve resolved my concern.

I think it’s because I do a lot of collaboration, despite maybe my insistence that something BE done about an issue, is the reason this approach has not caused me many problems, if any.

However, I find that many people do not understand this part of the role of a UX designer and often take offense to your critical eye. How do you handle such situations?

Twitter has had its scalability issues for a long time (first with Scoble and now Aplusk + others). The system takes alot of strain on memory + FollowFriday + Retweetage.

Looking at it from a technical perspective, thats why they removed the feature. Imagine how many dollars it takes to keep adding memory on the server, etc etc without continuous investment?

However, I agree with you –>

“It’s never a good idea to completely remove a used feature without warning.”

Yes I’ve met many emotional people who aren’t willing to let go and are quite unhappy with this fiasco. Unfortunately (as we all know) users are always complaining about UI changes etc etc.

I’m sure the engineers over at twitter know this, after all they are “geniuses” for coming up with such a simple application.

I agree partly with @pashmina (not about your rant) but the fact that they are very talented indeed. They know whats best and whats not.

The only thing they lack is the business model ($$$) which is quite funny indeed.

Thanks for the insight, I enjoyed reading what you had to say..

As a starting point, only 3% of Twitter users have ever *touched* that setting. Granted, it’s probably a segment of very active users. BUT more than 97% of Twitter users just don’t care. Your “spoke down” comment makes it seem that they’ve offended the most common user when clearly, it’s just a REALLY vocal minority. Probability wise, I’d say that at most, only 10% of that 3% are annoyed, so about 0.3% of all Twitter users. You’re stacking the deck against the masses.

And as another UX practitioner, I think it’s important for us to step outside of our bent and hold the long term vision for the product. I agree with their decision, as I can understand how they’ll eventually make it even better than it was, and make it kick-ass for the common users. The one thing that was done badly with this change, was their method of communication to the user. And that’s probably the only thing I’ll fault them on.