It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing. I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width.
Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster.
Unless something has radically changed within Google, I'd be very reluctant to question any of their design decisions. I'd be doubly reluctant to call them arrogant whilst panning their design based on nothing but instinct and supposition.
Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time.
The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome 1 for that matter (vs. KDE2). And KDE4. And KDE3. And Windows Vista. And OS X Lion.
I think two things are entirely possible here: One, that in reaction to Bowman's high-profile indictment of Google's design culture, there has been a shift over the past few years toward Apple-like, auteur-driven design at Google, that was misapplied in this case, or (I think more likely), every detail of the new Gmail UI was extensively tested by itself, but there was no final arbiter to say "you know what? This one part sucks; let's change it despite the data."
When Brin took the lead, the design culture inside Google changed.
My facts may be slightly off, but Brin essentially gave a lot more freedom to designers. As part of the Google redesign (or +ifying), Brin gave all the design responsibilities to the same division that's been producing some Google's commercials. This is undoubtedly a division that appreciates design more, but arguably doesn't appreciate the data as much.
After this, we all saw the obvious redesigns across Google's products. With such a drastic redesign, I am doubtful they did any large scale a/b testing that they typically do (for individual features or otherwise).
Its pretty evident something changed, and I personally have no doubt it's due to changes in the way Google goes about design. They've swung from one end of the spectrum (data obsessed) to another side that's too focused on 'artsy' design.
I'm not sure that the fact that something has been thoroughly A/B tested makes it indefensible. It is possible that overuse of A/B testing results in a local maximum, with sweeping changes needed to reach the global maximum.
I have heard the same thing about Google before, but obviously there seems to be a change. The old Google would not "push" a new interface when there is so much resistance to the new design. I may be suffering from a sample bias, but no Gmail user around me likes the new design. If they did test this stuff, maybe they cherry-picked their target population to get the results they wanted to please the designers. Who knows.
I'd argue that something has radically changed within Google.
Personally, I don't mind the new interface that much -- once it's in compact view and you change to a darker theme. They did make some significant improvements for folks who live in multiple Google Accounts, and I think the Google+ integration is pretty slick.
But, there is no way that incessant testing produced metrics leading to the default white-on-white theme and non-compact view configuration. Maybe they surveyed people with poorly chosen questions or did something else that caused the testing to fail. But they didn't do a meaningful usability test that involved using a mail app.
GMail originally moved email UI forward with the conversation view -- I think they saw this new look as a similar thing, and pushed it out.
From my experience, the new design is horrible for usability. The lack of definition between the menus and the content makes it much more difficult for me to pay attention to the emails. --I've had to switch to a theme, which helps a bit, but in my opinion it's still much harder to use than the older design.
There is absolutely no way they tested their design on anything smaller than a 15" laptop. I don't need to see their test data to figure that out; loading Reader or Gmail on my 10" netbook is good enough.
I for one still get confused with their icons. I mean, Archive doesn't look at all like archive, Spam looks like a quota warning error, "move to" looks more like "view another folder", and the lack of borders makes my eyes wander outside of the text all the time. And I have to agree about the uselessness of the importance icon. All my mail is marked as important, yes, i know that, how does this help me? It's more useful to know whether you 've replied/acted on an email instead (that could be a nice feature). Not saying the redesign is absolutely bad, after all it's not a radical departure from the previous one, just some things need fixing.
You can go too far with A/B tests, and maybe the Google execs realised that. You just end up with a fragment of your user base who like everything and convert well, and likely a majority who don't (to varying degrees, of course.)
To make a 'good' product, you've got to make some tough design and feature choices on your users' behalf. Case in point: Microsoft vs. Apple. Microsoft are well known to test extensively with "real" users, and Apple, well…don't!
OK. I'll call them inept and pan their design based on months of USE. As far as I'm concerned, there's only one example needed to prove the failure of this new design:
The: Gmail, Unity, Gnome, etc.. redesigns that we've been seeing recently all seem to have a pattern. A lot of these designs are benefiting and emphisizing the designers desperate attempt at garnering attention and acclaim rather than helping the users. You can tell by the constant tweaking of things that were never broken (the Start button), critical and heavily used elements being hidden or tucked away behind several clicks for the sake of "minimalism", incorrectly correlating a sterile white page with "simplicity". And they won't stop until the whole page is white and empty with one button and a line of text.
These designers are doing whatever makes them look off the wall bat-shit-creative (of the Lady Gaga variety). Many of these designers have stopped caring about a/b tests and the users and are focusing their designs solely on how it makes them look to the community. They want to be the next Steve Jobs, now that he has passed. And they are going to mimic his arrogance, take his risks, and think it will get them to his level. It will not, it's just pissing us off.
On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty and minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed. Explaining to the average person why the new gmail UI is abnoxious is like explaining to the average person what's wrong with Michael Bay's films.
The worst offence of this type I've come across is in JetBrains' latest crop of IDEs.
In WebStorm, they completely removed the scrollbar in the code editor, and replaced it with this "hidden until you mouseover it" slider thing. That means you have no visual cue where you are in a document, scroll-wise. And no way to quickly grab the scrollbar with the mouse since you have to hover and wait on the right edge of the screen before you can see where you're headed.
Making it worse, they have (normally) really useful gutter over there that displays colored bars describing the health of your code. Those are cool, but they now live on top of the scroll bar so even when its visible it's still pretty hard to find it.
Compare that to their (awesome) ReSharper plugin for VS.NET that preserves the original scrollbar and adds that helpful gutter bar next to it. You can quickly see the health of your code AS WELL AS where you're scrolled in the document. Perfect.
I filed a bug against WebStorm about this and had it immediately closed as "by design". Worse UI. Intentional. And not even a setting you can uncheck to fix it.
I actually uninstalled my paid copy of WebStorm as a result. It'd be an awesome product, but all its advantages are wiped out by not being able to navigate around files at times when I have a mouse in my hand. One bad UI choice to turn a good IDE into shelfware.
>These designers are doing whatever makes them look
I doubt Google would let a group of self interested ego fueled creative's override rational principal and analysis. Especially considering this is a flagship Google product with 350M users.
>On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty and minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed.
I'm a designer. I've never properly critically analysed the new Gmail design. But I haven't felt the need to. For me it just functions really well.
When I was handed my first challenge of doing design for a web site (being up until that point a pure coder) I encountered a striking tendency in myself to want to neutralise colors. If I didn't know what color to make something, my default choice would be to desaturate it until it no longer offended my eye. On a fine level it works and you can solve a lot of individual UI "problems" this way. The problem is that as you accumulate these decisions you end up with a design that says nothing, has no motivation, fails to speak anything to the user. This is one way I know that I'm a mediocre designer. Great designers make bold decisions that challenge and energise the user and still they do it well.
I feel like Google has suffered from a similar problem - the solution to every UI problem these days is minimalism. Remove borders, accents, highlights, colors. On the surface it looks clean and simple but scratch beneath that and it seems to have no soul and no reason to exist.
I think the same issue goes directly to functional aspects as well - the functions and features on the page should feel alive as if they are speaking to me. I should be attracted to them, immersed in them, like they've been incorporated as parts of myself - but I'm not - I can barely differentiate them from the inactive, static parts of the page. Most of Google these days feels like I am filling out an IRS tax form. At best it is boring, at worst it is aggravating.
I'm looking forward to when we get through this new style of design from Google.
>> I encountered a striking tendency in myself to want to neutralise colors. If I didn't know what color to make something, my default choice would be to desaturate it until it no longer offended my eye. On a fine level it works and you can solve a lot of individual UI "problems" this way. The problem is that as you accumulate these decisions you end up with a design that says nothing, has no motivation, fails to speak anything to the user.
Interesting observation... this is something I struggled with as well coming from a coding background and trying to do design -- at the individual element level the colors seemed great, but pulling back to the larger picture everything looked washed out. Did you ever come up with a solution for this?
I can't fault Google for experimenting, but the 'all or nothing' approach they took to the rollout was an example of false choice. The classic coloring could have been offered as a theme to lessen the impact of the UX changes.
In case you miss the old color scheme, try this Stylish theme:
One of the main problems why the 'clean design' has not actually benefitted users is because of gmails feature creep. Where once I could just write and recieve mail, now, by default, I have 'stars', 'circles', 'importance markers', '+ share', 'notifications', 'gadgets'... etc. all confusing my view of my mail. Most users don't want any of these things, and they certainly don't want to have to spend mental energy realising they dont want them, then hunting around in settings menus to see if you can actually turn them off...
There are some good design additions in the revised gmail too, but IMHO the above is really what makes gmail feel much more cluttered and cumbersome than it was before....
Personally, I love the new GMail interface and have been using it for months. I like that is less cluttered and that I can more easily configure what is displayed. I've changed the buttons to be text in the settings as I did find the icons hard to pick at a glance.
I also love the new themes.
It's interesting to me to see so many people grumble at interface changes whether it's Facebook or Gmail.
All of the things that he's complaining about are changeable in settings. And not even buried three levels deep -- they're right on the first settings page!
1. Pick a different theme. I have one with a blue background, not the default light/white one.
2. Go into the general settings, and change your star to a different colour, ie. enable the red, or blue one, or the green checkbox. Now they stand out.
3. Go into the general settings. Change the 'Button Labels' radio from 'Icons' to 'Text'.
If you're going to bag someone's interface, you should at least spend some time figuring out how you can change it...
I really do buy the "change aversion" theory. I never used Gmail before the current design, and now I use it every day without problems. I click an email and I can read it. Importance and starring work as expected. And, the interface is very smart about not moving things out from under me when I make a change, much like Chrome's tab bar. Except for the slowness, I think this UI is a fine way to handle email.
I use it without problems too, and so does the author, but our eyes are not happy and our brains are less relaxed. We never used importance and we don't want it cluttering up our stars. We need visual queues, like lines.
the fundamental problem I have with the redesign is the fact that it introduced usability problems that weren't there before. I'll admit the redesign may have solved other ones, I admittedly didn't notice them at the time.
The three points the author pointed out are some glaring usability issues that can be a problem for a big chunk of people. Just because you or I can use it without a hitch doesn't mean its a great design.
It's certainly possible that this is the reason, but I agree with the author that it's arrogance to assume that disliking a change can always be attributed to change aversion.
I have no problem with the new Gmail. After the initial adjustment period, I find myself enjoying it more than the old version. I have developed a reflex for using the buttons that didn't exist with the text versions. It just happened.
Well at least there's a giant red COMPOSE button, because every time I see a giant red button, I think COMPOSE!
I'm hoping that they'll do another revision soon to make it look more like the recently updated G+ design, which actually puts some visual separation between content and navigation (and also doesn't have giant red buttons).
I, like the author, abhor the new GMail interface. Thankfully, I found a workaround, explained at bottom.
In fact, I found it difficult to explain to my parents how to navigate the new interface. They were quite upset at the changes and were considering about how to revert to their old providers (thankfully, I set up an email forwarding domain for them years ago so they can change any time they wish). It really is that appalling!
The contrast in usability to almost any other web mail service is shocking. Check Hotmail or Fastmail.fm or even Yahoo mail and "feel" the difference yourself!
Workaround to GMail's new interface:
0. Make sure you have a browser or plugin that supports site-selective scripting, e.g. NoScript.
1. Disable scripting for google.com
Then when you login, GMail offers a "basic html" interface. This is amazingly straightforward, fast, everything clearly delineated with strong colors, all new information extremely obvious, and just the basic design that matches closely to the old design.
If Google manage to mess up even this basic interface, then I guess, I and my family will have to find alternatives, e.g. switching to mail clients or for those who travel a lot to Hotmail.
Levying "designer arrogance" on Google is laughable. Google has never made decisions based on the principles of design before, so why would one assume the design process is to blame here? I think this is a result of people who don't understand design abusing style and visual trends.
The authors criticisms are legitimate and directly related to the design, but to assume an arrogant designer is at the top pushing these changes is frankly offensive. It's the same old engineers calling the shots at Google. But now, they just seem to be trying to keep up with other well designed products, like a little kid putting on his dad's Italian suit, wondering why he doesn't look great. Pleas, don't blame the tailor.
I hate the new themes. My question is: why couldn't they have provided themes that at least look similar to the old ones? I tried most of the available themes and there only one that I find vaguely satisfactory is the high contrast theme. Some of them, like "Wood" are laughable -- is this an old Myspace page I'm seeing? And better yet, you'd think a company with Google's talent pool could make the themes configurable at a more granular level.
Thanks, Google, for making me contemplate abandoning gmail for the first time. (I know, I know... it's free, right? So what right do I have to complain? I guess I'm mostly angry at myself for growing so dependent on it (and recommending it to my friends/family.))
Now, personally speaking, I don't like a bunch of the changes (those damn icons being the most annoying - and yes I know you can change them to text and I have :-). I can certainly criticise some stuff that gets in the way of my personal workflow. But hey - I'm not the 'average' GMail user. Expecting Google for optimise for me is daft.
A couple of random thoughts from usability tests I've done over the years:
* People are treating the changes to gmail in isolation. Google has changed and integrated design over all of their products. Some parts of a system can get "worse", but still help the overall system get "better". I've seen this when we culled some specialised hi-density layouts on a particular part of a larger system that pissed off some expert users who spent all their time there - but opened up the functionality to be used by a much larger population who were more familiar with the "normal" look.
* People don't know what Google is optimising for. Usability and usability testing isn't necessarily about "making things nice for the user". It's about meeting the business goal. For example I've seen users hate the fact we took some layout and colour preferences away from them, despite the fact that overall satisfaction went up, and efficiency increased even for the users who hated the change.
* I 100% guarantee that the people commenting here are not "normal" as far as Google is concerned. Does it matter if the geeks like me hate that they can see less e-mail at a time, if the other 99% of the market is jumping for joy that they're not repeatedly clicking on the wrong e-mail? Sometimes you just can't make everybody happy - so have to make a decision over which audience you want to be happy. You will generally have a more successful product if 60% of your audience goes "yay" rather than 100% going "meh".
* I spend a bunch of my time talking to "normal" users. I've noticed the general reaction to the new GMail be very different from the general reaction here. They either liked it, or just not noticed/expressed an opinion. I suspect Google cares about that user group more than it does me :-)
Also, and this is complete guesswork on my part, this feels like a first stage to me. Currently the various apps are very lightly integrated with a mostly pure visual design makeover. I wouldn't be surprised to see more functional integration appear over the next year or two as more people perceive the various Google apps and systems as an integral "thing".
I'm incredulous that one of the goals of the redesign was to make more powerful themes. New-style themes are much, much less powerful than the old-style themes - cf. the new Terminal theme, which can't even change the text color or font, but is rather a hollow shell of itself with a small gif of a blinking green cursor in the upper left corner the only remnant of its old self. A preview of the old page in my Opera speed dial is all that remains of my old green-on-black monospace friend; I have set it to never update.
Incidentally, the new UI for video calls makes the 'end' button the same color as the background, and it is very difficult to see.
Sometimes when I read HN I feel like I must be the only person who really likes most Google products. I think the design is pretty good. I don't analyze it very closely, and... I don't know, it works and it works very well for me.
I have been using Yahoo Mail for a number of years. I find the interface to be far superior to that of GMail. More usable and practical. In many ways it mimics Outlook. They have some nice drag-and-drop action, right click menu tools and, my favorite, an Outlook-like reading pane. Last time I touched GMail it felt clunky. Because of this I have never felt compelled to use it.
Please, for the love of Loki, can we all stop equating our subjective opinions with objective truth? Your tastes are different than others. That doesn't make them "arrogant" - at least, not necessarily.
Does anyone else find it humorous that OP's site is ugly and hard to read? it doesn't diminish he's point (I could take or leave the new Gmail) but maybe his credibility.
Don't shoot the messenger - Who cares if his site is not easy to read? It's all about the message. He does not pretend to be a UI designer or something.
[+] [-] jdietrich|14 years ago|reply
Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster.
Unless something has radically changed within Google, I'd be very reluctant to question any of their design decisions. I'd be doubly reluctant to call them arrogant whilst panning their design based on nothing but instinct and supposition.
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome 1 for that matter (vs. KDE2). And KDE4. And KDE3. And Windows Vista. And OS X Lion.
[+] [-] mortenjorck|14 years ago|reply
I think two things are entirely possible here: One, that in reaction to Bowman's high-profile indictment of Google's design culture, there has been a shift over the past few years toward Apple-like, auteur-driven design at Google, that was misapplied in this case, or (I think more likely), every detail of the new Gmail UI was extensively tested by itself, but there was no final arbiter to say "you know what? This one part sucks; let's change it despite the data."
[+] [-] nchlswu|14 years ago|reply
My facts may be slightly off, but Brin essentially gave a lot more freedom to designers. As part of the Google redesign (or +ifying), Brin gave all the design responsibilities to the same division that's been producing some Google's commercials. This is undoubtedly a division that appreciates design more, but arguably doesn't appreciate the data as much.
After this, we all saw the obvious redesigns across Google's products. With such a drastic redesign, I am doubtful they did any large scale a/b testing that they typically do (for individual features or otherwise).
Its pretty evident something changed, and I personally have no doubt it's due to changes in the way Google goes about design. They've swung from one end of the spectrum (data obsessed) to another side that's too focused on 'artsy' design.
[+] [-] pcwalton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Duff|14 years ago|reply
Personally, I don't mind the new interface that much -- once it's in compact view and you change to a darker theme. They did make some significant improvements for folks who live in multiple Google Accounts, and I think the Google+ integration is pretty slick.
But, there is no way that incessant testing produced metrics leading to the default white-on-white theme and non-compact view configuration. Maybe they surveyed people with poorly chosen questions or did something else that caused the testing to fail. But they didn't do a meaningful usability test that involved using a mail app.
GMail originally moved email UI forward with the conversation view -- I think they saw this new look as a similar thing, and pushed it out.
[+] [-] tallanvor|14 years ago|reply
From my experience, the new design is horrible for usability. The lack of definition between the menus and the content makes it much more difficult for me to pay attention to the emails. --I've had to switch to a theme, which helps a bit, but in my opinion it's still much harder to use than the older design.
[+] [-] el_presidente|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashleyw|14 years ago|reply
To make a 'good' product, you've got to make some tough design and feature choices on your users' behalf. Case in point: Microsoft vs. Apple. Microsoft are well known to test extensively with "real" users, and Apple, well…don't!
[+] [-] DavidAbrams|14 years ago|reply
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6034/6310566055_4a5f5d4a53_b.j...
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|14 years ago|reply
The: Gmail, Unity, Gnome, etc.. redesigns that we've been seeing recently all seem to have a pattern. A lot of these designs are benefiting and emphisizing the designers desperate attempt at garnering attention and acclaim rather than helping the users. You can tell by the constant tweaking of things that were never broken (the Start button), critical and heavily used elements being hidden or tucked away behind several clicks for the sake of "minimalism", incorrectly correlating a sterile white page with "simplicity". And they won't stop until the whole page is white and empty with one button and a line of text.
These designers are doing whatever makes them look off the wall bat-shit-creative (of the Lady Gaga variety). Many of these designers have stopped caring about a/b tests and the users and are focusing their designs solely on how it makes them look to the community. They want to be the next Steve Jobs, now that he has passed. And they are going to mimic his arrogance, take his risks, and think it will get them to his level. It will not, it's just pissing us off.
On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty and minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed. Explaining to the average person why the new gmail UI is abnoxious is like explaining to the average person what's wrong with Michael Bay's films.
[+] [-] josephcooney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|14 years ago|reply
In WebStorm, they completely removed the scrollbar in the code editor, and replaced it with this "hidden until you mouseover it" slider thing. That means you have no visual cue where you are in a document, scroll-wise. And no way to quickly grab the scrollbar with the mouse since you have to hover and wait on the right edge of the screen before you can see where you're headed.
Making it worse, they have (normally) really useful gutter over there that displays colored bars describing the health of your code. Those are cool, but they now live on top of the scroll bar so even when its visible it's still pretty hard to find it.
Compare that to their (awesome) ReSharper plugin for VS.NET that preserves the original scrollbar and adds that helpful gutter bar next to it. You can quickly see the health of your code AS WELL AS where you're scrolled in the document. Perfect.
I filed a bug against WebStorm about this and had it immediately closed as "by design". Worse UI. Intentional. And not even a setting you can uncheck to fix it.
I actually uninstalled my paid copy of WebStorm as a result. It'd be an awesome product, but all its advantages are wiped out by not being able to navigate around files at times when I have a mouse in my hand. One bad UI choice to turn a good IDE into shelfware.
[+] [-] andrewfelix|14 years ago|reply
I doubt Google would let a group of self interested ego fueled creative's override rational principal and analysis. Especially considering this is a flagship Google product with 350M users.
>On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty and minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed.
I'm a designer. I've never properly critically analysed the new Gmail design. But I haven't felt the need to. For me it just functions really well.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zmmmmm|14 years ago|reply
I feel like Google has suffered from a similar problem - the solution to every UI problem these days is minimalism. Remove borders, accents, highlights, colors. On the surface it looks clean and simple but scratch beneath that and it seems to have no soul and no reason to exist.
I think the same issue goes directly to functional aspects as well - the functions and features on the page should feel alive as if they are speaking to me. I should be attracted to them, immersed in them, like they've been incorporated as parts of myself - but I'm not - I can barely differentiate them from the inactive, static parts of the page. Most of Google these days feels like I am filling out an IRS tax form. At best it is boring, at worst it is aggravating.
I'm looking forward to when we get through this new style of design from Google.
[+] [-] theoj|14 years ago|reply
Interesting observation... this is something I struggled with as well coming from a coding background and trying to do design -- at the individual element level the colors seemed great, but pulling back to the larger picture everything looked washed out. Did you ever come up with a solution for this?
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
I'd say that depends on the subject. I don't want bold decisions to try and energize my experience with my text editor.
[+] [-] option_greek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavesplash|14 years ago|reply
In case you miss the old color scheme, try this Stylish theme:
http://userstyles.org/styles/64637/gmail-google-mail-classic...
Follow Jason's post to fix icons and spacing:
http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-...
[+] [-] andrewfelix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e_proxus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twelvechairs|14 years ago|reply
There are some good design additions in the revised gmail too, but IMHO the above is really what makes gmail feel much more cluttered and cumbersome than it was before....
[+] [-] pedrogrande|14 years ago|reply
It's interesting to me to see so many people grumble at interface changes whether it's Facebook or Gmail.
[+] [-] anthonyb|14 years ago|reply
1. Pick a different theme. I have one with a blue background, not the default light/white one.
2. Go into the general settings, and change your star to a different colour, ie. enable the red, or blue one, or the green checkbox. Now they stand out.
3. Go into the general settings. Change the 'Button Labels' radio from 'Icons' to 'Text'.
If you're going to bag someone's interface, you should at least spend some time figuring out how you can change it...
[+] [-] jrockway|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] initself|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nchlswu|14 years ago|reply
The three points the author pointed out are some glaring usability issues that can be a problem for a big chunk of people. Just because you or I can use it without a hitch doesn't mean its a great design.
[+] [-] brown9-2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavidAbrams|14 years ago|reply
Guess what? The new design sucks far more.
[+] [-] DLarsen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul|14 years ago|reply
I'm hoping that they'll do another revision soon to make it look more like the recently updated G+ design, which actually puts some visual separation between content and navigation (and also doesn't have giant red buttons).
[+] [-] anthonyb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drucken|14 years ago|reply
In fact, I found it difficult to explain to my parents how to navigate the new interface. They were quite upset at the changes and were considering about how to revert to their old providers (thankfully, I set up an email forwarding domain for them years ago so they can change any time they wish). It really is that appalling!
The contrast in usability to almost any other web mail service is shocking. Check Hotmail or Fastmail.fm or even Yahoo mail and "feel" the difference yourself!
Workaround to GMail's new interface:
0. Make sure you have a browser or plugin that supports site-selective scripting, e.g. NoScript.
1. Disable scripting for google.com
Then when you login, GMail offers a "basic html" interface. This is amazingly straightforward, fast, everything clearly delineated with strong colors, all new information extremely obvious, and just the basic design that matches closely to the old design.
If Google manage to mess up even this basic interface, then I guess, I and my family will have to find alternatives, e.g. switching to mail clients or for those who travel a lot to Hotmail.
[+] [-] andymangold|14 years ago|reply
The authors criticisms are legitimate and directly related to the design, but to assume an arrogant designer is at the top pushing these changes is frankly offensive. It's the same old engineers calling the shots at Google. But now, they just seem to be trying to keep up with other well designed products, like a little kid putting on his dad's Italian suit, wondering why he doesn't look great. Pleas, don't blame the tailor.
[+] [-] msluyter|14 years ago|reply
Thanks, Google, for making me contemplate abandoning gmail for the first time. (I know, I know... it's free, right? So what right do I have to complain? I guess I'm mostly angry at myself for growing so dependent on it (and recommending it to my friends/family.))
[+] [-] adrianhoward|14 years ago|reply
A couple of random thoughts from usability tests I've done over the years:
* People are treating the changes to gmail in isolation. Google has changed and integrated design over all of their products. Some parts of a system can get "worse", but still help the overall system get "better". I've seen this when we culled some specialised hi-density layouts on a particular part of a larger system that pissed off some expert users who spent all their time there - but opened up the functionality to be used by a much larger population who were more familiar with the "normal" look.
* People don't know what Google is optimising for. Usability and usability testing isn't necessarily about "making things nice for the user". It's about meeting the business goal. For example I've seen users hate the fact we took some layout and colour preferences away from them, despite the fact that overall satisfaction went up, and efficiency increased even for the users who hated the change.
* I 100% guarantee that the people commenting here are not "normal" as far as Google is concerned. Does it matter if the geeks like me hate that they can see less e-mail at a time, if the other 99% of the market is jumping for joy that they're not repeatedly clicking on the wrong e-mail? Sometimes you just can't make everybody happy - so have to make a decision over which audience you want to be happy. You will generally have a more successful product if 60% of your audience goes "yay" rather than 100% going "meh".
* I spend a bunch of my time talking to "normal" users. I've noticed the general reaction to the new GMail be very different from the general reaction here. They either liked it, or just not noticed/expressed an opinion. I suspect Google cares about that user group more than it does me :-)
Also, and this is complete guesswork on my part, this feels like a first stage to me. Currently the various apps are very lightly integrated with a mostly pure visual design makeover. I wouldn't be surprised to see more functional integration appear over the next year or two as more people perceive the various Google apps and systems as an integral "thing".
[+] [-] jsherry|14 years ago|reply
You can remove the importance markers: Settings > Inbox tab > Importance Markers.
[+] [-] iaskwhy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] KaeseEs|14 years ago|reply
Incidentally, the new UI for video calls makes the 'end' button the same color as the background, and it is very difficult to see.
[+] [-] eblume|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robomartin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nollidge|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmeredith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luser001|14 years ago|reply
Nice big text with high, but not too high, contrast. What's not to like?