I'm sure that many have seen the Twitter user page. I would guess most common use of this page is to:

• decide if to follow a user, and then
• to follow that user

If that is the case, why isn't the page optimized for these tasks?

What works well

In order to meet the first need: "decide if to follow a user" I think the page works well.

The following are probably of most interest in deciding if to follow a user:

• number of followers
• number following
• bio
• recent tweets

All of these items are shown in a prominent place in the page. It is easy for a user to scan and find all of these items in a matter of a couple of seconds.

What can be improved

Now that you have decided to follow a user. The next action to take is to click the 'Follow' button. Think back to the first time you clicked on the 'Follow' button. Was the click successful? How did you know?

There are two problems with the interaction design of the 'Follow' button:

• the 'Follow' button does not change state
• the spinner is 700 pixels away from the button

A simple improvement

By changing a few lines of HTML and Javascript the design could be changed to:

In the redesign, after clicking 'Follow' the reaction is entirely in the visual field of the user and linked by proximity to the 'Follow' button.

In this case: - the 'Follow' button changes state and indicates this change visually - the spinner is right next to the button

Note: It may be the case that the spinner is used for multiple actions on the same page. If this is the case, place a spinner appropriately near each interface element that initiates an action.

Reasonable, but can be improved

This use of proximity is already used by Twitter to indicate that the follow action has been successful.

I think the placement of the success message is appropriate, as is the change in state of the 'Follow' button.

Now suppose that the user wants to stop following someone. They will click the 'Following' button and see:

There are a few issues:

• to unfollow requires two clicks
• the unfollow process is not symmetric with the follow process
• the language is not consistent: click 'Follow' to follow, click the 'Following' to stop following
• unfollow is called 'remove'

I suspect the design is like this to prevent a user from spuriously unfollowing someone. In cases like these it is almost always better to replace confirmation actions with an undo, i.e. Never Use a Waring When you Mean Undo.