Redesign?

The problem with web development is that you stare at the same screen for hours each day. Consequently, you begin to second-guess your design.

The current look-and-feel of Timelimes is actually about the fifth iteration. Much of the incremental change has centered upon the styling of events in feed. At the moment, each event has a thumbnail to the left (which in the case of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace is the profile pic of the event actor, for Flickr it's the Flickr logo, for eBay it is the item gallery thumbnail and for Digg it is the item image if it has one, else just the Digg logo).

I use Timelimes quite a bit and I'm beginning to find it a bit difficult to mentally organise the information I'm seeing. Information digestion is exactly the problem Timelimes aims to solve, so it isn't good to have an interface which is not conducive to 'glance comprehension' (what I call the ability to quickly glance at a screen, or item on a screen, and intuitively understand what it's about).

I think the thumbnail image is the problem. It's confusing because, glancing at an event in the Timelime, you can't intuitively tell which service it comes from. Sure, there's the small icon under the title and description, but your eye isn't drawn to it. The entire event just appears as one big block of text. You have to actually read it to comprehend it, which violates the goal of glance comprehension.

If you use Timelimes enough, you begin to developer a sense of which service each event belongs to, but it shouldn't be something you need to train yourself into -- it should be intutive.

So, I'm thinking of trialing a new style for events, using the service logo on the left instead of the user's profile image etc. If anyone has any ideas, suggestions or feedback (once it's implemented), I'd love to hear them.