I’ve been a long-time critic of Skype’s UI/UX. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I’m Skype hater, it’s cause I’m an active Skype user. Now with Skype v.6 we have been told about some “UI improvements”. What are these “improvements” about?
- Flattened icons
Don’t much different as it wasn’t an issue - Flattened application icon
A trendy move that doesn’t improve usability - Facebook +IM integration
Yeah, Skype wants to know more about you - Chatting in multiple windows
That’s nice to have that feature back - Profile-picture picker doesn’t work
Sorry, no thanks for that - Recent images can’t be seen
The same
It seems like we should be grateful for these updates. But, what if Skype UX designers would be really interested in UI improvements? There is a room for that and, believe it or not, it wouldn’t take much effort to make a real improvement. If you wonder, it’s a long-time UI glitch – “offline” and “invisible” status icons. The problem there is that they look the same, while from a user perspective being offline is quite different than being invisible.