Flickr - initial impressions

Well, I have begun to use Flickr, and my initial impressions are that its a cool concept, but the implementation is that of a beta, or I am too used to Google. The first issue is that when I selected maps, the web page hung for about 45 minutes, which was irritating. It seems like a time-out would have been in order.

I then signed up to add family members, and that interface wasn't designed by anyone who knows about GUI's. That is an issue because this page is likely used frequently. All fields are required, so why they would use a grayed out field as shown below cost me about 5 minute of looking. Of course, the error that was given didn't take me to the point of origin - the text field. It takes 1 line of JavaScript to place the cursor in the offending location - and 1 more line to turn the label red. It baffles me why they have missed out on this usability opportunity. I have included a photo below to show the issue.


Finally, I have to say that to find help or a page that highlights all the features has continued to remain hidden. It might be there - but its clearly not in some location that I am looking. Maybe I need to go back through and start looking at the grayed out items. However, I always like to find that single page that walks through how to use the common features of a page.

Inital impressions of Flickr - the concept is an A - the implemenation - a C - overall score B-.

scc