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GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

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Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#161

Post by pinaceae »

mattmanser wrote: post #150
ajross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

You're begging the question. If we take what you say is true every redesign is good, which is patently false. A perfect example is the Office Ribbon UI, an unmitigated disaster. Also putting Vista in your list there, mmmmmm. Wasn't exactly a great redesign was it. The Google redesign is also pretty much a disaster.

the ribbon is the best thing MS has done in a long time. a ballsy move, but absolutely needed to have a UI that is able to guide users through the very complex functionalities of excel, etc.

use ms office daily, love the ribbon.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#162

Post by sokoloff »

read_wharf wrote: post #158
adestefan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that actually likes the ribbon? I can actually find the options I want to use in Office 10 instead of trying to dig through dozens of drop down menus.

"Am I the only one ..." The answer to this is always "no." Except this time.

Amusing, but untrue. I took a (long) while to like the ribbon, but I have to say that I find it a large improvement in usability, and it makes it vastly more likely that I will accept "other than the basic/defaults".

It actively encourages exploration. That's good for some use cases, and it's certainly good for Microsoft.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#163

Post by rwallace »

seldo wrote: post #96
furyofantares wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think the possibilities are that either google ignored the data or the data is wrong with no affordance to the possibility that you are wrong?

When something is as viscerally, obviously bad to me as the new GMail UI, I go with my gut. Google has no track record of great UI that would make me question that feeling. They built the world's simplest home page not because of some profound respect for minimalism; they just didn't have anything else to put on it.

Well, these things are matters of opinion. Personally I'm happy with the new user interface. I find it works fine. (I did switch the buttons from icons back to text - credit to them for providing that option.)

As for the world's simplest homepage, that was the reason I switched from AltaVista to Google in the first place. I only started noticing the better search results after I switched to avoid the clutter.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#164

Post by jsnell »

coob wrote: post #147
option_greek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you faced any problem with the toolbar buttons ? they are all lumps of coal with minor variations!

Are you serious? I see 5 symbols up there. First is a box, for selecting mail. Next to it is an arrowed circle for refresh. No Problem yet. After that it's 'More', which is text. No problem telling the difference there. The others are eon the right hand side, clear chevrons next to numbers telling me where I am in the list. The last is a distinct settings cog. Am I missing something?

You need to open a message. There will be a icon showing something toaster-like with a down-arrow in it, a roughly octagonal surrounding an exlamation mark, a trash can, a pull-down button with a folder, and a pull-down button with a label.

Two of those icons make no sense at all (the toaster with down arrow for archive, and the octagon for spam). One makes no sense in the context of Gmail. It turns out that it is actually for manipulating tags just like the adjacent pull-down menu.

The trash can is pretty good though.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#165

Post by fr0sty »

pinaceae wrote: post #161
mattmanser wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're begging the question. If we take what you say is true every redesign is good, which is patently false. A perfect example is the Office Ribbon UI, an unmitigated disaster. Also putting Vista in your list there, mmmmmm. Wasn't exactly a great redesign was it. The Google redesign is also pretty much a disaster.

the ribbon is the best thing MS has done in a long time. a ballsy move, but absolutely needed to have a UI that is able to guide users through the very complex functionalities of excel, etc. use ms office daily, love the ribbon.

I use excel every week or so and I grumble at that stupid ribbon every time.

I _was_ a proficient excel user once upon a time but now I feel like I'm trying to cook in my kitchen after some "organization expert" came in and moved all my stuff.

IMO, life is too short to have to re-learn stuff you already know.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#166

Post by kamjam »

ajross wrote: post #43
jdietrich wrote: post #19

It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing. I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width. Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster. U…

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

I actually find the redesign quite nice. I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it when I first switched to it, I "temporarily reverted back" which helped me "map" the old functionality to the new. Stuff the blogger is ranting about are all easily "fixed" back to the old look and style, but he hasn't gone to the trouble of looking. In fact, the 2nd comment on site tells you how. The demarkation thing, I haven't used the default theme ever since additional ones were available, I see his point but just adding a background solves that. There is also new functionality for display density, i used the one which reverted to the old look.

But at least they have provided the functionality to go back to an old style look (albeit i had to dig around a bit and the average user may struggle, GMail settings are not the most user friendly IMO). I very rarely use it, but I still struggle with the ribbon style menu in MS Office, and that's been around for years!

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#167

Post by soofaloofa »

mattmanser wrote: post #150
ajross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

You're begging the question. If we take what you say is true every redesign is good, which is patently false. A perfect example is the Office Ribbon UI, an unmitigated disaster. Also putting Vista in your list there, mmmmmm. Wasn't exactly a great redesign was it. The Google redesign is also pretty much a disaster.

The Ribbon UI is one of the best improvements to Office in years.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#168

Post by pasbesoin »

fr0sty wrote: post #165
pinaceae wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ribbon is the best thing MS has done in a long time. a ballsy move, but absolutely needed to have a UI that is able to guide users through the very complex functionalities of excel, etc. use ms office daily, love the ribbon.

I use excel every week or so and I grumble at that stupid ribbon every time. I _was_ a proficient excel user once upon a time but now I feel like I'm trying to cook in my kitchen after some "organization expert" came in and moved all my stuff. IMO, life is too short to have to re-learn stuff you already know.

Same boat. I was a very proficient Excel user. The ribbon completely fucked my workflow. In addition, they broke just enough of the shortcut keys to break my flow.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#170

Post by Drbble »

forgotusername wrote: post #159
ajross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet and rehash the same flame war every time. The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome…

> People spend many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing I've had some thoughts on this recently, and wholeheartedly disagree. We spend aeons engineering stability into every other interface within a software ecosystem, since it's supposed to improve stability, reduce surprising breakage, improve engineer efficiency, discoverability,…

Gmail gave people months to use the two interfaces side by side before dropping the old interface. And they flooded users with notifications of every incremental change, and were roundly mocked for that too. It is impossible to satisfy everyone all the time.
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