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Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

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Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#31

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

"You will like it! You will get used to it! I know what's best!" The designers will scream to their users.

This may be, just the beginning.

It's not just the "+" missing from the new tab button or the logo issue, it's a LOT of things. Gmail's new "blank sheet of paper" look. The annoying notifications of Google+ that follow you around. I just logged into analytics yesterday and saw the new redesign and I just... my jaw literally dropped. Who the Hell did this?! Is this is a joke? A bad dream? What did we do? Who at Google did we piss off to deserve this? More importantly what's going on in the world of design? Everywhere I look I see designs that look like the crap I used to turn out.

For a moment I even ventured to think that maybe that radioactive water from Japan finally hit the west coast in full force.

Google's new redesign combined with Kotaku, Gawker, and TechCrunch's new redesign, Ubuntu's Unity and Gnome's, and the new Yahoo mail is making 2011 + 2012 the beginning of an era of atrocious UI. Even Microsoft is joining in, by removing the start button. Maybe the designer shortage last year caused companies to hire up a lot of beginner designers.

More likely this is all because Steve Jobs passed away and now every designer in town is trying to take his place. The king of UX has died, the throne is up for grabs, and everyone's eyeing it. Desperately trying to mimic Steve's "forcefully creative" attitude and ignoring all logic and design laws, these new designers are hell bent on overly simplifying and minimizing every interface until there's nothing left. Desperate for fame and glory the designers will infiltrate every company they can find that's hiring. "You will like it! You will get used to it! I know what's best!" The designers will scream to their users.

I bet you it will get worse.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#32

Post by GnomeChomsky »

My two biggest annoyances with Gmail:

One of my accounts has this bar at the top reminding me that a couple accounts are linked. It says this notice will remain for a few days, then disappear... it's been there now for 3 or 4 months.

Secondly, Gmail auto-trims signatures. This is annoying by itself, because I don't think Google should get to decide, by fiat, that signatures are passe. Worse, the trimming often trims much more than intended -- sometimes whole messages. It's totally unprofessional when e-mails to clients & partners go out sans signature, closing, and the bottom half of my e-mail.

Naturally, getting a hold of Google for help with this is a laughable Sisyphean endeavor.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#34

Post by schraeds »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #31

"You will like it! You will get used to it! I know what's best!" The designers will scream to their users. This may be, just the beginning. It's not just the "+" missing from the new tab button or the logo issue, it's a LOT of things. Gmail's new "blank sheet of paper" look. The annoying notifications of Google+ that follow you around. I just logged into analytics yesterday and saw the new redesign and I just... my j…

A more likely scenario: Now everyone realizes they need to take UX seriously but lack the talent, resources, and/or taste to pull it off.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#35

Post by brildum »

The last few days, gmail has been a pain for me to use specifically because I can no longer click on the logo to return to my inbox after viewing an email thread. Navigating my mouse to the "Inbox" link in the nav menu is difficult because I have to actively distinguish "Inbox" between all the other categories that look similar, whereas I can click on the logo without thinking.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#36

Post by untog »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #31

"You will like it! You will get used to it! I know what's best!" The designers will scream to their users. This may be, just the beginning. It's not just the "+" missing from the new tab button or the logo issue, it's a LOT of things. Gmail's new "blank sheet of paper" look. The annoying notifications of Google+ that follow you around. I just logged into analytics yesterday and saw the new redesign and I just... my j…

I just logged into analytics yesterday and saw the new redesign and I just... my jaw literally dropped. Who the Hell did this?!

I'm not just being contrarian when I say this: I like the new Analytics design. I also happen to like the new Gmail design.

I guess what I'm saying is that not everyone hates these changes- I don't need a designer to scream at me to convince me so.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#37

Post by kfury »

GnomeChomsky wrote: post #32

My two biggest annoyances with Gmail: One of my accounts has this bar at the top reminding me that a couple accounts are linked. It says this notice will remain for a few days, then disappear... it's been there now for 3 or 4 months. Secondly, Gmail auto-trims signatures. This is annoying by itself, because I don't think Google should get to decide, by fiat, that signatures are passe. Worse, the trimming often trims…

I agree. The auto-trimming of the signature is another good example of going to far. Gmail used to elide repeated content, and would grey the signature. Eliding it behind a click changes the emotional tone of the messages that people send to you, and that's a step further than a UX should take.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#38

Post by benaston »

Agree wholeheartedly with this post. Thing is; I have never come across a so-called user experience expert that had a single particularly insightful thing to say about a user interface.

Indeed, my experience has been that I get more insight from "lay" people than these guys.

I can't even be bothered to count the number of different items on the Google menu. Actually I just have... it's 17 items (for me), plus an "even more" item. I'd love to see the analytics for that one!

Now, you might forgive them because, well, if you have lots of products then you need a way to navigate to them... EXCEPT the millions they spend every year on making menu-based navigation completely redundant by their world-beating search.

If I want Google Maps, I will either type "maps" into Chrome's address bar, which auto-completes it, OR (as most non technies will do, I hazard a guess) I will type something (e.g "maps") directly into Google.

The unfortunate thing is that this is not just Google. It 99.9% of websites I have ever visited. OK, so most small companies do not have the resources for a dedicated UX person, but the only big-company website I can think of with a sane UX is Apple. Is it really all that hard? Actually I suspect it is - it's Conway's Law in full effect.

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#39

Post by untog »

ianox wrote: post #27
citricsquid wrote: post #6

> First up is the 'new tab' chicklet in the Chrome tab bar. Somewhere around Chrome 16 the '+' disappeared from it, leaving a little ghost of a button that, to my mind, wouldn't be recognized for what it was by a user who hadn't already formed their mental model on earlier versions of Chrome. I'd noticed this and it was very irritating! I assumed it was a bug and for whatever reason the image was missing, not that th…

The lack of the '+' was annoying to me at first. I don't seem to miss it anymore though, but then I do use the keyboard a lot for opening up new tabs.

We all know Chrome very well, though. If you launched it for the first time it's very unclear what that button does- and given that the only thing it does do is open a tab, why remove the +?

Re: Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

#40

Post by danabramov »

I like the plus label removed.

For someone who never ever used a tabbed browser, “+” doesn't mean “new tab”. It doesn't even mean ”add a thing“. It means “sum”.

Web browser is the most basic application to use this icon.

The icon just doesn't help because user has no prior knowledge of the metaphor anyway.

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