Google has been infected by the "minimalistic design" disease in the last few years. The term evidently means "hide everything from the user and present them with a pure white surface". It looks beautiful. The sensitive artist types running google UI now love that. Look at all that negative space. Orgasmic. Ship it.
I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
71–80 of 344 posts
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#72> "There is a tradeoff in HCI that is between ease and efficiency. It seems Gmail is less easy to use AND less efficient. The only improvement seems to be design."
I would argue that the improvement is the arrangement of pixels to be more eye pleasing -- design improvement would be addressing all of those issues outlined. In fact, this is a design failure.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#73Time to try Outlook.com buddy. That product beats GMail anytime.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#74Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's used everywhere else.
Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've now sent half an e-mail to you boss....
I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#75Does anyone really think Photoshop is a good UX for mass consumption (which is obviously the target for Gmail)? I've been using it since version 2, and I think it's a great product, but for new users it's a miserably difficult product to learn, especially for any kind of casual use. There's a reason why users love apps like Draw Something or (more relevantly) Instagram or Paper. They're able to easily achieve the res…
Nobody thinks Photoshop has a good UX, but that's not the point; the point is it's been consistent, with only small, helpful changes.
If Adobe redesigned the Photoshop interface they'd instantly love half their market share, as people using software professionally don't like or have the time to learn something new just because it's better in some odd way.
Microsoft did that with Office, the whole Ribbon fiasco, but to their defense: - Office 2003's UI was extremely complicated; GMail's new extra steps are nothing in comparison. - The Ribbon UI was well designed from the start. - All (or most) keyboard shortcuts stayed the same. - Microsoft actually did extensively test the new design and, being Microsoft, it will be supported for a long time.
Adobe probably wouldn't be able to pull that off, and it looks like even Google can't anymore.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#76Gmail is now a cluster fuck of terribleness. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to make you type your email in what is basically a slightly larger chat window? Who decided it would be a good idea to put the "reply" edit box at the end of a potentially very long email? Oh, and make it fit like six lines of text. I swear, this is what happens when you let a bunch of kids run the show. "My emails are rarely ever mo…
What bothers me most about gmail is the flat conversations, where you can't see that a message was a reply to an email in the middle of a thread.
It seems I'm almost alone thinking this way, though -- it's not a complaint I often hear from other people.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#77Here's another total usability fail: Tab sends the e-mail you're currently writing instead of indenting text. Everywhere else tab indents text, and when you write an e-mail in gmail you'd expect it to act consistently with how it's used everywhere else. Start writing in gmail, hit tab to indent some text. Congratulations you've now sent half an e-mail to you boss.... I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea.
Nitpicker's corner: it doesn't actually send the email, it focuses the send button.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#78As always, I feel like people are more averted to a change to a product than the product itself. People complain in droves about how "everything is RUINED" in Facebook or Gmail, but simple fact of the matter is that you can do far more in both than ever before.
Gmail features like fulltext label search make me prefer it over almost every other email client. And the author's comment about it being "too hard to change the subject" is by design, because it both breaks threading and pisses people off when you change the subject of an ongoing thread. New subject? Write a new email, idiot.
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#79I'm normally pretty easy to please with UI changes, but even I'm a little frustrated with some of the new compose quirks. Personally, I've had a very hard time putting together bulleted lists in the new compose. To start the list, you need to click the underlined A (for Additional Formatting), then the familiar bulleted list icon. I can live with that, though I'd certainly prefer one click. To do a nested list, thoug…
Learning the following keyboard shortcuts for formatting bullet lists made the transition to the new compose UI much less painful for me: ctrl + shift + 8 to create a new bullet list ctrl + ] to indent right ctrl + [ to indent left
Ctrl + Shift + 8? You gotta be shitting me!
Ctrl + ] & [ to indent? What's wrong with Tab & Shift-Tab, like in every other app?
Re: I feel like Gmail went from being Photoshop to Draw Something
#80I'm torn between strongly agreeing with these points and wanting to comment pointing out that none of them matter..... I hate change for change's sake, but the new gmail compose window has made me more efficient. It took some getting used to however. Responses to the points made in the article: 1) I can’t easily delete my signatures. Forget about deleting your sig and generally cleaning up email threads. Decent email…
> Drag and drop from the address bar. So easy.
This is stupid. For starters, it means people can only insert links to sites they currently have open in their browser...