Introducing the new Google+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#181

Post by tapp » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 1:50 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #170

rogerbinns wrote: post #16

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community.

Interesting. Could you provide any links/citations for this?

I ask because it feels like practically every designer I talk with these days wants to force a card layout onto everything (even text-oriented sites) and I'd love to hear the other side.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#182

Post by wstrange » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 1:54 AM UTC

caf wrote: post #129

macintux wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were exactly zero good search engines at the time, however. Google was exponentially better than anything else from day 1.

At launch, the actual search functionality wasn't noticeably better than Altavista. It was, however, much faster and aesthetically pleasing.

"much faster" is important.

Speed is a feature

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#183

Post by sytelus » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 1:57 AM UTC

sirtastic wrote: post #179

sytelus wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. I disagree-- it would appear to be exactly the opposite if you look at current design trends (checkout dribbble.com), cards look to be a very big yes-yes in the design community. I believe googles implementation of the cards within Google+ very poor UX. If they made each card the same height so your eyes can move about the page more orderly it might make G…

Trending design ≠ efficient design. Lot of me-too designers try to copy what's on popular websites even though it's clearly a wrong approach and that's how bad designs become viral (Jumbotrones is another example which has become viral but has measurably lower engagement metrics). Also many designer falls in to side-by-side measurement trap while what they should be measuring is users engagement metrics. Card layout looks pretty in PowerPoints and SBS numbers would generally shine but any designer who have actually measured actual engagement metrics with card layout would agree that it's horrible idea. BTW, I'm taking about card design where there are more than one horizontally laid-out cards.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#184

Post by markdown » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 1:59 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #170

rogerbinns wrote: post #16

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community.

Pinterest.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#185

Post by ksk » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

moonchrome wrote: post #82

agumonkey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the web has gone into distributed application / magazine, density has dropped. http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://justinjackson.ca/words.html TBC

> http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ >You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi. Except that it's really hard to read on a wide screen. I get it - it's a satire - but it goes too far and fails to make a convincing point because…

>Except that it's really hard to read on a wide screen.

I think the issue is - who gets to decide how wide the content is. Is it the user or the website? Or to put it another way, does the act of maximizing a window represent an intent or does it represent a default error state that needs to be worked around by laying out the content in a different way.

I think that the user should get to decide how wide they want the content to be. For almost all GUI applications 'Maximize' has always meant "I want to see more of it".

>There are good reasons for things in design like column/page width/ratios, margins, line spacing, font family/size etc. purely from usability standpoint (ignoring subjective/stylistic choices).

What are those non-subjective reasons?

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#186

Post by kldavenport » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #170

rogerbinns wrote: post #16

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almos…

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

Amazon's UX designers feel the same way. G+'s card layout does not make it easy to infer what's the latest vs the most commented on item and what the logic is behind it's positioning laterally. I think basic gestalt principles in cognitive science would support the problem with laterally adjacent but vertically edge overlapping tile placement.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#187

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:04 AM UTC

The changes are OK, I suppose.

I read stuff on G+ a lot, my preference being on my Note 4 rather than on a laptop size browser. Maybe it just because I have a lot of interesting people in my circles, but in any case there is usually a lot of interesting (and even useful) information.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#188

Post by sytelus » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #184

sytelus wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Pinterest.

Pintrest is different use case. Pins typically have little other content than images for consumption and card design works great where major content is images.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#189

Post by mynameisvlad » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #155

criley2 wrote: post #95

Shame, the single anti-feature that prevents me from joining is still in place: >Join Google+ by creating your public profile I don't want a Public Profile. I don't need my gmail account to have a public profile. I don't need search engines, randos, nobodies, everybody to have access to my profile. Why does Google mandate Public Profiles? I don't understand. Facebook does not mandate Public profiles (if you visit my…

The craziest part is when I happen on Google + accidentally and Google shows me the account I deleted eleven times. Than I am confusing as to whether I have an account or not.

Considering it's been back after 11 times, I'm going to say that yes, you do still have an account.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#190

Post by XJOKOLAT » Wed, Nov 18, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

tapp wrote: post #181

sytelus wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is…

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Interesting. Could you provide any links/citations for this? I ask because it feels like practically every designer I talk with these days wants to force a card layout onto everything (even text-oriented sites) and I'd love to hear the other side.

+1 for a damned list ...

I mean look at the front of hacker news.

Speed. Read.