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

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

#291

Post by istillwritecode » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 3:46 AM UTC

Lutzb wrote: post #20

mattkevan wrote: post #5

Besides the terrible UX I’d say Google is getting left behind due to the virtually zero improvement in its apps over the last decade. Started using Google Drive for work in around 2011 and stopped last year when I moved to a Microsoft-based company. In that time it didn’t seem like there were any major improvements in functionality to the core Drive, Docs and Sheets (and poor, forgotten Draw) apps. In fact most chang…

When Google Mail was invite only, it was a revelation of what a web mail client could be. Fast, forward thinking in the way mails were presented. Then it became a monstrosity that I can no longer recommend to anyone. Suddenly Google Inbox came along. Fast, simple, focused packed with useful new features like mail grouping and content extraction. And it was killed off after roughly two years without any of the feature…

I was a Google employee from 2005 to 2018. I HATED inbox, and I certainly wasn't alone. It divided users into two pieces, and the real issue was Google tried to force it on users rather than make it an option.

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

#292

Post by mpalmer » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 4:15 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #253

mpalmer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Derision makes an unmistakable point. Is nothing worthy of derision? I say nothing rather than no one, because to deride a product's failings is not the same as belittling a person.

Let me add that Google has outsize power and influence, and the idea that we need to be nice to the corporate juggernaut is completely ridiculous.

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

#293

Post by kyriakos » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #9

The new version of Gmail is still horrible. Every day, I'll do things too fast, and it will pop alerts because some ajax request or promise hasn't resolved completely. I expected that things would get better eventually, but that has not been the case.

Still don't understand why they killed the much superior inbox product

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

#294

Post by random5634 » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

tjlav5 wrote: post #113

random5634 wrote: post #13

The UI is fine. Seriously folks - get a grip. That said, there is no question that things rot at google. One thing other companies do but google does not - listen to customers just a bit. My favorite is of course, google home can't get gsuite calendars, but I can setup alexa to get them fine (so whatever technical / secuirty argument there might be doesn't really hold). This has been a top request for years? I wouldn…

This just popped up in android-police last week: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/12/07/google-assistant-ca...

The issue is that the biggest evangelists and the CEO's and CFO's and CTO's with paid google accounts (which at that level you want so you can have some confidence in service) can't get their calendars on their home devices. So it's not an issue of multiple accounts, but paid accounts not working.

After 8 years of folks asking for this we got https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googleassistantforgsuit...

How in the world is this so hard? I look forward to checking out the link, it needs to be more than multiple accounts, it needs to support PAID workspaces accounts.

I've just been around this again though with google family accounts, I couldn't accept the invite. And it hits you everywhere.

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

#295

Post by thatfunkymunki » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 6:10 AM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #105

anonygler wrote: post #17

As a former Googler, Google has been utterly hostile to self critcism on this front. Responses to any criticism of Google's UI falls in the following buckets: - Well I think it looks great. - Stay in your lane, how dare you criticize our designers. This makes them feel unsafe at work. (Whatever the fuck that means) - We did a user study and they liked it, so it must be good. Fundamentally, Googlers are afraid to make…

> Engineers are also sandbagged with "we need more data" until a risk-taking idea gets snuffed out of existence. Not at Google, but what I saw was worse than that. It was "we need more data" over and over and, on each round , I could watch other people's riskier changes just fly by without a shred of evidence that they even did what they were claimed to (let alone that they were beneficial). "Need more data" is not a…

Uggghh, this is a pet peeve of mine. Particularly when dealing with people that are not domain experts. Like why do I even exist, if not to provide a good data point for what the product you're developing for me should look like?

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

#296

Post by fakedang » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 6:41 AM UTC

harha wrote: post #153

fakedang wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't explain the poor UX for its existing / inbuilt apps such as Google, Gmail, Drive, etc.

You will have to compare them to their contemporaries, for instance moving from Hotmail and GMX to Gmail was great, not only for the free storage but also for it‘s simple UX. Ironically the lack of display advertising and advertorials was one of the greatest features, little did we all know.

> Ironically the lack of display advertising and advertorials was one of the greatest features, little did we all know.

I read somewhere that Marissa Meyer was responsible for that feature.

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

#297

Post by thiht » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 7:23 AM 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…

> look at Inbox, for example

What about it? It was awesome until it was killed for no reason.

Of course it was not widely used, at no point was it promoted as much as it would have deserved.

And even if it's not widely used, so what? It was already perfect. What is so bad about proposing multiple competing UIs for the same service?

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

#298

Post by sigsergv » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 8:17 AM 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…

> but even changing something minor in Gmail or Google Docs impacts orders of magnitude more people, using the product in such a huge number of environments -- phones, tablets, PCs -- in every language and every corner of the world.

Then why google change (not minor) things and make them much worse than before?

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

#299

Post by bloodorange » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 8:50 AM UTC

sg47 wrote: post #288

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…

Actually Google does this all the time. They just simply change the UX and features for products for seemingly no reason. e.g on Android, when I want to save a link to Pocket, I'd use the share button and it'd pop a list of all the apps I could share to. Now that has disappeared and has been replaced with a smaller list of apps(4-5) and the most recently used app to share or the most frequently used (pocket in either…

While you say "for seemingly no reason", somewhere there is a team happy that an A/B experiment has shown the change to move some metrics (which they care about and perhaps aids the team-member(s') goal(s) of being promoted) in the direction they desire. It's a thing of beauty when the metrics align with the interest of the user but this of course is secondary to the profit motive.

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

#300

Post by hyperdimension » Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 9:24 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #256

hyperdimension wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I personally can't really see any evidence of mocking or any psychologically-unsafe ideas in any of the comments in this thread, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. You can criticize a product (design) without disparaging the person who created it, and I hope we all can take constructive criticism without making it personal.

Good UI design shouldn't be strictly for design's sake, so it can be frustrating when something is difficult to use because 'looking good' was prioritized over usability.

There's a quote I've read here that I like and think is appropriate: "Accessibility is for everybody."