Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#251

Post by mattkevan » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

danudey wrote: post #238

mrweasel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major mistake Google also makes is assuming that everything is web, it's not. Google have world class engineers, they have the ability to develop infrastructure that scales globally, yet they apparently can't write desktop application. A few days ago I tried to install Google Chat, for work. There's no download buttons to be found, you're just logged into Chat directly and is greeted by a "You need Chrome to down…

In fairness, the "Can't write desktop applications" issue doesn't seem to be restricted to Google. The Microsoft Teams app for iOS is fine, nothing special but it works. The Microsoft Teams app for Microsoft Windows is just complete and utter garbage. It's laggy, it's missing features that the mobile clients have, and it's just kind of a mess all around. In case anyone was wondering why Apple is going with the "iOS/i…

Oh Teams on the Mac is a tyre-fire too, don’t worry.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#252

Post by vram22 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

That (bad UI/UX, though I would not call all parts of it bad or horrible) has been the case for quite a while, IMO. And yes, it includes UX.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#253

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

mpalmer wrote: post #111

KirinDave wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me that something as innocuous as, "Professional conduct includes at least an attempt at constructive criticism as opposed to venting" is now a heretical concept on this website.

Criticism: unacceptable unless totally devoid of emotion Responding to criticism: bring your whole emotional self! guard your mental "safety" with your life!

The notion of being passionate without being derisive just isn't an option, I guess?

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#254

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #101

KirinDave wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me that something as innocuous as, "Professional conduct includes at least an attempt at constructive criticism as opposed to venting" is now a heretical concept on this website.

No one mentioned heresy. No one mentioned venting. No one mentioned constructive criticism. Other than that, good job.

And yet that's almost certainly what people were describing by mocking the notion of psychological safety in the workplace.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#255

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #97

KirinDave wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me that something as innocuous as, "Professional conduct includes at least an attempt at constructive criticism as opposed to venting" is now a heretical concept on this website.

I really don’t think that’s the situation being described here.

Obviously I do, and I note several replies here that strongly suggest that's how other people took it as well.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#256

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

hyperdimension wrote: post #93

KirinDave wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me that something as innocuous as, "Professional conduct includes at least an attempt at constructive criticism as opposed to venting" is now a heretical concept on this website.

Doesn't sound like 'venting' to me. Eye strain and inscrutable UI elements sound like concrete complaints. Whether they were phrased diplomatically, I'm not sure, and I'd concede it might be construed as venting depending on the delivery. That being said, assuming it was brought up constructively, I see nothing wrong with the criticism except for the specific designers' refusal to consider it.

It would be great if it was brought up constructively. However, this thread appears to be about mocking the concept of psychological safety in the workplace.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#257

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #157

deckard1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was a revelation of what a web mail client could be you and I have a different recollection of what Gmail was at the time. Their sole differentiator was unlimited storage. Oh, and they were Google. Google has relied on their reputation in search to carry most of their products since the early 2000s, right up until Google Plus when things started to fall apart for them and people started to realize that Google is…

> you and I have a different recollection of what Gmail was at the time. Their sole differentiator was unlimited storage. Oh, and they were Google. It also introduced, and led to the broad adoption of, a few really nice features: truly effective spam filtering, conversation threading that actually works, and tags instead of folders (e.g. a message can have more than one tag, but it can only be in one folder). At the…

It also introduced, and led to the broad adoption of, a few really nice features: truly effective spam filtering

Google Mail's spam filtering is many things, but I don't see why it's been particularly effective. Adaptive spam filtering was already being done before GMail came along, and unlike GMail's approach, the filters in other popular email clients didn't lurch so far towards avoiding false negatives that they all but broke normal email by having so many false positives.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#258

Post by nefitty » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

egsmi wrote: post #98

bigtones wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft faced significant blowback for that ribbon change, and billions of dollars were spend on re-training hundreds of millions of office workers to do it. Because that change was in desktop software - users had the option of just sticking with the old version (which millions of users did) but you can't really do that with web applications.

Why can't one stick with the old UI with a web application? That's an implementation choice Google makes.

Doesn’t that double the support surface? Bugs are still going to pop-up in the old interface, and so do you still tackle those or move engineer focus to the new interface? It seems weird to continue spending engineer time on an interface that is being phased out.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#259

Post by lern_too_spel » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

mdwelsh wrote: post #14

I used to work at Google, as an engineering director on the Chrome Mobile team. While I agree that the UX of many Google products needs fixing, it's not just a simple matter of "Google, you are made out of money. Fix your fucking interfaces." The article misses a really important point that you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback. Startups like Notion…

Maybe that was the case in mobile Chrome, which isn't that bad. Many other products have had bewildering UI changes just for the sake of UI changes or have even been completely replaced by other products that look entirely different. Look at the communications products from Google or the music products for recent examples.

Worse, all of these products share a cpetent-looking feedback system that is completely ignored. Recently, I've seen humans responding to poor reviews in the Play Store asking for the feedback to be submitted via the in-product feedback, but everybody knows that's a black hole. If anybody actually looked at the feedback submitted that way, Google would allocate an engineer to combining feedback from the Play Store into that system instead of responding on the Play Store with pretend interest.

Re: Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

#260

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

me551ah wrote: post #36

mdwelsh wrote: post #14

I used to work at Google, as an engineering director on the Chrome Mobile team. While I agree that the UX of many Google products needs fixing, it's not just a simple matter of "Google, you are made out of money. Fix your fucking interfaces." The article misses a really important point that you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback. Startups like Notion…

Facebook is exactly in the same boat , but they have redesigned the user interface multiple times over the years. Even after so many years, Facebook still feels current.

Google has also redesigned their UIs several times over the same period of time.

I think a lot of big-product UI complaints come down to: different people want different things.

The more popular a product is, the more people the company has to satisfy. It’s just simple math that as a product grows, so does the chance that some vocal people will disagree with how it evolves.

I can’t think of a mass-market software product with a UI that everyone loves. You can find UI complaints about any of them—including Facebook and Google.