I look at UI changes in a totally different way now. My saw me come online on Skype, so she called me. There's an ocean between us currently. She said she called me because she was writing an email to me, but couldn't find the Send button, so didn't know how to send it. Either it made her feel stupid or frustrated, or she felt so sad that she couldn't send an email to me that she had spent some time writing, or whatever, but she started crying. She was crying because she couldn't find the Send button in gmail. She's approaching 60 and isn't as technically adept as some of us, so that is admittedly a factor.
Seeing her cry about this made me change the way I think about what some users go through when they experience unexpected UI changes. I remember hearing people say they got confused by Windows 8 tiles, and didn't think it was such a big deal. After seeing my mom cry over a UI change, I think there are better ways to implement UI changes than simply shoving them down people's throat. Sure, if it must be done, it must be done (UI change), but don't shove it down people's throats unexpectedly and with no hand-holding at all.
On a similar but different note, there were stories of children getting upset at the new look of iOS 7. When I saw the headline I thought it odd, because I doubt the designers of iOS 7 ever thought they'd actually make someone cry with the new design.
But what can be done about it? Good design is important, but sometimes things have to be changed, and ultimately a lot people just don't like change. Even if it's the best design in the world, somebody, somewhere will struggle with it being different. I think some "hand holding" as you suggest would be a good idea, but I'm not sure how that could be done in practice.
Why? If a UI works for people, why does it have to be changed? That seems to me to be at least part of the problem: software designers think things have to be changed, when it's really just that they want to change them, for whatever reason, and don't stop to think about the impact.
a lot people just don't like change
A lot of people have things that work perfectly well for them and don't like having to re-learn their workflow whenever some software designer has a bright idea. I'm one of them: I still run a KDE 3 desktop on Linux because it works for me and I don't like having my UI messed with just because somebody designed some new eye candy.
This how I feel about every version of Skype (for OS X) since version 2.8.x. The Skype UI had two windows - one for contacts and one for conversations. This made it easy to tuck Skype in a small corner of your screen. I think starting at version 5 they switched to one giant window and the community, pretty unanimously thought it was one of the worst UIs they had ever used (see this blog post: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/30/skype_5/). The change seemed completely unnecessary and made things very non intuitive. If I myself had trouble using it, I think it must have been even worse for people who do not use computers so often. Indeed many people reverted back to 2.8. I used 2.8 up until a few months ago when Skype finally decided to drop video support for it.
I think the newest version of Skype does let you break things into new windows, but to me it seems that it should be the default.
My main point is: the UI was already great, it didn't need any changes.
I'm still using 2.8 - if the other side cares about video, we'll use a google hangout, but skype's never getting upgraded again. Man was that a disaster.
Because it's a web application. In the old days, you could use that old version of said software until your motherboard gave out 15 years later. However, today there is only ONE version of Gmail. Everyone has to use that version. Hence one person's "New Feature" will be another person's reason to cry. The cost of keeping X versions of Gmail in production is just too prohibitive.
If this is true, then to me it's a reason not to use web applications. (And I don't, for the most part; I still run KDE 3 on Linux, and use KMail to read email. The only web applications I use routinely are for things like paying bills, where I have no choice but to use the web UI for the bank or credit card company or whatever. And every so often those change and I have to re-learn things for no good reason.)
How much is the cost of updating the old interface once in a while when the backend API's change? They don't need to keep improving to versions in parallel, just keep the old one working is good enough.
There can be numerous of reasons why something 'has' to be changed. These changes are not always justified from some perspectives of course. If these perspectives represent the majority and also on the long run, something's wrong and perhaps that is your point. But sometimes, change is for the better, for the majority, especially on the long run. Often, with software design, you reach local optima, and to get further (more user friendly, more flexible, incorporating new or changed features, adapt changes in hardware, or things happening outside, etc), you'll need to move away from the sweet spot the majority settled with to get to another (hopefully better adjusted) local optimum.
Finding examples of cases where this did not work are no argument against all changes.
And as far as people not liking change. This is not only about re-learning. Change on itself is often met with tough resistance. And this resistance is often rationally hard to justify. Your example may or may not be like that (I don't have enough perspective to tell), but perhaps re-learning would have been more than compensated by the amount of time saved due to new features.
Of course this is always possible in general terms. But I was talking about a specific set of cases: redesigns of UIs that already work and that already have a huge base of existing users who will have to relearn what they know. In my experience, it's extremely rare for that kind of change to be "for the better".
you'll need to move away from the sweet spot the majority settled with to get to another (hopefully better adjusted) local optimum.
And in the process, you will have to move through a "pit" of UI suck where lots of people have significantly worse productivity for a significant period of time. And for what?
Finding examples of cases where this did not work are no argument against all changes.
I didn't argue against all changes; as noted above, I was talking specifically about software UI changes that force existing users to re-learn things for no good reason.
perhaps re-learning would have been more than compensated by the amount of time saved due to new features.
How much time saved? And how long before that savings pays back the huge cost of the switch, per the above?
And can these numbers even be measured anyway? Sure, Google can measure to the millisecond how long it takes for you to move the mouse from one place to another, and no doubt they have numbers to show that the new GMail UI shaves critical milliseconds off certain common operations. But can they measure the frustration caused by changes like this? Can they measure the emails that don't even get written because people get fed up with their new UI? Can they measure the cost of keeping people within their walled garden?
This problem is not limited to Google, of course; I think it's endemic in the software UI world. I think software UIs are like fashions: changes are largely driven not by functionality but by an arms race for users' attention.
Then there are those of us at the opposite end of the age spectrum... I hated the look of iOS 7. Very hard on aging eyes. Replaced the wallpaper with a custom photo with my favorite background color for my text editor. Still can't find a way to get the high contrast, dark keypad back. Grrr. (expletive deleted), Apple - not everything needs to look like an hipster toy...
And then there are those of us who love the new design in iOS 7. And I know quite a few non-technical people who also think it's great.
UI changes, no matter how great, are always going to piss off someone. A lot of the time that someone probably has a very good reason to be pissed off. BUT the changes might also benefit a lot of people who aren't as vocal. We shouldn't hold back innovation because we're scared of pissing people off. Of course we also shouldn't change just for the sake of it.
[This isn't directed specifically at the parent but at the issue in general].
You have two peculiar observations brought about by one root cause and drifted off into the wrong theoretical cause.
The root cause is the traditional old style vs substance. This fits your observation that its harder to use, both to read and to keyboard. But its not marketed / designed as a tool to do anything, its a fashion accessory, so its irrelevant if its usable. What matters is if its shiny. That led you astray into the whole ageism anti-hipster thing. I also laugh at hipster kids, but the problem in this individual scenario has nothing to do with age.
Imagine if a hardware store released the iHammer and it was just like a conventional hammer, but cost much more so you could show off how rich you must be, and was painted blue, they made the hammer head pointy to be edgy and cool, had lace tied around the handle, and shipped it in a really cool origami clear plastic box. Anyone in search of a productive carpenters tool is going to be horribly disappointed and make fun of the iHammer, but thats not the point, the correct reason to buy a iHammer is to show off to their peers.
iDevices are no longer useful. That's OK. They're supposed to be fashion accessories, not useful devices.
Could you pack any more condescension in a post against happy iOS users? I happen to like ios7 because it is the most productive mobile OS available, for my needs. Which are not trivial.
I would disagree with your observation in that I never claimed that no needs can be fashion driven or that fashion is trivial, or that no one should be fashionable. Fashion and style are big business.
For analogy I have nothing against women who wear wedding dresses to a wedding instead of sweatpants and tee shirt, or people who market wedding dresses to women who want to wear them while getting married, it certainly fills a need for them very well, and profitably. The point I'm making is its pointless for a gang of construction workers to complain about women's wedding dresses, all "LOL they're selling wedding dresses how useless because the train will get stuck in the bulldozer hydraulics" and the other construction dude all "LOL yeah and how does she intend to get the cement stains out of that fabric anyway".
If your particular situation values style over usefulness more than any other device on the market, and some device fits your needs better than other devices on the market, hey, have fun with it.
Or maybe rephrased a basic product design goal is a fairly objective observation (although I may be wrong, but I don't think so). However, a (subjective) discussion about some users desires being trivial or non-trivial is way far away from that discussion.
I am making the claim that iDevices are not just a fashion accessory and in fact are a highly productive, useful mobile device for what people do with mobile devices. The success in the iPhone has been in large part due to its utility - the entire phone industry basically works like an iPhone does now.
Competing for customers remains a balancing act between increasing usability and the aesthetics/fashion of the device - clearly a gold iPhone has little to do with usability, but will sell heavily because it has a fashion edge in some quarters. But none of this would matter if the device wasn't still useful. My construction site superintendent step dad moves to an iPhone because it worked better than his BlackBerry. Rail yard workers I worked with are moving to rugged-case iPads over ruggedized PCs because the latter are difficult to use. Airline mechanics use them to log their daily activities and order parts. These folks don't necessarily move the needle of sales the way fashion does, but they wouldn't use an iPhone if it didn't help their job.
> iDevices are no longer useful. That's OK. They're supposed to be fashion accessories, not useful devices.
Unfortunately the issue is the lack of a quality alternative. My best friend was an iPhone user, then switched to a Samsung Galaxy S2 because he wanted to be able to use is phone as a mass storage device, among other things. Eventually he switched back to the iPhone because the Galaxy was so unreliable. After less than a year, his phone would just silently shut off a couple times throughout the day. And he's far from the only person I know who's had Android reliability problems. My old HTC Incredible would stop responding to input a couple times a week until I yanked the battery.
All that said, I'm sticking with Android because I have a high tolerance for pain. iDevices may no longer be useful, but at least they work.
My gf's iPhone5 started crapping out at 3 weeks old. My Galaxy S1 hung on just fine until I got the GS4 last month. Anecdotes on individual failures do not data make.
The iPhone is the best mobile option. I am much more attracted to Android than iOS (openness, the app store policies), but it just doesn't work as well as iOS. It's a bit cliche, but iPhone's just work.
Have you tried "invert colors" under accessibility? Makes the color palette rather crazy but at least everything is dark.
I don't understand what light colours have to do with hipsters though, most UIs tend towards lighter colours, it's the old school unix coonsoles that preferred dark.
There is a setting that might help, although it does not seem to affect the keyboard much if at all:
Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Increase Contrast
On a similar but different note, there were stories of children getting upset at the new look of iOS 7
This was a real concern for me. I made sure my children (19 months, 4 years old) could unlock my iPhone with iOS 7, before upgrading their iPad Mini.
Unfortunately I forgot about Spotlight Search, and the older one was complaining about it being missing after the upgrade (he knows he can find apps by typing in the first letter).
I showed him how to activate it but I can imagine many people never (re)discovering the feature, and possibly limiting the number of apps they install because they can't search for them easily.
I'm not a parent, but do you think that is acceptable behavior? (Regardless of the product, service, or situation.)
I can't imagine wanting to be the teacher or classmate of said 11 year old if he/she is always "bitching" about stuff. And if that behavior continues into adulthood, I can't imagine being the boss or coworker of him/her. Such negative social qualities might be detrimental to his/her professional success and social well-being.
I wouldn't be able to say for certain until I have kids, but it might be beneficial to teach your 11 year old how to tactfully and constructively discuss the negative aspects of something rather than just "bitching" about it.
I think Steve Jobs himself would have cried if he saw either IOS 7 or the iPhone 5C. One looks clunky and amateurish; the other is simply hideous and was designed specifically to increase margins while delivering an inferior product to the customer(sure its still well made, but most people would rather have an all metal case.)
John Gruber voiced an interesting perspective on the "Jobs would have _____" syndrome surrounding Apple products (scroll to "Defining Innovation Down"): daringfireball.net/2013/09/the_iphone_5s_and_5c
Having been an initial iPhone Luddite, I remember the posts I'd read discussing the detractors of various models. The criticism of this update, and a number of others since Jobs died, have an incredibly similar tenor.
What I find inspirational is that by force of personality alone, Steve Jobs convinced so many customers that the products' let-downs were much less meaningful than those customers and proponents would have normally felt.
I think the 5C would have driven him over the edge. It looks like it was made by Mattel or Hasbro (although it feels surprisingly sturdy. Salespeople should be doing everything they can to get it physically into customers hand). I actually really like iOS 7, although there are some rough edges that I bet would have bothered him (although I had to use an iPhone 1 for a week when my phone was stolen, and I think a lot of people forgot how clunky some of the software was). The only thing I don't like is that some buttons (mainly send and end calls) are extremely bright. It doesn't seem like it fits with iOS, plus it reminds me too much of Windows.
I never really bought in to the whole "Apple can't survive without Steve Jobs" thing. I think that they are perfectly capable of designing elegant, functional devices. Unfortunately, I don't think IOS 7 and the iPhone 5C are signs that the company is living up to its potential.
IOS now looks like it was slapped together in a hurry. I can't believe that this is the culmination of Jonny Ive's vision. He can do better. He has done better.
I think it's easy to underestimate or fail to appreciate the huge number of people who learned to use computers by rote. I have more than one relation who uses GMail by first typing "gmail" in the Google search bar. For them, just moving the send button would at least cause a hiccup in their workflow. Any UI optimization is a show-stopper.
By that logic, we should freeze all Software UI where it is. Any UI change is going to run into some level of change aversion, no matter how brilliant it is. Software makers have to balance that with the need to keep innovating on a piece of software - otherwise someone else will just do it and make them obsolete.
Why is there a need to keep innovating on the UI for sending and receiving email? Why isn't this a solved problem? Why can't the innovators move on to some new problem whose solution would create much more value?
I suspect it's because "Delivered a new UI experience for Gmail" sounds great at review time. People get rewarded for delivering features and a new UI for an existing product is relatively easy vs. trying to create a solution for a whole new problem.
Or maybe because it's a huge, intensely competitive market where multiple top-tier companies are trying to draw users from each other: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo. You can't stand still and expect your user base to keep growing. You might make your current users unhappy sometimes, but the goal is to keep getting new users, not just hold onto the ones you have.
the goal is to keep getting new users, not just hold onto the ones you have
I understand that this is the current goal of the companies you named, but, to put it bluntly, why should I care? My goal is to not have to deal with change just for the sake of change, or because some company wants to keep capturing new users. (Which is why, as I've said in other posts in this thread, I don't use GMail, don't use MS or Apple products, don't keep upgrading my Linux desktop just because somebody invented a new UI, etc.)
Also, "keep getting new users" isn't a sustainable goal anyway. Facebook already has more than a billion users; they don't have too much further to go before everyone that has Internet access at all (apart from a few outliers like me) will have a Facebook account. What do they do then?
We could also just keep using lynx for web browsing. It worked fine.
I'll gladly admit that having a browser that does graphics is a huge improvement over a browser that only displays text, like lynx. But browsers have been supporting graphics since what, 1995? Earlier?
Since graphical browsers appeared, IMO, there has been exactly one UI innovation in browsers that was worth the effort to re-learn things: the Chrome UI, that basically got rid of the UI except for the address/search bar and the browser window itself. I'm fine with having to re-learn where all the menu options are if I need them, in exchange for that simplification. But that happened in what, 2008?
Of course there have been plenty of changes behind the scenes in browsers, such as security fixes, support for HTML 5 and updates to Javascript, etc. None of those affect the UI, and I'm not talking about those kinds of changes. I'm talking specifically about changes to the UI that force people to re-learn things for no good reason.
> Seeing her cry about this made me change the way I think about what some users go through when they experience unexpected UI changes.
I can understand. My mother is her 60s and is now a Ubuntu user, has broadband, uses Skype & Gmail.
It took her a long time to get used to it. It is funny she has never used Microsoft or Apple or other computer before on a long term level. She thought, Windows for example was a very user "unfriendly".
But back to the complexity. I remember when she was learning it was very frustrating both for her and me. I think it is easy, and she didn't. Now the other day there was a post on HN about how to start a Boeing airliner. I at that moment understood what it is like being faced with a new interface with new rules and paradigms. If I had start a commercial aircraft I would start crying too probably.
Then of course every time Google or Ubuntu messes with their interface, it causes her and me (having to re-teach her) considerable stress.
Sometimes I think corporations go through re-design just because they can. Like there is an timer set to go off every 6 months and designers, new bosses, CEOs all see it go ding and say "aha, let's redesign it". Sometimes it doesn't make it better, it just makes it different even if it was already pretty good.
That's why you have a well worn checklist you use to start a jetliner. It's complex, so they wrote it down and that's how you do it to make sure you don't miss a step.
Reminds me of when I was showing my mom how to use a new piece of software and she opened a notebook and wrote it down step by step. That's how she starts her airliners. Now if only documentation was not considered an afterthought these days.
I have a particularly common word as a gmail address (not common like a grammatical article - think more like "experience@gmail..." or something like that). I know the UI's gotten bad in a usability way by the increasing frequency of mistaken emails sent my way because people keep inputting their subject in the "To" field.
> She said she called me because she was writing an email to me, but couldn't find the Send button, so didn't know how to send it.
Yeah, the send button used to be in a horrible place in Gmail. Nowhere close to the editor, and oddly detached from the compose area. I always had trouble finding it.
Thankfully they fixed it in the UI update the author's complaining about. Now it's where I'd expect it to be...attached to the email composer.
I said it before and I got downvoted to hell, but I'll say it again. Just because those of those of us on HN can deal with these UI changes does not mean that the vast majority of the public can. We ARE the minority, and when designing systems we should expect people to be computer illiterate. I am the computer-go-to-guy whenever something goes wrong or family members/friends need help, and ANY UI change always leads to difficulty. Something as small has the UI change from IE7-8-9 was enough to trigger a "how do I use this thing?" every single time. Same when MS Office introduced the ribbon.
It's the reason Apple have done so well - they didn't invent anything new which hadn't already been done, they just added better UI that appealed to the masses.
I have to say, I agree with most of what is written in that blog, I've gotten used to some of the changes now but still a lot of the time keep looking around to see where the hell something has gone (the attach files expands out to reveal more options, why the hell is add URL link under attach options?)
Ah... but neither Google nor Apple care much about customer feedback on their UI's. Google will have an abandoned forum thread you can complain about defects on that will never be read. Apple will simply delete the forum thread to keep everything starchy. Either way users either find a way around the problem, stop using technology, or cling to their Outlook 1998 client.
Actually, we care deeply about customer feedback and several of us on the product team read the threads on the product forums personally, especially when there is vocal feedback. We don't necessarily act on everything, of course. With a product that operates at global scale we have a huge responsibility to make sure we are making optimizations that improve Gmail for as many users as possible, and the only way to do that is to rely on metrics and surveys that capture the entire user base. Otherwise we would be, by definition, changing a UI used by hundreds of millions in response to a vocal, non-representative minority. Basically we use the product forums and social media to figure out of there are trends or issues that we should be concerned about, but then always validate those issues with real data before taking action.
Thanks for the reply Jason. Many of the movements of the Google properties have been toward the light over the last two years and it certainly is a very difficult task for the Google peeps. Props to them.
Alas, as a keen WebApp dev myself, I have found myself having to Google for how to do tasks I once did easily. Such searches eventually uncover the highly counter intuitive means to do the previously simple thing (via someone's blog post), or reveal that the feature has been dropped from the new and improved version. Such issues are not a subjective matter of color choice or icon design, but the reduction of functionality and confounding of user interaction.
Largely Google wins the efforts to improve their products, but I've seen a half dozen such failings in the last year that I am surprised managed to ship. Hopefully their batting average continues to improve.
The best was my mother-in-law finding out that her contacts were all lost when her Outlook calendar got corrupted. She didn't even use the Outlook calendar.
And of course, because she didn't have a hotmail account, her contacts were stored locally, so there was no backup.
I watched my mother attempt to deal with Windows 8 and she was quite confused by it. What makes it worse is that Microsoft (and most others) are now actively trying to get users to sign up to things they don't need to and make this the 'easy' path.
My mother is smart enough to know not to randomly sign up to things but this means she now has to try and navigate the 'advanced' path through a UI.
Skype on Windows 8 is a UX abomination. Whenever I get a call and it's ringing, I can never find where to pick up and miss the call. Every time. I'm sure I'll figure it out one of these days.
I normally use linux but thought i'll try w8. Installed it on dual boot and played around. Wanted to restart it so I could boot to linux. Had to google how to shut down w8.
Don't you know you just hover the mouse in the magic spot and then move it up quickly when the magic charms bar appears? ;-) I am fine with Win 8 in desktop mode but every once in awhile, I'll click to open a file and be thrown into tablet mode and then you're in a different world.
I think it's safe to say that if Steve Ballmer thought it was a bad idea, then it wouldn't be that way. All of his post "retirement" statements seem to be made in the mood of a man who didn't leave voluntarily, so he was forced to walk the plank over this and an accumulation of mistakes.
Outlook mail also sucks totally. It's quite impossible to find some of the key buttons with it, like the send button. I have complained about it, but as far as I know, there's no fix for the problem.
The problem with hand-holding is how many times have you created good looking prompts to introduce a new feature and then find that the client just clicks through them ignoring what was written?
This redesign of Gmail, like most of the Great Google Redesign happening in the last couple years, demonstrates to me that Google is constantly breaking one of the most basic rules about UI design: "Good Design" is not about making it pretty. "Good Design" is about making it easy to use; If you can do both, great. If you can only do the latter, then it will just have to be less pretty.
The Old Google was the latter (very usable, not beautiful).
The New Google is the former (looks visually pleasing, very unintuitive to use).
I curse every time I compose an email now in Gmail. Why have they hidden all the controls? Why is EVERYTHING one click away? Is ANYTHING gained AT ALL by HIDING all those buttons that are there to be used?
Heck, I still can't tell you how to make a hyperlink. I think you have to mouse over the hidden buttons. Or do you click on the hidden buttons? I think if you click on the hidden buttons then you end up clicking a button that's next to the "hyperlink* button, by mistake.
> Google is constantly breaking one of the most basic rules about UI design: "Good Design" is not about making it pretty. "Good Design" is about making it easy to use;
I suspect that the problem is that for established products, like gmail, "easy to use" just means "the exact way it is now": user familiarity trumping every other metric.
And I suspect there is only so many times a HCI design team can say "we ran a study and we should do nothing" before they are deemed useless. Eventually things have to be changed to preserve jobs and since the only metrics of "good design" in HCI, currently, are "ease of use" and "looks good" it usually results in something that "looks" easier than the old one through hiding (or removing) features and padding the shit out of everything.
>> Eventually things have to be changed to preserve jobs
This is a shortsighted answer. The acceptance of this as a truism is the kind of office culture that is toxic to a company's long term health. If you're user tests say, "we shouldn't change anything" then the people making the new designs are the ones who should be fired because they can't improve the interface.
As for familiarity, you wouldn't test current Gmail users against a new interface. Of course they would perform better against the old one. You'd get a group who'd never used either one and run your tests (unless you're incompetent).
you wouldn't test current Gmail users against a new interface
Why not? If you're trying to assess the impact of a new interface, surely the fact that it's going to confuse existing users is important?
You'd get a group who'd never used either one
So if this group likes the new one better, that outweighs any amount of confusion caused with existing users? That's basically what you're saying here.
If you're trying to determine which interface is "better", you'd want to rule out familiarity with one over the other. You could test familiar users as well, which might let you know things like how much hand holding will be needed to transition to a new interface, but it certainly wouldn't be useful in telling you which one was easier to use. The familiar one will almost universally be easier to use.
On your second point: I'm not saying the control group picking the new interface "outweighs any amount of confusion caused with existing users", but it certainly outweighs some.
If you're trying to determine which interface is "better", you'd want to rule out familiarity with one over the other.
You're assuming that "better" is some objective quality that is independent of the history of your product and who uses it. It's not. Part of what makes a UI "good" is that it's similar to other UIs that users already know, so it takes them less time to learn it. By this criterion, the UI you have right now is "better" than any other one, because your existing users already know it. Any metric of "better" that doesn't take that into account is, IMO, wrong.
it certainly outweighs some.
How much? Your prescription gives no way of judging that that I can see, since you explicitly ruled out considering input from existing users.
> As for familiarity, you wouldn't test current Gmail users against a new interface. Of course they would perform better against the old one. You'd get a group who'd never used either one and run your tests (unless you're incompetent).
Everyone has used email at this point except babies and tech averse grandpas, and all clients look more or less the same, i.e. like old gmail.
My primary frustrations are with things that I didn't use in their earlier incarnation. The fixed position headers in Google+ take up screen space, giving almost a sense of claustrophobia for negligible benefit. Google Groups is painfully slow, and performing an advanced search (e.g., if you wish to search a certain date range) is currently not possible. Blogspot has a loading page.
For things that I have used, there are real, identifiable problems: the instant search results break the back button. Link tracking on search results means you cannot copy an URL.
I feel that there is a definite trend towards poor UI, irrespective of the user's prior history with the products.
The Google redesign seems to be about creating a walled garden, tied together by Google Plus, Android, and aggressive highlighting of other Google services on each page.
Maybe they fear that if they don't trap the users, Facebook will. Either way, the continued high user figures at Yahoo show that it's possible. To do it, they need to stop being a search engine (to discover others content, leave the garden), and become a portal, the only web experience you'll ever need.
I think this becomes necessary because on a tablet, people use apps, and if those aps are deep enough, they may never escape them. You could make a tablet that just ran the facebook ap, an a subset of users would be happy. They need a counter trap.
To me, to them, any other GUI changes that crept in are likely incidental. Does it tie in with Google Plus? Will it work on a tablet?, Does it look like our tablet ap?, would be the primary question.
But that would lead to making their products easier to use, not harder. I'm not sure this theory is good for explaining much (besides Google being run by evil illuminati henchmen or whatever).
On the other hand, good design isn't simply making every single button and control visible on the page so nobody ever has to click more than once to use one. Good design is recognizing which features are used the most and making those one click away while hiding less used features that for most people just clutter up the interface.
"hiding less used features" Like sending an email?
I agree with everything you've written above, and unfortunately agree with you that they've nearly perfectly designed the UI to match "some population".
I firmly believe that proof of space aliens on earth will not be techno-thriller like spaceplanes in area 51 or theatrical drama like a UFO landing on the whitehouse lawn (we'd probably shoot it down anyway) but more likely we'll finally prove space aliens are among us when we properly identify the UI designers at APPL, GOOG, MSFT are all Vulcans and Orion Space Pirates which explains why normal earthlings can't make any sense out of what they're pushing to us.
The "modern" problem with UI seen over the past few years isn't conservatism, or ageism, or noob orientation, or pushing hardware tech for the sake of increased sales, the problem is the focus groups being used are composed of homeless Alpha Centaurians on LSD instead of humans, so naturally the endusers have an intense WTF moment when they're subjected to something that makes perfect sense if you have eyeballs that can see ultraviolet and seven fingers per tentacle.
Several jobs ago I worked at a place where they formally directed us to think about any written communication we generate, and if it sounds like something you'd read in a Dilbert cartoon, think it over a bit more. Modern UI designers need to implement a similar rule, if Cthulhu rises and decides to use your phone, or Vulcans land and click on your website, and they love it and feel you designed your product specifically for members of a horror mythos or space aliens, as a designer you're probably doing something wrong unless you're a hollywood sci fi prop designer.
Just tested this on my GMail. None of the tools required to send an E-mail are hidden. In fact you can do it all without even using a mouse if you have shortcuts turned on.
It seems that the same thing is happening to Youtube. There is now a 'settings' button in the bottom right of the player that I need to click first before changing the player size, video quality, or the annotations. I do not understand why they added this extra step.
I find this annoying too. Previously, it was one click to reveal a pop-up menu to change video quality, then another click to select a video setting. Essentially, two clicks.
Now it's one click to display the pop-up settings menu. Another click to reveal the video quality pop-up menu. Another click to select a video quality setting. And now that they've shoehorned all settings into one menu, you need another click to dismiss the entire settings menu. So they've gone from two clicks to four. Plus, there's the glaring inelegance of displaying a pop-up menu and then another pop-up menu within your pop-up menu.
I know Google have UX designers - I would love to know what their rationale is for their UX choices. I'm guessing, like Gmail, part of the design ethos was to "streamline" the interface or sweep away what they perceived as interface clutter. But all they've actually done is clumsily obscure features that were easier to access previously.
How is it that Google hires PHDs in HCI to design this stuff and they're still getting it wrong?
I don't think they're getting it wrong; I think they're just judging success by a different metric than you are. As other comments upthread have suggested, their success metric appears to be how many users they can keep within their walled garden. So the HCI experts aren't figuring out how to make Google's apps easier to use; they're figuring out how to make them harder to escape.
Case in point: a bunch of people in this thread have pointed out various things wrong with GMail's web UI, but nobody, as far as I can tell, has said "Screw this, I'm using a different email client." [Edit: I have now spotted one such person, but that's still effectively none in a thread with this many posters.] (For the record, I use KMail on Linux, the KDE 3 version, and I don't use GMail anyway, for reasons which go way beyond its UI.) To Google's HCI experts, that's success.
One thing I cannot stand is that google tracks links in my email. It's one thing to track links in the search results, another very different thing to track links in messages, which to me is unacceptable.
They did improve some things, like draggable tags. The search bar was a nice effort but not a good input system in the end[1]. It's a trend rotation, you gain some you lose some, they should acknowledge user rants and work on correcting things.
[1] most of the time, web based interfaces are less efficient than many COBOL screen based terminals, fragile, laggy, non-burst oriented.
> "Google’s actively trying to make email less fussy and formal--or, in other words, to make it a little more like instant messaging."
> "email is just too much work"
> "Jason Cornwell, Gmail’s lead designer, explains, one of the ways to do that is simply to "give you permission to write shorter messages."
Why is gmail trying to compete against iMessage or Whatsapp or fb chat? Email IS for work and should be optimized for it. Email is a useful medium because you are allowed to write long messages and permitted to respond later during the week. A friend would not read your text if it was 500 words long.
Also recall reading a justification that less formatting should be used in emails and that was part of the UI decision. Don't recall whether that was from Gmail team or a writer editorializing but fact is I use formatting to make my emails more clear to people. This whole new idea of having quick conversations through email feels like trying to shove a square peg in a round hole to me.
For users that like to use the pop out layout for compose, hiding the formatting may be needed to save space.
For users that opted for a full screen layout for compose, the full formatting options should be available as a default given that space is not a limitation.
Are you really suggesting that email should just be for work, and that we should ignore personal use cases: photo and link sharing, for example, or just writing a thoughtful message to a seldom-seen friend? Lots of Gmail users do those things, and I reject the notion that email providers should just cede that ground to proprietary communication silos.
The point that I was trying to get across in that article was not that all messages should be shorter. Rather, that the form of the composition UI sets expectations for what the message itself should look like. The form of Gmail's old compose set the expectation that it was a formal medium; that writing something short might not be appropriate, and that writing an email should be like writing a memo in a word processor. That makes messages feel less immediate, less personal, and as a result raises the bar for sending shorter and/or personal messages.
The goal was not to prevent users from writing long messages, but rather to provide a better balance between the two. Ultimately, though, this isn't a personal vs work issue. Facilitating short messages is arguably even more important in work settings where everybody tends to be inundated by large amounts of legitimate work-related email. There is real value in having a UI that gives users signals that it is ok to write shorter messages.
At the same time, on a 1366x768 browser window I can fit more than 3 paragraphs of lorem ipsem from http://www.lipsum.com/ in the default Gmail compose window before it even starts to scroll. In full screen mode at the same resolution you can fit 5 paragraphs before it starts to scroll. The UI isn't preventing you from writing something longer if that's what you need to do.
Hi Jason. thanks for replying. I was genuinely curious as to your opinion on the gmail UI since you are more experienced than me.
I don't have much issue with the spacing in compose. I have an issue with hiding the formatting and functionality of the email.
I was not suggesting ignoring personal use cases. Given the popularity of Gmail, a lot of people uses email to do work for personal use. However, SMS/whatsapp/fb chat is a much more effective medium for personal use cases. Picking up the phone to reply a text feels a lot more personal and less intimidating than email. The new redesign does not make it less intimidating to use email.
I agree that Gmail should "influence" users on their behaviors by changing the UI to some extent. However, you should facilitate the user's existing use cases. Most people would prefer to send an SMS for personal messages and send email for work. Forcing email to look more minimalistic like an SMS by removing formatting / forward button is not user friendly. Another example is the pop in compose button. I like to see other emails before I compose - naturally, you would think i would love the new pop in since I can see emails as I compose. However, I am used to having one tab open for composing and another for reading emails.
Out of curiosity:
How do you determine whether a redesign is successful or not? Are there particular metrics you pay attention to?
I like the new interface. I find it easy to use and streamlined. Since we are all talking about our old parents, FWIW my mother (60) found it easier to use the new interface then the old interface.
There is really nothing objective that is pointed to as to why it "sucks". I get it you don't like it. I imagine most people do, here is an XKCD comic about the situation your in http://xkcd.com/1172/
There is really nothing objective that is pointed to as to why it "sucks".
The post repeatedly mentions functionality that used to be one click away, but is now multiple clicks away. That is about as objective as measures come. You may not mind it, but you can't say it's just subjective.
The post also points out how UI controls shift relative positions based on the view being presented. One could define a metric that assesses the effect, and anybody calculating the metric would get the same result. Again, you may not mind controls jumping about as you work, but you can't say it's not objective.
It's not about control jumping. Google makes decisions based on data so they know these changes require more clicking. Why did they hide them? Probably because their data shows that most people do not use them (which I've noticed in most non-tech people), so not showing those buttons is actually less confusing for most people and thus offers a better UI to them. Objectively.
because some functionality was moved and now requires more interaction doesn't mean its objectively worse. If by moving a feature that is very seldom used ( like renaming the subject ) allows you to make common features easier to use then its better.
I like it, too, and the amount of hate it receives baffles me. I like the fact that the message-compose window does not stretch across my whole screen - my laptop screen is quite wide. I don't want anything to stretch all the way across. I have no problem replying inline, I very rarely ever change the font of an email, and I very rarely change the subject. I don't do these things very often, so I would prefer that they're hidden.
I also use GMail mostly for personal emails, not professionally. I wonder if that's part of it. But, even then, I use Notes for professional emails, because I have to. The GMail changes work well for how I use it, but there's also the fact that I constantly compare it to Notes.
Agreed - I enjoy it. It's been streamlined to be good at conversing easily with people via e-mail. If you use other more "Outlook-type" features a lot in e-mail you might be annoyed.
If you're writing a marketing e-mail with HTML or something longer, it's probably not great. If you like to use a lot of rich text formatting then it's probably not great, but for actual, pithy e-mail, in plain text, quickly, I think it works really well. Keeping your messages in the background to cross-reference things without opening 12 windows is awesome.
That said - I did have to search for a second to figure out how to edit the subject. A couple of quick tweaks or the addition of a "message settings" button for more admin-type tasks would make it just a bit better.
Google has moved all their UI towards "don't worry your pretty little head about it" mode.
It's incredibly insulting. But it is aimed at people who don't know they are being insulted so it works out perfectly for them.
What I do not understand is why it would be so hard to give us options.
Just give us the option of having the old compose box back, with all the controls visible, all the form fields visible, for the other 50% of people who know what they are doing.
99% of emails don't include formatting. 99% of users never set anything but "TO" instead of the anachronistic BCC and CC thingies (how many emailers even know what a "Carbon Copy" even is?)
On a handheld where real-estate is at a premium? Those features are tucked away semi-hidden. And for the sake of consistency, that UI is mirrored onto the web form.
Also, changing the subject of a reply is hidden for very good reasons - many applications use the subject of a reply for threading. Changing that subject line is going to break the user's expectations of how threading works. Even if Gmail handles the threading with grace, the e-mail client at the other end may not, and that can causes a mess of broken expectations. Better to leave this seldom-used feature (changing the subject of a reply) hidden to avoid the trouble.
The inability to fullscreen and the tiny composition window are, imho, unacceptable though.
Also I do not see why even after deliberately setting a (B)CC this is collapsed back into a single TO-line (only visually - when you click CC again you see how it's actually configured to be sent under the hood, but this has confused me a few times already).
I think the idea is to conceal the confusing CC feature from those who don't understand it, since everyone involved in the email chain must see the box and not just the clever originator who threw the CCs in there. That is, Adam sends out an email with all the bells and whistles, but Barry has no idea what all those random abbreviations mean and they frighten him. Adam and Barry both mostly just want to know who's going to receive this thing, so Gmail hides the CCs but shows the name. I think there's the unspoken belief that CC/BCC is a complete misfeature and Google wants it to die silently for the sake of clean UI.
It might not be the right approach, but I see why they did it.
The situation is actually a bit worse than that. As soon as Barry replies, Adam becomes the only person on the to line and everybody else is moved to cc despite all of Adam's hard work to distinguish recipient types up front. To vs CC is basically broken in threaded conversations. Moreover, unless you turn on some hidden options there is no visual indicator telling you who was on the to line vs the cc line in the Gmail inbox anyway. The distinction has become meaningless for the vast majority of cases.
Yeah, I think that makes sense (although I don't consider myself part of the group that has this unspoken belief about the misfeature of CC/BCC). But if they just at least keep the three separate fields visible to me as soon as I fiddle with them, they can please both the average and the 'advanced' (for lack of better word) user.
That's my feeling. The new gmail is a piece of garbage and no matter what justifications are thrown at me all I can think is "Fix it."
The new interface is so poor that a legit suggestion now is to use a dedicated mail client so that you dont have to use an interface that was once useful. Terrible!
I actually really like the new Gmail design and it's helped improve my workflow. However I have a relative who uses computers only for work and rarely. I took the time to teach her Gmail and she finally got the hang of it. One day she called to ask me for help attaching something. It took me a few minutes to realise I couldn't help because she was still on the old UI and I couldn't walk her through it over the phone as I was on the new design. I mistakenly got her to update to the new UI (so I could more easily support her) and now she has constant issues trying to understand basic interactions. If she has an email open in the background + the compose window does she press send on the compose window or background email? Sounds simple but you'd be amazed and how complicated this is for some people and how stupid it makes them feel.
The problem seems to be communicating changes. Rather than the basic instructions given when a new design is introduced companies like Google should be producing detailed 30 minute walkthroughs of the new design and giving users the option to watch that.
I love the new Gmail and I think it makes a lot of sense if you embrace the idea of conversations/threads, and if you don't insist on having a 10 line signature. (Also, keyboard shortcuts help a lot though I agree not everyone has time to learn to use them.)
The new design makes email more lightweight and fluid; replying to a thread or composing a new message feels less like work and less ceremonious.
I agree the formatting options are a pain to use though...
Me too. But I write 10 short emails for every long email. Why? Because writing short emails is faster so I get more of them done!
I think Google is definitely on the right track here. I love to be able to compose emails while still clicking around for context in the background. I am perfectly fine shift-clicking to open a new compose window because that is the exception not the common case. Similarly, I don't often change the subject or use formatting in emails, so I don't mind clicking an extra icon to open up those options.
This whole movement about how unequivocally Terrible the new Gmail UI is is the biggest tsunami of nerdrage I've seen in quite some time. But here's the thing: there is a reason and justification for it, and it does work for some people, and there's no going back; so it's time to either adapt or move to some other client with a traditional UI.
I used to love Gmail because I thought it was fast, reliable, secure and had a great UI. Now I kinda hate the UI, it's not quite as fast as it once was, and I don't feel like it is a good place to store my email.
However, what all the posts about Gmail fail to do is point to a substitute. I need a web-based mail client which can provide mailboxes with my own domain, fetch mail from outside boxes and send through them, and filter and order my mail according to a set of rules I define. Also, it should not be hosted in the US or by a US based company, and should have at least a decent UI.
I would love to pay for such an alternative but, alas, I doesn't seem to exist today
For me, GMail reached an optimum in terms of user experience some three or four years ago. Then it was a mixture of changes that were nice but of minor significance (the look of the main interface is prettier now than those few years ago) and of "reverse improvements" of usability like very confusing and ugly icons, hiding core functionalities, all the "social" crap etc. I guess this might partially be the result of UI people coming and going to the GMail team, new people arriving always want to prove they can do better and do things their own way, and if things are already good, they can only get worse this way.
What? The text box expands as you type to fit the content. I would be very frustrated if it took up most of the screen space for no reason at all and I couldn't see the email I'm replying to.
2. Edit subject (when replying)
When you reply and edit the subject you're starting a new conversation. It's what the big "compose" button is for, except now your conversation starting email contains junk from other emails. I'm happy if this UI change discourages people from doing this.
3. Formatting (when replying)
First valid point, hiding this under a button makes no sense to those who use formatting. I'm just glad if I receive less HTML emails because of this change.
4. Adding cc and bcc (when replying)
Second somewhat valid point. Although I think it's still intuitive while keeping the UI uncluttered.
5. New email (compose)
You have several options to make the area larger. I love that I can look up other emails while composing a new one without the need to open a new window. In fact, I would like to see this while replying. The "feel there is no more space to write anything" is a ridiculous argument to hinder a useful feature.
edit: I would even make the point that if your emails are most often so long that they take up most of the screen you're doing communication wrong.
It's just my opinion but I would say that many Google products really suck from usability standpoint. I use computer all the time and I would say that I am pretty advanced user... and yet I think that sometimes it is really difficult to quickly find something in Google Analytics and I think it's UI is counterintuitive and user unfriendly as hell. And I have to admit that I hate Google Groups - when I am searching for a solution to some problem and I see something promising in Google search results I just continue searching when I notice that the result goes to some thread in Google Groups and I don't bother checking that out - if I were looking for the example how NOT to do this I would use Google Groups.
I've been working on a theory that they produce awful UIs as a disinformation campaign. Consider a scenario where an unmedicated paranoid dude thinks GOOG is sniffing his wireless, recording whereever he goes on the internet, and sharing it all to the NSA, CIA, DHS, and his local HOA zoning committee. Unfortunately this is all true, except for the HOA thing, but the dude is crazy so the point isn't if he's accidentally correct or not. Lets say he tries to spread the paranoid meme to an angry gmail user. The gmail user is going to respond "heck no, these guys can't operate some incredible elaborate spying program, they can't even write a simple email UI after email UIs have been in continuous development for about four decades". Thus the public impression of the "don't be evil" is maintained.
I think if the Mighty GOOG ever divorces itself from .gov / .mil then we'll see them release sane UIs.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how my theoretical model applies to .com with UI issues like APPL. Perhaps they're a mere manifestation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Or something else... it would hardly be the first time that totally different root causes leads to similar appearing results.
From what I've heard, at least some of those extensions work by faking the user agent as IE8 and will break as soon as Google discontinues support for it.
This sounds like a good idea for a startup -- a Web mail service that uses imap / pop to access other web mail services. Bonus points if new versions can co-exist with old versions (i.e., you go into your accounts settings and choose which version you want to run).
It supports POP3 and IMAP, which is supported by iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and pretty much any other smartphone OS out there. What else do you need?
I totally agree with exactly those points. What's going to make me finally leave Gmail and migrate everything to... where is it I can migrate my stuff to?... well, I'll leave when they take away "Chat" and replace it with "Hangouts" like they did on Android where "Hangouts Replaces Chat". The LAST thing I want is Hangouts, chat is meant to be quick, private, light weight and how Hangouts "replaces" that I'll never understand. I'm unreasonably bitter over this, I know.
I think what you fail to understand is that Google are building a tool for the masses and I would bet that they have analysed what features people actually use and most of the time the majority of people don't change the subject or modify the recipients or format the email.
In short - they're catering for the typical user, and the typical user doesn't use all the features that the OP thinks they need.
Ever wonder how bland, feature barren, largely useless lowest common denominator shit that nobody really seems to like, or identify with can come to dominate design of software products?
My theory is that the assumption there is some kind of meaningful "Average user" which a product is then built for ultimately destroys utility in software.
If you have 50 features that on average 1% of people use, you can easily reach the false conclusion nobody cares about these features, when on aggregate 90% might use at least one of those features. Thus in aiming for the average, you haven't designed for anyone at all.
Yes, I think you're right. When they brought in priority inbox, then the split tabs for promotions, etc, I couldn't switch them off quickly enough. I aim to get my inbox to zero, so these just got in the way. I imagine that the vast majority of users let their inbox pile up into the thousands, so these features would be a huge help.
Thankfully these examples are optional, unlike the author's qualms.
I'm like you. My work Gmail account currently has about 30 messages in the inbox but my personal Gmail has 2573 (in the priority inbox alone). The use cases for work vs personal are so different it's hard to fathom any single app that would handle both equally well. That said, I get enough vendor spam at work that I'd really welcome a "Promotions" inbox that force-separated the chaff. And, since we use G+ at work, too, I'd be cool with a Social inbox, also. I thought I'd hate that part of the redesign but it's turned out to work pretty well. The lack of formatting buttons in the compose box, on the other hand....
Do you have information we don't? I hardly think any user testing at all.
I hate I when organisations like Google, who have no real personal contact with end users, just do a redesign without consulting the people who actually us their products. It's the Alan Day school of design, and it is totally unnecessary.
Are big editing area or the option of editing subject really such esoteric, geeky features beyond the concern of an average user? What has become of us if so?
All the sub average users I've talked to about the Gmail changes dislike what they've done. I don't believe for a second that the changes they've made are positive for the so called masses. Just my opinion.
To be fair to Google, Gmail has always sucked...but it sucked many millions of times less than Hotmail or Yahoo mail, and still sucks many millions of times less than them even with the new revamp.
I use Yahoo and Gmail. Which is better is subjective depending on how you like to use email. I prefer Yahoo, mainly for the same reason the OP mentions about the size of compose. Yahoo compose gives you almost the full screen, in its own tab. It gives you space to think, copy and paste, vomit draft.
Also, objectively, from the time I hit the bookmark, to the time I see my inbox, Yahoo is faster than Gmail. Where Yahoo loses is the terrible ugly display ads that loaded in.
ps: you know what other site has an annoyingly small compose space? HN! :)
I should refine what I said in that I meant Gmail's UI has always had suck here and there. Other features like the bang-on spam filtering are pure brilliance, and I love the way it sticks ads and social network crap into their own folders.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel there is a trend that it is absolutely necessary to "fuck with" something that already works for the sake of [insert rationalization here]. It's like changing the semantics of how Unix pipes work. Don't do it. Go build something new. Leave the shit that already works Good Enough (tm) alone.
I spent almost 20 minutes trying to work out why a new Gmail account didn't work on my phone when an older one worked without issue. My mistake really, should have just assumed Google had cancelled a popular service.
I think this was inevitable as when you read and send mail only using exchange you can access nearly all the gmail features without having to see their ads. Running the exchange servers costs money but generates zero revenue. They should just create paid accounts that allow them to keep exchange accounts
That doesn't solve the problem of people who have existing @gmail.com e-mail addresses and who would gladly pay a little extra for access to the account via ActiveSync, but aren't interested in paying for a full-blown Google Apps set up, getting a domain, changing their e-mail address, etc.
My personal gmail hate is that I can't select more than a screenful of text by dragging. If there is lots of text and I want to delete it, I click and drag to the bottom of the screen. But it's not able to scroll itself while I'm dragging, so I can only delete a screenful at a time.
Cant you place the cursor at the top of the screen, scroll to the bottom, press shift and click at the bottom to select the whole chunk? This works in Mac OS at least.
I've been programming and using computers for (too many) hours a day since I was 12 (11 years ago). When Windows 8 came out, I literally spent like 10 minutes looking for the shut down command. I guess it wasn't intuitive that you had to mouse down to the bottom right corner of the screen, click the icon usually reserved for "settings" and then click shut down?? Maybe I had an early release candidate or something weird, but I decided to give OS X a try at that point...
Yeah, you're not supposed to shut computers down anymore. You close the lid and it goes into hibernate. Or for a desktop, you walk away and it eventually goes into hibernate by itself. It's part of the commoditization of computing. You don't need to know how it works, you just use it to do what you want and it does everything else behind the scenes.
It's the revenge of the weird taxonomic western culture.
If you hate your users and don't know anything, you think systems should be designed logically. Logical, to you, will mean that similar things are put together. Likewise, similar will be defined by occupying the same spot in some weird taxonomy of all things in your head [1]. This will result in putting change the font size, boldface, and indention in a little tray of "things that happen to text". This is either because you are crazy or think your users love playing the $25,000 pyramid. You will then compound your madness by labeling this tray with the not-an-icon of an italicized, underlined, bold letter A.
If you do not wish to be one of these bad people that turn their UI into some sort of Lovecraftian chest of drawers where the contents of each drawer is another chest of drawers, please investigate "task driven user interfaces". They are better. Things that use task driven UIs are illogical and messy and unbalanced and much, much, more pleasant for the people who have to use them.
[1]: This is culturally determined and possibly different for every individual. Nobody else will understand your taxonomy. There is no way to fix this. Sorry.
I wish google would change their motto from "don't be evil" to "don't be assholes". I bet they would get a lot more mileage out of the second one.
Really, when has google ever cared about customer service? Heck, the BORG have better customer service than google. And no, I'm not still mad about google getting rid of my beloved Reader... Why do you ask?
I think the basic new compose window is an advantage since I often want to reference previous emails while writing one email, and it lets me do that without creating a new gmail tab. (I always though Google should add this feature: http://www.zappable.com/2011/07/things-gmail-should-fix/ )
There is a separate issue that Gmail hid many options. I personally find this annoying since I don't want to click through things to change things like formatting. However, maybe the average Google user rarely uses the formatting. Also, keyboard shortcuts are faster than any clicking anyways. I assume Google has access to more data about this issue and decided it was worth it. I don't know why they don't provide more configuration options though.
What I hate most about the new UI is the "Show trimmed content" feature. I have to click those three little dots every single time I reply to an email and they are awfully close to the send button. Gmail has tons of settings for everything, but I can't find a way to turn this completely useless and annoying feature off.
I think the broader trend behind this kind of stubbornness is a move toward opinionated software. The problem with opinionated software is that even in the best case it is more specialized for the needs of one particular group of users. It is not flexible enough to cater to different workflows.
I guess what this means is that consumer software and software for professionals is going to diverge again after converging for many years.
If you have a problem with the new Gmail, you can use the ancient gmail at https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html&zy=h and set it as default. I honestly didn't even know that there was a new Gmail.
If you look at that basic html version and cry about all of the features you're missing, IMO you're really just being a backseat driver. You're not going to like every improvement that they make, but if you like enough of them to render how we used email in the very near past completely unusable, then they're doing a good job.
While I get the resistance to change, a small UI change in software is something people should be able to deal with. Our world is ever changing, new roads and neighborhoods are constructed, stores come and go, and we need to be able to adapt.
And as far as frustrating changes go, recently they changed the layout of the grocery store across the street. What should have been a 5 minute shopping trip turned into a 30 minute long ordeal. So I don't have much sympathy for those who can't deal with buttons in new places on a computer screen.
What I can't stand is that they completely broke search for chats. Previously you could prepend your query with "is:chat" and get individual conversations returned as you would expect. These days you're given your entire "hangout" histories with various people and when you click them you have to frantically scroll to locate the relevant portion that matches your query.
The title is "why the new gmail sucks" not "a reason gmail has sucked for a long time already". The scanning of content to fuel the advert relevance engine has been a part of gmail pretty much from the beginning IIRC.
If you don't like that, you shouldn't use the old one let alone the new one.
I run my own mail server(s) anyway as I like being in control of the backup processes, having access to recent and archived mail if the Internet has a blip, and being more in control of the interface (I currently use Zimbra, but if they go a direction I don't like I can easily move to something else that supports IMAP but also provides a nice web-based interface). I pay for that in my time (and in having a server to run it on and resource to hold/manage backups, though the cost of that is not particularly high), people pay for gmail by allowing the adverts thing. You pays your money, directly or otherwise, you takes your choice.
Here is a New York Times article on gmail from 2004 discussing the privacy issues around google scanning email content. It is a controversy that came and went, so I can imagine people who were young and not using email at the time missing it entirely.
I think the intension was to focus on the 80% of functionality that people use the most and consider the remaining 20$ as not-useful, which is generally ok by me. I think it's still better than the feature rich outlook.
For me, the main annoyance is cc and bcc which I use quite often. Really, how often do you edit the subject?? more than once a week?
These negative posts are so cliché. If people who were blogging wrote more in a positive light than whining or bashing on something that is purely their own opinion, I think reading top articles around here would be much more enjoyable.
For anyone else out there thinking of doing anything in Word then copying and pasting... you can break soooo many things on the web.
Agreed. The new interface just doesn't work for me. Really need to find a new mail client. Kind of dislike GMail anyway since it searches ZIP files I attach and won't even let me send EXE builds to people I am working with in a ZIP. So I do all these stupid rename things and have to send the person instructions to rename the files.
I'm most frustrated by the Android application. There are alphabetic icons left of each mail item, and I don't understand why. They have the first initial of the sender... ???. I also don't like the way mail loads, and it seems to take longer. And I can't get notifications to work properly, all on a Nexus 4.
I used the Gmail web UI exclusively for about 7 years. Overall, it was great - simple, yet functional.
After this redesign, I have been pushed away. Despite my efforts, I failed to make any sense of it. So now I'm just using the Mac Mail app - certainly not as powerful, but much less frustrating.
Where did you jump ship to? I've wanted to do the same (and I have for personal email) but the ease of using my own domain with Google apps is unmatched anywhere I know of.
As lot of other people, I moved my email to fastmail. It just feels so much lighter and cleaner and better.
I moved my contacts and calendering to a owncloud-based setup, which literally takes 5 minutes to set up. That way this data is available to all things which can work with the CardDAV and CalDAV standards.
This can easily be done on any webhost, and getting it "under your domain" a no-brainer. As a bonus, you now have your own private Dropbox-like setup as well, with clients across most major platforms.
For Google Drive/Docs, I've yet to see any replacement worth jumping on to, so I've kept that around. I've seen a few candidates mentioned, but they aren't ready/released or mature enough yet.
They certainly get more ad inventory to deliver when folks are zipping around ten small emails and clicking to read them.
I'm surprised people haven't figured this out. As we always say, if you're not paying, you're the product and not the customer. So of course Google wants to encourage lots of short emails. Google's incentive in designing the Gmail UI is to create lots of clicks and ad impressions. User satisfaction is secondary and held up mostly by "don't be evil". Google's only incentive is to keep it just tolerable enough that jumping ship isn't worthwhile.
I'm sure Google does have many designers legitimately dedicated to improving the service. But also sure that they're closely monitoring the business moneymaking end as well.
I agree with many points, except the smaller compose window.
1) It's done so you can search your email while typing a reply, maybe find some info and copy/paste it. It's extremely useful.
2) You don't tons of horizontal space to write an email (except for embedded photos). Vertical space scrolls.
3) I'd actually argue that short emails are better than long ones. Learn how to write succinctly, to the point, and there are more chances it will be read.
4) Get a high res display if you need more screen space. 1080p displays are dirt cheap.
It is a useful improvement and I do like it, but sometimes I can't help but look at my screen and notice I have a window manager, which contains a web browser window, which contains tabbed windows, one of which contains gmail which now has it's own little mini window system and think that it's all a little crazy
I have to agree with point #1. I hated the small compose window until I realized I can minimize it, browse/search my Gmail and then return to finish.
I can't say I agree with your other points. Sometimes, you need to write a long email and there's no way around it. an email provider should not be trying to re-invent how people use email, they should embrace how people use email and make it better.
Google is able to test changes thousands of times every second, and since Larry Page became CEO the changes have all been done to create a consistent feel across Google's services, and have all been tested and refined. What are your credentials? Saying "I’m writing this post hoping that it will reach someone that works in Google and they are going to do something about it." is ambitious, the opinion of one person does not reflect the amount of data they have that likely implies that this change is an advantage.
I agree, 'what are your credentials?' is the wrong question - 'where is your data?' would be better. But I too question the author.
The author is posting a list of his personal gmail bugbears. We all understand the author doesn't care that you can see the email in the reply window, he'd rather a much bigger space to write.
I think we can safely say that Google test UX changes with actual users. Asking the parent for some data to back up that most users don't like the change is reasonable.
Also making the compose full screen would result in a very wide compose area, which is widely though to slow down reading (eg, of what the gmail users has just written).
I've actually flagged the submission: evaluating UX based on opinionated users without data is simply poor.
Sorry, but what is your point? You rambled on about how the author is unqualified and not everyone feels the same way he does and yet you didn't provide a single point to rival any of his. I'm confused?
Yeah, that infallible data-driven juggernaut is the image you want to project outside.
But in reality the people whose promotions and bonuses are riding on a successful launch of the redesign are also the ones cherry-picking the metrics of success. It doesn't matter if it's universally hated and actively drives people to use IMAP clients. There will be some bullshit statistic that'll go up. Hell, most metrics are going up anyway for a service like GMail, and it's not like this is being A/B tested.
Seeing her cry about this made me change the way I think about what some users go through when they experience unexpected UI changes. I remember hearing people say they got confused by Windows 8 tiles, and didn't think it was such a big deal. After seeing my mom cry over a UI change, I think there are better ways to implement UI changes than simply shoving them down people's throat. Sure, if it must be done, it must be done (UI change), but don't shove it down people's throats unexpectedly and with no hand-holding at all.