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Designing NotebookLM

jasonspielman.com

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Re: Designing NotebookLM

#81

Post by navigate8310 »

epolanski wrote: post #44
ashwindharne wrote: post #7

This post has the same issues as NotebookLM for me -- overdesigned, overengineered for what at its core is a simple and valuable UX. NotebookLM: obviously useful, but I just wanna select some files and chat w/ them or have them summarized for me. It's got low info density, way too many cards/buttons/sections/icons, and it makes the core UX really difficult for me to navigate. This post: I wanted to know what cool tho…

Really disliked the author's tone: "me, me, me, me, me, me. Also somebody promote me." All this paragraphs telling us what a great job he's done and this charlatan's product (with great potential)...doesn't even save your chats. So you start discussing about something in your notes, come back and...the messages are gone. But sure come tell me what a genius you are with your 3 column layout. Charlatans, and those peop…

And the, "I ran off paper and the final design was the one I created on a napkin", was just too cliche and overly dramatic.

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#82

Post by dandelionv1bes »

jorgemendes wrote: post #54
jayspiel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too negative, I really appreciate this perspective and agree with some of what you said. IMO if you wanted to simply talk to a file or two Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude are great for that. The goal of this experimental product was to think creatively around what a true source grounded tool could be. (Obviously while building to best support the user needs). Our team put in immense work to move quickly while trying…

Thank you for your work. NotebookLM has been invaluable for my learning experience. With the summaries, the mind maps, the multi-source synthesis and dialogue with the material, it adjusts pretty well to my learning style.

Agreed. NotebookLM is one of my most used tools for my research work. I’m able to give the audio overview to friends and family who don’t want to read a paper but am interested in what I’m doing. And the “live” talk allows me to interrogate my own work and identify gaps where I haven’t explained something well.

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#83

Post by lelanthran »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10
tetrisgm wrote: post #6

I don't care much for NotebookLM's UX. I find the layout confusing, the concepts conveyed in the UI not very intuitive. I feel like the power of what's under the hood doesn't translate very well into the frontend. That said, this article was a very nice overview. Clean page, interesting to see his perspective. He clearly took tare and thought about the project. I don't agree with his conclusions and results, but that…

Do you use an alternative? I haven't explored the space much.

I'm writing an LLM interface that would work for me, but as a side project I cannot really give an ETA.

I'm going in a fairly different direction to all the ones I've seen (including NBLM) because I am going workflow-first for my workflow.

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#84

Post by evnix »

NotebookLM is a success in spite of the interface not because of it.

Pretty awful UX to be honest. Credit goes to the backend engineers who made this happen.

Took me ages to figure out you can copy paste simple text. Editing any text isn't great either.

Why isn't there a dedicated markdown notes section with folder and files? Most of us won't have ready to use PDFs but almost all of know how to use a text editor and paste text into it. Your Notes app UI is without proper support for editing and maintaining notes.

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#85

Post by troupo »

jayspiel wrote: post #53
ashwindharne wrote: post #7

This post has the same issues as NotebookLM for me -- overdesigned, overengineered for what at its core is a simple and valuable UX. NotebookLM: obviously useful, but I just wanna select some files and chat w/ them or have them summarized for me. It's got low info density, way too many cards/buttons/sections/icons, and it makes the core UX really difficult for me to navigate. This post: I wanted to know what cool tho…

Not too negative, I really appreciate this perspective and agree with some of what you said. IMO if you wanted to simply talk to a file or two Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude are great for that. The goal of this experimental product was to think creatively around what a true source grounded tool could be. (Obviously while building to best support the user needs). Our team put in immense work to move quickly while trying…

Your blog post shows that more effort and creativity was spent on "brand identity" than on "everyone is doing column layouts with chat in the middle and we'll just make the rest an indistinguishable mess of links on par with literally every single Google product".

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#86

Post by muragekibicho »

ashwindharne wrote: post #7

This post has the same issues as NotebookLM for me -- overdesigned, overengineered for what at its core is a simple and valuable UX. NotebookLM: obviously useful, but I just wanna select some files and chat w/ them or have them summarized for me. It's got low info density, way too many cards/buttons/sections/icons, and it makes the core UX really difficult for me to navigate. This post: I wanted to know what cool tho…

ngl, i stole his website design. this is the content i live for

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#87

Post by xnx »

Etheryte wrote: post #20
ashwindharne wrote: post #7

This post has the same issues as NotebookLM for me -- overdesigned, overengineered for what at its core is a simple and valuable UX. NotebookLM: obviously useful, but I just wanna select some files and chat w/ them or have them summarized for me. It's got low info density, way too many cards/buttons/sections/icons, and it makes the core UX really difficult for me to navigate. This post: I wanted to know what cool tho…

Endless scrolling just to describe a three-panel layout, something that's been around since the 80s (?).

To be fair, a lot of graphic designers have very little knowledge/experience with computing, so they genuinely believe they're inventing obvious and common approaches.

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#88

Post by xnx »

navigate8310 wrote: post #81
epolanski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really disliked the author's tone: "me, me, me, me, me, me. Also somebody promote me." All this paragraphs telling us what a great job he's done and this charlatan's product (with great potential)...doesn't even save your chats. So you start discussing about something in your notes, come back and...the messages are gone. But sure come tell me what a genius you are with your 3 column layout. Charlatans, and those peop…

And the, "I ran off paper and the final design was the one I created on a napkin", was just too cliche and overly dramatic.

The napkin definitely feels like a retcon

Re: Designing NotebookLM

#89

Post by tao97 »

Thanks for sharing!

I've been working on my own knowledge management app to help small businesses with high part-time and employee turnover to manage FAQs and centralize local expertise. I think the 3-pane with the chat in the middle is a really clean way of making a whole library knowledge repository easily accessible, especially for someone wanting to avoid minimize clicks or as you say 'tab-overwhelm'.

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