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Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#221
post #213
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but where? There are not that much email providers that will live forever and won't change your UX and have mobile apps, and... and...

fastmail.com - I used gmail since the good old days when I bought an invite on ebay. Yesterday, I switched to fastmail with my own domain. I'm not looking back.

> fastmail

You are aware they're an Australian company that will be forced to provide Oz government access to your account?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#222
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's especially bad on Firefox. With that, and the fact that Google is killing Inbox, it feels like time to look for alternatives.

Sure, but where? There are not that much email providers that will live forever and won't change your UX and have mobile apps, and... and...

Mailspring is nice.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#223
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UX Pro here. Google pays senior UX folks an average $160,000 they have "degrees" from third rate Unis like Stanford and Cal Poly tech. How dumb can they be? Do you think they will ever make any money?

Skipping the "UX Pro" creds, I trust that the rest of your post is correct: Google has well-paid UX engineers from the best places. That's precisely what I find scary about those UX changes: they to run counter-current of everything I value in UX (clean and compact vs. bloated and spread out).

UX will eventually become fully personalized to the user's preference rather than the latest fashion vaguely branded to the site owner. If they could figure out how to personalize the UX as well as they personalize ads...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#224

Google has a lot of overpaid managers who need to do something to justify high salaries. So I imagine they sit down and then stare at Gmail, a great product that we all like, and then decide to make a lot of unnecessary changes that will make us stop using it. About a year ago I registered a domain to use for e-mail. Even though I currently use Google Suite because I like current (classic) Gmail version, if they real…

Agreed. Why can't software devs just complete a project and then call it good? Perpetual change is unnecessary and a waste of effort.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#225
I was using Gmail in 'classic' mode until today, when they force-upgraded to the new layout. In my opinion, even the "compact" mode is less compact. I don't like it.

So as of today I'm forwarding all my email to protonmail. This was just the push I needed to start switching over.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#226
post #74

At the risk of saying something unpopular, I like the new Gmail. I liked the previous Gmail too, so maybe I'm not the best judge. It is slightly slower, but I like the look and enjoy working in it. While I dream of doing it, I think it would be hard to PM something as popular as Gmail. Once you reach a nine figure user count, any change you make will be met with millions of unhappy people...

People are always unhappy with new UIs (just look at what happens when Apple tries to change anything) and hacker news seems to be pretty negative towards all of the big tech companies (often deserved but sometimes not) so it's not always the best barometer for these changes.

Those are excellent points.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

It's an idiomatic term. It means to use the thing you produce yourself. So when, in the case of Gmail, it is slow and painful to use for yourself, you will fix it.

I think the question wasn't "what is dogfooding" but rather "why do you say dogfooding doesn't work at large cos?"

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#228
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fastmail.com - I used gmail since the good old days when I bought an invite on ebay. Yesterday, I switched to fastmail with my own domain. I'm not looking back.

> fastmail You are aware they're an Australian company that will be forced to provide Oz government access to your account?

How is that relevant to UI performance or stability?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#229

Google web UX has gotten horrific. I used to visit Google News multiple times per day. Then the UX went to hell there too. Each iteration became worse. After the latest changes, it became so unbearably hideous and clunky that I couldn't stand it anymore. I got mad every time I loaded the site. But years of keyboard memory still had me typing in the URL constantly, getting mad every time it loaded up. I finally black…

Not to mention Maps forces the god-awful "3D" satellite view on you all the time now. It makes investigating forested areas an exercise in frustration. I can't see any details through the mess of origami trees.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#230
"The creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, had a rule: every interaction should be faster than 100ms. Why? Because 100ms is the threshold where interactions feel instantaneous"

Took this from a company's website [0] who is trying to reinvent an email client. I have to agree, the new Gmail experience is definitely not something its original creator would be very proud of!

[0] https://superhuman.com

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