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Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

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Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#221

Post by coldtea »

cromwellian wrote: post #174
studentrob wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always a single search box. And it always centered around results. Removing the side panel makes it so I now can't use a browser text search to find the results I want faster. So, I disagree, and I think the old way was both easier (because I knew it) AND simpler (less complex). What now? And here is the difference between Google employees and their users. Google believes, and has told their employees, that wh…

I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal. Practically every Facebook redesign got pissed on. Apple famously got ripped for Final Cut Pro X, for many of the same reasons people are ripping the new Maps (bunch of power user features removed) I personally prefer the map to show the results. They are spotlighted and e…

>I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal.

Sure, because what else are the users supposed to do? Return to MapQuest?

Meanwhile their hatred increases...

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#222

Post by coldtea »

cromwellian wrote: post #187
enraged_camel wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal. Practically every Facebook redesign got pissed on. You might be getting confused. There's a difference between the new design becoming the "new normal," and the new design being tolerated because there aren't any real alternatives to the product. After all, the only reas…

No, obviously the stickiness is less based on network effects and more on brand perception. But a brand can also die from staleness. A new generation of users are coming online whose experience is predominately a mobile one, and on touch, sparse, touchable, explorable interfaces are the norm. If Google simply kept maps the way it has been for a decade, sooner or later, they'd find themselves criticized because it doe…

>A new generation of users are coming online whose experience is predominately a mobile one, and on touch, sparse, touchable, explorable interfaces are the norm. If Google simply kept maps the way it has been for a decade, sooner or later, they'd find themselves criticized because it doesn't work like "Apple Maps".

Or, you know, they could have changed them into something better, either incrementally or in one step, instead of the new broken design.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#223

Post by GVIrish »

dasil003 wrote: post #67
enochroot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chuckled when I read: > First, the small window by default encourages short emails which is always good. "Sorry mom, I intended to write you a longer message but gmail encourages me to keep it short." > Putting them behind one extra click is really not the huge usability nightmare people make out. Folks at Microsoft are nodding their heads and furiously tweeting this sentence.

Nice pith, but how about adding some meat to that rebuttal. > "Sorry mom, I intended to write you a longer message but gmail encourages me to keep it short." The topic at hand is power emailing. Not people who write a message to their family once a week as the majority of their email. > Folks at Microsoft are nodding their heads and furiously tweeting this sentence. I don't even know where you get this. Having a mini…

What exactly does "power emailing" mean to you? Is it the ability to send a lot of short emails quickly? Is it the ability to email while seeing emails come in?

From my perspective the new compose modal window removes power from the user. Instead of having all of the formatting tools and options open and ready to go, you've got to expand the window the see them. You've got less screen real estate to work with and even on the reply window you have to click on the formatting icon to get the formatting tools even though there is plenty of room to just show the tools in the first place.

Making users click more to complete a task is not bad if there is a good reason to do so. Forcing users to click more because you hid important functionality to save room that is not used for something else doesn't make sense. You've added load to the task for virtually no gain.

I guess if short, rapid fire emails are the primary mode of usage for a user the new compose UI works great. I'd imagine the vast majority of gmail users do not send a high volume of emails per day, and the old compose UI worked fine while surfacing all of the functionality they needed.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#224

Post by lingben »

goblin89 wrote: post #184
lingben wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it personal to mention the individual who is responsible for the change?

Three of four comments you left in this thread call Jason's name and attempt to discredit him, with little substantial criticism addressing Gmail UI.

You are wrong. Jason's work discredits him rather well without any need for me or anyone to resort to personal insults.

As for substantial criticism of gmail's new UX, why rehash what has been already discussed over and over again here and everywhere? just google for 50+ well thought out blog posts and comments to those blog posts and google forum discussions.

I'm sorry if you are a googler and feel the need 'to circle the wagons' out of misplaced loyalty. Or if you fail to see that it is pertinent to mention the person responsible for the changes out of a perverse sense of 'white knighting'.

Now please downvote this to prove how intelligent you are.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#225

Post by WayneDB »

randallu wrote: post #62
WayneDB wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps and me are constantly at odds because I run all sorts of privacy extensions, I disabled Local Storage (via folder permissions) and I don't let cookies persist. So, I just stopped using web apps wherever possible in favor of native ones. It pisses me off too because the web (and the Internet) could be so much better than this. Anyway, for the longest time - even with a bare browser (no extensions) - YouTube w…

Aren't you more uniquely identifiable on a native app, though?

Most of the native apps that I use don't serve ads and they don't pull in third-party resources from the web.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#226

Post by GVIrish »

curiousdannii wrote: post #194
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #128

"recently"? October 2012 this started rolling out....geezus.

And I opted out. I believe that it was only recently enforced on everyone.

I'd be curious to see what the opt-out rate on the new compose UI was. I like to adopt new UI improvements but that was one of the few that I immediately hated and switched back. I wonder if this feature was liked more or less than some of Google's other UI changes.

I get the feeling that Google is ignoring user feedback for some of these types of thing so they can push users towards their corporate goals. Youtube badgering people to switch to their Google+ username is a good example. Clearly a lot of people don't want to do that, yet they persist.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#227

Post by atacrawl »

pg wrote: post #93
ihnorton wrote: post #27

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am activel…

There's a reason for this pattern. When I complained to a friend at Google about the new GMail compose, he said that what was driving it was that Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters. The various Google products may have been inconsistent, but each of their designs was the product of long evolution. Steve Jobs could probably have…

Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters.

Of all the mantras from 37signals over the years, the one that I agree with and adhere to most is "context over consistency" for exactly this reason.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#228

Post by aestra »

ihnorton wrote: post #27

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am activel…

>- maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting.

I can't for the life of me figure out how to show street view on android's google maps. I know it used to exist, but did they really take it out?

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#229

Post by levosmetalo »

dasil003 wrote: post #29

The self-righteous anger about the irredeemable horror of the new Gmail compose is starting to get a bit old. First of all, it's not as one-sided as people are making it out. I was also annoyed when it first came out, but there are some clear benefits. Being able to browse email in the background while composing email is a huge win for my email workload (CTO for a 30-person company). There are some important philosop…

If email has to be short in your company, then why don't you just use twitter. Those 140 character limit should clearly help you and your employees to express better.

In the meantime, please leave alone people that use email to actually write something and go back to twitter and the likes.

Re: Anxiety over the new Gmail Compose

#230

Post by aestra »

siddboots wrote: post #112
ihnorton wrote: post #27

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago. Two examples: - maps: new interface is so terrible that I am activel…

Youtube: * Buffering was nerfed/broken some time ago. I can no longer watch 720p+ videos on youtube at all. * Changing video quality now has a long and unavoidable delay, and often fails outright. * Google are evidently uneasy about the profile name that I signed up with, and have been repeatedly nudging me to change it. I don't know how to reassure them about my choice. * Advertising. Everywhere.

I hate that Google "created" a youtube account for me, just because I use Gmail doesn't mean I want a youtube account (I don't). One day I forget to sign out of Gmail, I browse to Youtube, and bam, now I have a Youtube account, I'm signed in, and my video history is tracked, and I have to manually turn that off. I didn't ask for that.
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