Looks the same as before: rubbish.
Introducing the new Google+
261–270 of 300 posts
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#262I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are different sizes. So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third column. I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful. You get a…
The problem isn't the multi-column layout. The real problem are the blocks/cards/boxes that have different heights.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
It definitely looks better when viewed as a screenshot or in a graphic design presentation. Of course actual usability is far worse, but nobody cares about that. Only how shiny it is. The people making the decisions on which design to go for are given screenshot or mockup presentations in 5 minutes and asked to choose which design to go for. They will always go for the shiniest one, and you end up with stuff like thi…
... you honestly think Google has no analytics on whether or not design changes affect UX? And that they'd stick with a significantly worse-performing page?
They will only have numbers for the people that are actually using Google+. The millions that prefer other social networks may have different views on the G+ usability.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Pinterest? Design is only a part of the experience, most of the value comes from usefulness.
It depends on the content and the users' goals.
Pinterest is mainly focused on pictures and its users like to scroll at leisure through long lists, collecting items that catch their eye. On the other hand, G+ is more focused on reading single articles: notice an interesting headline, read the first few lines, click to read more.
This distinction between grazing for images and hunting for text articles is why lack of horizontal alignment makes Pinterest more enjoyable and G+ harder to use.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because you can fit more information into a space, doesn't mean you should. At a certain point it hurts user experience. http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Shots/BRU_Main_Screen.gif UI design is largely about directing flow. Scrolling down is certainly not the end of the world, and hiding less-commonly used features helps make those which are used stand out.
Thanks to such UX guidelines we don't have tools anymore, we have only toys and fluff. One of the most important characteristics of a tool is that you need to learn how to use it . Today's design is focused on making everything effortless from the get-go. But there's only one way to achieve this - and that is to dumb the thing down and cut out features until what you get is a very limited / pretty useless trinket. BR…
A tool is a way to solve a pre-existing problem that is outside the tool itself. Something which creates its own problems for you to solve is not a tool, but a toy.
Whether a tool needs learning beforehand or not determines how likely you are to try the tool in the first place (by estimating whether the expected result justifies the effort), and how likely you are to actually be able to use the tool to solve that problem successfully.
It helps to determine what the real goal is in this case. It is not really "allow me to browse through lots of headlines at maximum efficiency", but something more like "entertain me and let me keep in touch with people".
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 th…
What gets me with MFWS, it's that when I really read something, when in flow and only the ideas behind the words matters to me, no amount of presentation will ever help or be of any importance. The most valuable ideas I got were written in old busted books with bare typesetting.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. To most users, "we aren't facebook" is not an effective sales pitch. As far as a comparison goes: both UI's leave me disappointed, but everyone i know is on facebook. I can think of 1 person who uses G+ with any regularity. By that measure, G+ loses every time.
A "don't be evil kind of Facebook" could've been appealing. Unfortunately they're decidedly not that, with their real name policy, forced integration with other services, public profiles, etc.
Google is as evil as Facebook, if not more.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#268Charise Strandberg via Google+ Daniel Brinneman shared this via Google+ Antonio Valdés via Google+ I see Google+'s commenting is still drowned out by sharing notifications. Google, there's a reason everyone turned off trackbacks ten years ago. It's just noise for anyone reading that page to filter out.
It also happens with Tumblr, and just as bad. At least FB puts " and 1526 others shared this" instead of a long list of noise. In Tumblr it sort of works because nobody reads the "comments", instead some people share the content adding a note and the "comment thread" is actually a nested quote.
I even wrote a script that goes through every note on a post and posts all the reblogs with comments. It's technically against Tumblr TOS, but as long as I only occasionally run it, it should be alright.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
A "don't be evil kind of Facebook" could've been appealing. Unfortunately they're decidedly not that, with their real name policy, forced integration with other services, public profiles, etc.
Google is as evil as Facebook, if not more.
Clearly. I never understood how anyone could take the "don't be evil" slogan seriously, actually. It's comic book level of ethics. We can disagree over whether they are actually being evil though, but what is clear to me is that there is a seriously worrying potential for evil with the amount of information they control through being de-facto monopolies.
Re: Introducing the new Google+
#270I'm confused as to why my google+ has almost 200,000 views, but it has zero posts and basically nobody in my circles. Is this counter broken for anyone else?
Are you really active in Gmail? It could be lots of people you correspond with clicking through to your profile, from the link that typically shows up in the right sidebar.
Nope, nobody contacts me personally through gmail. I kind of wish g+ had a similar stats tracker as youtube so I could check where all the traffic came from.