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.