I'd be happy if they stopped trying to be fancy and just covered usability basics like supporting the browser back button. I can't even count the number of times I've hit back on an event screen expecting to get to my calendar view and left the calendar site entirely. Yes, there's a fancy JavaScript button that works that I could take ten times longer to trigger, but that's not good practice to force users to use your internal JS only navigation solution.
1. The post is referring to a new Android app, not the web UI.
2. The situation you're talking about has existed since... well, it's been there for the last 3 years I've been using Google Calendar. I, too, would like a working back button, but the web UI is effectively set in stone.
Agreed. I'd really like to just be able to look at part of two consecutive months at the same time. Seems silly to have the same visualization constraints as a real calendar that crossing from the 31st of current month to 12th of next month means going back and forth a few times.
Love google calendar for the cloud, sharing and ability to email myself custom reminders but the UI on the web is pretty minimal. I tried a couple different calendar apps and found fantastical by flexbits.com to have the best UI/functionality for me on iPhone.
I loved the "meaningful animation"[1] for location pin after you create an event. At first I thought Material Design is a lot of buzz words with not much innovation but when I read the docs I realized they put a lot of thoughts behind it.
Their assists animation looks interesting, but I will wait to judge until I can actually try it. The Apple calendar looks great, but feels really clunky to add and edit events. (Especially on a Mac!)
For pure usability, I haven't found a calendar program that beats MS Outlook running on Windows.
Consistent choreography. Do: Direct user attention with coordinated, orderly motion. Don't: Don’t confuse users with inconsistent or disorderly motion and objects leaving/entering in seemingly random directions.
This seems like a strange hard rule to follow. The disorganized demo has a very different "feel" to it that might be appropriate in some places more than others.
Adding events from emails is nice, but I'd love to be able to add an event from taking a picture of a poster or a flyer. I see ads for concerts, rallies, art exhibits, and so on whenever I'm walking around town or visiting the local library. I'd love to just snap a picture and have the details uploaded to my calendar.
I wrote my senior thesis on a calendar assistant that achieves much of the functionality mentioned here (recommending times/places, auto updates, etc) and lost so much motivation just to the sheer amount of integration between parties/services required to solve this problem.
There has been a lot of work in the academic space on optimizing calendar/email functions but its challenging to implement across so many email providers/clients. I'm glad Google is taking a step in this direction, I'm not confident many startups would be able to solve this problem effectively.
I won't lie, I'm starting to become a google fanboy again thanks to the beautiful google material design experience. Hats off to the team behind this new calendar app.
Calendars on mobile phones are a hard design problem. We're used to large calendars the size of well... a wall calendar. Try making that 3" wide and you can't show all the days and information and you either (1) make things too small (GS4 Cal app) or (2) make it a swipe fest. This is probably the reason they didn't address the design previously.
My employer (German) just banned all Google products (except search) for work-related things, due to privacy issues. Reading Google's latest terms-and-conditions, this move is somewhat understandable, given the strong privacy laws that German companies and institutions have to follow.
On the other hand, I guess that scanning a large amount of emails is the precise thing that allows them to offer robust email-to-event conversion. But I wish that this sort of thing would work locally (on the cellphone or computer in question), not on a remote server somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if in years to come we'll look at Germany's policy as overly cautious and a net loss or extraordinarily prescient.
I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. I'm rather cavalier on privacy issues (at least where they affect my own person) and quite happy with the goodies I receive in return. However I sometimes wonder how I'll feel with the benefit of hindsight.
What a terrible advert. I couldn't focus on the features being demoed because they were on screen so fleetingly and the background scenes were so distracting.
They're trying to imitate Apple's adverts but completely blow it by showing overcomplicated interactions.
It seems I do not really have to hope my vendor will provide an Android update for my phone, as Google distributes most cool new stuff using the app ecosystem. As with Inbox, I think Google is finally generating sufficient pressure on developers and businesses to use meta-data for their mails and websites. I appreciate that. If their text parser for stuff like locations and times works for non-english texts, I'll be a super happy user!
The flip-side to this is that the Android versions of these apps aren't getting anymore love. Messages is now Hangouts, Browser is now Chrome, Calender is now GCal. I heard that the Gmail app is going to start allowing Yahoo email accounts too. Android is much more locked down than it once was.
Not sure if this applies, but I got the web version of Inbox about 2 days after I installed the Inbox app on my phone. Ideally they'll release the web version soon after as well.
I second this. I cannot wait for the day where I don't second guess myself whether I want to put an event in my company's MSExchange calendar, or google calendar because I don't know if I will see it if saved to the latter.
The web-based version is way too outdated. Given Inbox was written using the newest GWT, and I assume Calendar is using an older version, maybe it won't be such a big deal to refresh that, too.
It shocks me that the default calendar for android does not interoperate with any calendar server except gmail's (unless you can shoe-horn events in with a separate caldav app.)
I watched the video twice and I still can't figure out what the changes are about because I kept getting distracted by all the stuff happening in the background.
Even after I purposely tried to focus on the device UI, I couldn't process all of it in any coherent way. Please don't make promo videos that leave me with no sense of the product you are trying to demo.
So first we have a new Gmail app, and now a new Google Calendar app. What's the roadmap here?
Is Google going to roll out new versions of their other apps? Do they plan to maintain both apps in parallel, and for how long? Is this just an experiment or do they plan to convert all users to the new apps eventually?
Are you referring to inbox? Or the Gmail app redesign?
All the Android and Web apps are being updated at the moment for Material Design, with the higher priority being on the Android ones it seems to get them ready in time for the imminent 5.0 launch. They're just updating the app for everyone (the new ones are backwards compatible with less flashy animations). Inbox is a separate app though.
I'm a little worried that this is introducing a new vector for spam. I have already been getting spam through invites (where they get auto-added to my calendar even before I have a chance to see what they are).
Frankly, I want my calendar to be a private calendar. I don't want to share it, or receive invites through it, or auto-add events just because I got an email. I'm still happy to have the sync capability, because I use a smartphone, but aside from that I really have no use cases which require my calendar to be online at all.
Admittedly, this may just be a case where Google's interests are not aligned with my own. If so, are there (real, viable) alternatives?
I wanted a private calendar without sharing/invites too, so I ended up building my own (do not recommend unless you have a lot of time on your hands!).
No spam, no ads, you own your data. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about it.
I've been using and (for the most part) promoting Android ever since the G1... but after 2.x the rate of UI change has, in my opinion, been terrible from a usability experience.
Pretty much all software (whether that's apps, websites, programming languages, or anything else) past a certain complexity has quirks. Getting used to the quirks is part of learning the software.
Massively changing large swathes of your built-in software is bad for users! I get that it'd be suicide to say "OK, permanent feature freeze... now," but big changes to the UI on apps that are (to many normal users) fundamental to using Android break the user's understanding of their use, often amounting to months of acclimation down the drain.
I too have been using Android since the G1 (I still have it for testing on!) and I would agree that the introduction of new paradigms/ways of interacting with apps (seemingly introduced every I/O every year) is frustrating.
The hamburger menu is in fashion. Then it isn't. Swiping from the left is, then it isn't. All of the examples in their design spec of how NOT to do things was precisely what they did on 2.x.
I know you have to be seen to be "innovating" for attention-deficit new phone buyers, but living in a world of constantly shifting sands just means it's hard to see from all the dust blowing around in your face.
Given that it is now more than 2 years since Gmail cards were released for Google Now, and there's still no sign of them arriving for Apps accounts... I'd say no.
[+] [-] lnanek2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmhedberg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbitur|11 years ago|reply
2. The situation you're talking about has existed since... well, it's been there for the last 3 years I've been using Google Calendar. I, too, would like a working back button, but the web UI is effectively set in stone.
[+] [-] chuckcode|11 years ago|reply
Love google calendar for the cloud, sharing and ability to email myself custom reminders but the UI on the web is pretty minimal. I tried a couple different calendar apps and found fantastical by flexbits.com to have the best UI/functionality for me on iPhone.
[+] [-] nevir|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/meaningful-trans...
[+] [-] jobu|11 years ago|reply
For pure usability, I haven't found a calendar program that beats MS Outlook running on Windows.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] emehrkay|11 years ago|reply
Sidenote: you people on the "tech internet" use the word innovation too much
[+] [-] andreyf|11 years ago|reply
This seems like a strange hard rule to follow. The disorganized demo has a very different "feel" to it that might be appropriate in some places more than others.
[+] [-] pradn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sounds|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayshahtx|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbhl|11 years ago|reply
https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/highlights
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
Take a look at Sunrise. They're doing a pretty good job I think.
[+] [-] d0m|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mholt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twistedpair|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssully|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fudged71|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maho|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I guess that scanning a large amount of emails is the precise thing that allows them to offer robust email-to-event conversion. But I wish that this sort of thing would work locally (on the cellphone or computer in question), not on a remote server somewhere.
[+] [-] andybak|11 years ago|reply
I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. I'm rather cavalier on privacy issues (at least where they affect my own person) and quite happy with the goodies I receive in return. However I sometimes wonder how I'll feel with the benefit of hindsight.
[+] [-] bruceboughton|11 years ago|reply
They're trying to imitate Apple's adverts but completely blow it by showing overcomplicated interactions.
[+] [-] PMan74|11 years ago|reply
Nominative determinism in action folks
[+] [-] netrus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haubey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amaks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enobrev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johngd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kolev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acalendar|11 years ago|reply
It shocks me that the default calendar for android does not interoperate with any calendar server except gmail's (unless you can shoe-horn events in with a separate caldav app.)
[+] [-] Nullabillity|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alphakappa|11 years ago|reply
Even after I purposely tried to focus on the device UI, I couldn't process all of it in any coherent way. Please don't make promo videos that leave me with no sense of the product you are trying to demo.
[+] [-] matmann2001|11 years ago|reply
Is Google going to roll out new versions of their other apps? Do they plan to maintain both apps in parallel, and for how long? Is this just an experiment or do they plan to convert all users to the new apps eventually?
[+] [-] jordanthoms|11 years ago|reply
All the Android and Web apps are being updated at the moment for Material Design, with the higher priority being on the Android ones it seems to get them ready in time for the imminent 5.0 launch. They're just updating the app for everyone (the new ones are backwards compatible with less flashy animations). Inbox is a separate app though.
[+] [-] yincrash|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knicholes|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eslaught|11 years ago|reply
Frankly, I want my calendar to be a private calendar. I don't want to share it, or receive invites through it, or auto-add events just because I got an email. I'm still happy to have the sync capability, because I use a smartphone, but aside from that I really have no use cases which require my calendar to be online at all.
Admittedly, this may just be a case where Google's interests are not aligned with my own. If so, are there (real, viable) alternatives?
[+] [-] gmcabrita|11 years ago|reply
Fortunately you can turn this off in the Google Calendar settings. This way they only get added to your calendar if you accept.
[+] [-] timcraft|11 years ago|reply
I wanted a private calendar without sharing/invites too, so I ended up building my own (do not recommend unless you have a lot of time on your hands!).
No spam, no ads, you own your data. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about it.
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kruk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ou812|11 years ago|reply
Not sure why they can't do this, the default Calendar app that ships with Samsung phones pulls it off beautifully.
[+] [-] kentosi|11 years ago|reply
Eg - Typing "Dinner tomorrow at 7:30pm at Foobar restaurant" would automatically create an event with the correct lexical components.
It looks like they're finally reintroducing this back.
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|11 years ago|reply
Pretty much all software (whether that's apps, websites, programming languages, or anything else) past a certain complexity has quirks. Getting used to the quirks is part of learning the software.
Massively changing large swathes of your built-in software is bad for users! I get that it'd be suicide to say "OK, permanent feature freeze... now," but big changes to the UI on apps that are (to many normal users) fundamental to using Android break the user's understanding of their use, often amounting to months of acclimation down the drain.
It's very frustrating.
[+] [-] 72deluxe|11 years ago|reply
The hamburger menu is in fashion. Then it isn't. Swiping from the left is, then it isn't. All of the examples in their design spec of how NOT to do things was precisely what they did on 2.x.
I know you have to be seen to be "innovating" for attention-deficit new phone buyers, but living in a world of constantly shifting sands just means it's hard to see from all the dust blowing around in your face.
[+] [-] buzzkills|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porges|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdicola|11 years ago|reply