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How to cope with the Gmail redesign

jasoncrawford.org

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Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#131

Post by kreitje »

Hurdy wrote: post #119
kreitje wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgot to mention how they get them. Either someone has my login and is messing with me by somehow adding the Trash and Inbox label or there is a glitch in the system putting both labels on it. My guess is the glitch.

There is no glitch that just adds trash labels. Did you check if you have any filters set up that might be responsible?

I did. I cleared out a few filters even though I am 95% sure they wouldn't match the emails. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong though.

The main thing I find irritating is that it contains the Inbox label as well.

Any filter to send something to the trash says "Skip Inbox, Delete It".

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#134

Post by stan_rogers »

pg wrote: post #88

This article made me finally bite the bullet and convert. I've been using the new design for the last several hours. I happen to have a window open with the old design, so I know it's not merely my imagination that the new one is worse. Not enormously so, but definitely worse. Read mails are more legible in the old version, because there is more contrast between black letters and the old light blue background than be…

This almost exactly matches not only my complaints, but the feedback I gave when Google claimed to be interested in such things.

Another thing I've observed is that non-expert users are utterly confused by the various actions not being visible (though greyed out) when documents are not selected—they simply assume that they will never exist and don't see them after a selection is made. I can't see any way in which the new design is as good as, let alone better than, the old.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#135

Post by vidarh »

kfury wrote: post #84

I designed the original Gmail UX and I have to admit I'd changed every pref in my accounts exactly as Jason did. Good call.

Too bad they ruined it with this redesign. The old one was pleasant and unobtrusive and overall great.

The new one is making seriously consider leaving Gmail...

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#136

Post by vidarh »

Hurdy wrote: post #112
esc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better. My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design. Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the pas…

The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.

The only cool new feature I'd like would be a flag to make Google stop fucking with the UI.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#137

Post by esc »

Hurdy wrote: post #112
esc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. Having forced to use the new design for a few days, the old one feels and looks so much better. My biggest annoyance in the new one apart from the horrible colors was how the buttons change position or disappear depending on the context. Much less intuitive than the old design. Its a shame that Google decided to force the new design, I would just leave the old one as optional as it was during the pas…

The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.

Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the old design :)

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#138

Post by kennethcwilbur »

I have never been so frustrated with a UI redesign as I have been with Gmail and Analytics. Unfortunately, I was already using all of the settings pointed out in this post, and I still can't get comfortable with the new design. I can't separate how much of that frustration comes from the large degree of change and how much comes from my long history of use, but the frustration is huge.

I know that many Google employees were similarly frustrated when they were eating their dog food last august. Yet the new look was rolled out anyway.

So I can only assume that the company had solid UI data showing that their target group of users prefer the new design. And I can therefore only assume that the target group of users does not include users like me.

Consequently, there is an opportunity here for somebody to do email right for the people frustrated by the new gmail redesign. I would happily pay for an email interface that makes sense and doesn't change against my wishes... especially if it doesn't require switching to microsoft.

Until then, I will be very grateful to the person who pointed out the 'slow-connection' interface is still available.

Re: How to cope with the Gmail redesign

#140

Post by Hurdy »

esc wrote: post #137
Hurdy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old design will completely go away in the next few days. From a development perspective it's just not feasible to make everything work for two different designs (with many many themes). It's better to spend the time on cool new features.

Thanks for the answer. Based on the discussion here, one especially cool new feature would be a 'classic' mode that would mimic the look and feel of the old design :)

It's not possible to please everyone when you do a UI change and have 300+ million users, but we do try to fix some issues people have with the new design (e.g. setting for text buttons, high contrast theme). Of course it has to look consistent with other products so there are some limitations. Our community manager wrote a much more eloquent answer to that topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/sk7i7/how_do_you_get...
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