Unfortunately, it's quite hard to use common sense at large companies. The incentives aren't there, and for every one person who "gets it" there are nine that don't - and they will be your review committee / peer reviewers / project partners.
I think it is incompetence of product managers. They ought to know how to use their own products, have a keen eye for design and functionality.
You can’t A/B test your way through UX/UI in a product like GMail. Sure, it works for a e-commerce front end but just because of UI problems, people aren’t going to ditch the entire GSuite like they would if it was a shopping website. They’d just close it and A/B tests would produce a strong signal.
At Apple, when Steve was around, he had such a keen eye to details. He cared. So if PMs are getting fat checks and not getting scrutinized by their management, I blame the entire ladder upto Pichai for growing such a culture. Engineering at Google is top notch and lots of great things come out of there. Obviously, very smart people for there. I don’t think there are 9 people who don’t get it.
You need a strong dictator at top. Google is becoming a snowflake like organization where it would be impossible to criticize products in favor of not offending anyone - at least that’s what it appears to me. And management doesn’t give a shit about their own products - you're right that the incentives just aren't there.
I’m truly convinced that in order to produce top notch products, you need a military type dictatorship and harsh rejection of bad design - personalities such as Steve Jobs or Elon to make better products. Whether we want to work in such environments is orthogonal and up for debate.
You know why it works? Because the button also has the text on it that says 'Archive' or 'Retrieve' and the interface actions change accordingly on whether the resource is archived or not.
It's not about iconography, it's about ever increasing loss of context through simplification. It's the curse of the modern UI/UX designer.
I still don't get why Windows Phone's UI concept for this didn't catch on, it was great for touchscreen based apps. All relevant actions were on a grey bar on the bottom of the screen, in every app. And you could drag the bar up to reveal labels for each button as well as a list of options(the equivalent of the burger menu everywhere else).
But instead Android has most of these buttons on the top of the screen, which is the hardest to reach place on the whole damn thing. And every other app out there uses a completely different set and style of icons and that one curved arrow symbol in the mail app does something completely different from the same button in the note-taking app and the calendar.
When you tell a company that your design is too obfuscated and you're also a Perl hacker is like: the biggest burn I could possibly think of. Chapeau mjd.
(1) Designing icons that work for a product that's used by billions is really hard. you have to deal not just with how it looks, but how people will see it across different languages, disciplines, experience, and so on. It's practically impossible to do it "right" and to satisfy everyone.
(2) I bet you given #1, the idea here isn't to design an icon that works, but to create a placeholder for a position in the UI, and then train you to click in that general direction. That's why two icons are on the opposite ends of the navigation bar. They know those two are confusing, but they just want you to remember (<- go this way to do X, and go -> that way to do Y).
So obvious in fact, that they removed the text labels.
So insanely obvious that it made sense to reduce the size of the icons to like 20px x 20px.
So inexplicably obvious that they chose two basically identical icons to convey the message.
These are standard material design icons. Most likely someone needed to add a new button/feature and just picked whatever icon best fit the purpose, or someone designed a new icon that would fit the purpose of whatever feature/button was being added.
With huge apps like Gmail, there's likely just so many different things happening that there's no time allocated to check every small change in a broader context, and these kinds of things slip in and pile up.
Over time, more and more "small" things pile up, and eventually a redesign is necessary because the palette has been polluted with too many things and the software becomes too clunky.
Another option is that no designer even gave this a look, or they saw it too late. This happens often too, designers might be busy working on a big new design and an engineer needs to just put in a button and doesn't think twice about just using one of the icons from the icon library.
Incompetence can explain stuff sometimes, but just like engineering, design is also often a collection of compromises and sometimes a lot of compromises can collude together to form a bigger disaster. The call icon is a good example of this. It's constrained by a lot of things, like overall language rules of material design, and any prior interface design choices made about button styles, toggles, etc. If the designer came up with a totally new style of button, they'd also be scolded by their peers for not maintaining consistency.
All of that said, I'm not making excuses, I'm providing an explanation. I think overall, with any kind of iconography based interactions, when in doubt, add a label. It just works. Icons are abstractions of language and actions, when it's no longer clear what they are abstracting, it's time to use language. It really is that simple.
This is MS Outlook's and MacOS's archive button - https://i.imgur.com/Csjpgth.png - if you can't see that, it's a filing cardboard box with it's oversized lid fit on top.
I use MS Outlook web UI and exchange on MacOS with an Apple mail client.
Also then by 'fixing' the archive one to this better one, you sort of also fix the 'Move to Inbox' icon because it's not so similar. The 'Move to Inbox' isn't to bad if it's by itself, what makes it bad as the author says is it's context. I'm not sure what a better 'Move to Inbox' icon would be, I'm not a skilled icon designer.
The TL;DR is: Gmail has a number of modifier-less keyboard shortcuts that can hide messages and dismiss the notification the message has been hidden faster then you can notice if you are typing fast and accidentally lose GUI focus on the message editor area.
Email clients are not video games. The keyboard commands should require modifiers.
Icons are a bad idea. Words for short commands work better. In the olden days some UIs let you hide icon images and display the alt text instead. Those were very good UIs.
My knee-jerk instinct was to respond with 'but what about UIs in other languages?' But then I checked Fastmail's solution of the same problem as Gmail's, which I have in Danish. Not because I am not comfortable with English, but I have come to appreciate when people actually bother to translate their UI to my language.
And their solution is straight forward; keep a few buttons for the most common actions with an icon along with text indicating what the button does. For further commands, a dropdown is available where all the commands are merely text.
Because usually the problem would have been to design a UI with interface constrains around the size of the text in English, but then »indlæs« (load) turns out to be just a little wider than your box had allocated. But keeping the flexible is the solution (and thus minimise its number).
I've seen at least two different sets of icons in Gmail in the past month. It was very confusing. Why do they keep change? The ones in the OP look different from the ones in my gmail.
google has so poor standards, but what is worse those standards become general and other companies are copying them because its the great google doing it
[+] [-] infinityplus1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scene_Cast2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systemvoltage|5 years ago|reply
You can’t A/B test your way through UX/UI in a product like GMail. Sure, it works for a e-commerce front end but just because of UI problems, people aren’t going to ditch the entire GSuite like they would if it was a shopping website. They’d just close it and A/B tests would produce a strong signal.
At Apple, when Steve was around, he had such a keen eye to details. He cared. So if PMs are getting fat checks and not getting scrutinized by their management, I blame the entire ladder upto Pichai for growing such a culture. Engineering at Google is top notch and lots of great things come out of there. Obviously, very smart people for there. I don’t think there are 9 people who don’t get it.
You need a strong dictator at top. Google is becoming a snowflake like organization where it would be impossible to criticize products in favor of not offending anyone - at least that’s what it appears to me. And management doesn’t give a shit about their own products - you're right that the incentives just aren't there.
I’m truly convinced that in order to produce top notch products, you need a military type dictatorship and harsh rejection of bad design - personalities such as Steve Jobs or Elon to make better products. Whether we want to work in such environments is orthogonal and up for debate.
[+] [-] grenoire|5 years ago|reply
Archive (a box with a label tag on it, https://www.storagegiant.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/a3-archive... from the frontside) Unarchive (same box, but the lid is slightly tilted open)
You know why it works? Because the button also has the text on it that says 'Archive' or 'Retrieve' and the interface actions change accordingly on whether the resource is archived or not.
It's not about iconography, it's about ever increasing loss of context through simplification. It's the curse of the modern UI/UX designer.
[+] [-] alpaca128|5 years ago|reply
But instead Android has most of these buttons on the top of the screen, which is the hardest to reach place on the whole damn thing. And every other app out there uses a completely different set and style of icons and that one curved arrow symbol in the mail app does something completely different from the same button in the note-taking app and the calendar.
It's a convoluted, insane mess.
[+] [-] whitepoplar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IvyMike|5 years ago|reply
For those who also want to try it in the web interface: Gear->See All Settings->General->Button Labels
Don't forget to scroll all the way to the bottom and save.
[+] [-] yongjik|5 years ago|reply
Change to text, lose weird icons, and gain peace of mind.
[+] [-] porker|5 years ago|reply
As GMail learns from what you mark as spam, that had bad consequences for future emails.
[+] [-] justinator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kirillzubovsky|5 years ago|reply
(1) Designing icons that work for a product that's used by billions is really hard. you have to deal not just with how it looks, but how people will see it across different languages, disciplines, experience, and so on. It's practically impossible to do it "right" and to satisfy everyone.
(2) I bet you given #1, the idea here isn't to design an icon that works, but to create a placeholder for a position in the UI, and then train you to click in that general direction. That's why two icons are on the opposite ends of the navigation bar. They know those two are confusing, but they just want you to remember (<- go this way to do X, and go -> that way to do Y).
[+] [-] King-Aaron|5 years ago|reply
So obvious in fact, that they removed the text labels. So insanely obvious that it made sense to reduce the size of the icons to like 20px x 20px. So inexplicably obvious that they chose two basically identical icons to convey the message.
So obvious!
[+] [-] riho|5 years ago|reply
These are standard material design icons. Most likely someone needed to add a new button/feature and just picked whatever icon best fit the purpose, or someone designed a new icon that would fit the purpose of whatever feature/button was being added.
With huge apps like Gmail, there's likely just so many different things happening that there's no time allocated to check every small change in a broader context, and these kinds of things slip in and pile up.
Over time, more and more "small" things pile up, and eventually a redesign is necessary because the palette has been polluted with too many things and the software becomes too clunky.
Another option is that no designer even gave this a look, or they saw it too late. This happens often too, designers might be busy working on a big new design and an engineer needs to just put in a button and doesn't think twice about just using one of the icons from the icon library.
Incompetence can explain stuff sometimes, but just like engineering, design is also often a collection of compromises and sometimes a lot of compromises can collude together to form a bigger disaster. The call icon is a good example of this. It's constrained by a lot of things, like overall language rules of material design, and any prior interface design choices made about button styles, toggles, etc. If the designer came up with a totally new style of button, they'd also be scolded by their peers for not maintaining consistency.
All of that said, I'm not making excuses, I'm providing an explanation. I think overall, with any kind of iconography based interactions, when in doubt, add a label. It just works. Icons are abstractions of language and actions, when it's no longer clear what they are abstracting, it's time to use language. It really is that simple.
[+] [-] Toutouxc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savolai|5 years ago|reply
1. The heuristics by Nielsen https://duckduckgo.com/?q=heuristics+using+Nielsen&t=iphone&...
2. Learn to do usability testing. Fundamentally it's the only way to know what's comprehensible for your target group in a given usage context.
Then there are the HIG human interface guidelines for platforms. There seemed to be a lot to learn from the one of Apple's the last time I checked.
[+] [-] knrz|5 years ago|reply
“What do I want the user to notice? Where am I trying to direct their attention? If I didn’t know what this button does, how do I find out?”
It’s like checking out what you know at the door.
[+] [-] CyanDeparture|5 years ago|reply
This is MS Outlook's and MacOS's archive button - https://i.imgur.com/Csjpgth.png - if you can't see that, it's a filing cardboard box with it's oversized lid fit on top.
I use MS Outlook web UI and exchange on MacOS with an Apple mail client.
Also then by 'fixing' the archive one to this better one, you sort of also fix the 'Move to Inbox' icon because it's not so similar. The 'Move to Inbox' isn't to bad if it's by itself, what makes it bad as the author says is it's context. I'm not sure what a better 'Move to Inbox' icon would be, I'm not a skilled icon designer.
[+] [-] peterbraden|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|5 years ago|reply
https://sean-mcbeth.tumblr.com/post/77384411853/gmail-is-a-u...
The TL;DR is: Gmail has a number of modifier-less keyboard shortcuts that can hide messages and dismiss the notification the message has been hidden faster then you can notice if you are typing fast and accidentally lose GUI focus on the message editor area.
Email clients are not video games. The keyboard commands should require modifiers.
[+] [-] hibbelig|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xelfer|5 years ago|reply
gmail2.png still wont load but he's circled it at least in the 2nd image.
[+] [-] abraxas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Svip|5 years ago|reply
And their solution is straight forward; keep a few buttons for the most common actions with an icon along with text indicating what the button does. For further commands, a dropdown is available where all the commands are merely text.
Because usually the problem would have been to design a UI with interface constrains around the size of the text in English, but then »indlæs« (load) turns out to be just a little wider than your box had allocated. But keeping the flexible is the solution (and thus minimise its number).
[+] [-] thomaspark|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/thomashpark/status/1005090263499530240
[+] [-] JBiserkov|5 years ago|reply
1. Open Gmail.
2. In the top right, click Settings and then See all settings.
3. Scroll down to the "Button labels" section.
4. Select Text.
5. At the bottom of the page, click Save changes.
The text also has the benefit of making the buttons much bigger / easier to click.
[+] [-] tracyhenry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nathias|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakaze|5 years ago|reply