supersonic feet

After flickr finally adding pages to see comment activity on your photos from one place as part of their swish ‘gamma’ re-design, all was looking good.

Then tonight I tried to get back to the ‘create a flickr badge‘ page and found that their information architecture ain’t all that good. It’s taken me eventually searching flickr’s forums in order to get the link to the page I was after, where the link used to be on your main photos page.

Granted, it perhaps didn’t deserve to be on a user’s main photo page all the time as it’s something you only use now and then, but they seem to have gone from always available to extremely hard to find. I tried going through the various drop-down menus at the top of the page; looking at my account and profile pages; I even looked at the page with the link once and didn’t notice it (the Help > Tools page).

It really doesn’t stand out anymore. For such a handy feature, you’d think flickr would want it very easy to find. One reason I didn’t spot it even when on the right page (aside from the link not standing out in the least) is that the Tools page is under the Help section. To me, help sections are where you go for FAQs, support, etc. and not generally where I expect to find application functionality. Yes tools help you, but in a more functional than advisory way.

Anyway, I found it in the end, just a bit miffed at how awkward I found it.