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Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX

danielmiessler.com

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

#301

Post by robertlagrant »

mikelanza wrote: post #271
robertlagrant wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So did Engineering change all the icons to look almost identical?

No, poor product management from neglected product managers did that. You might not be very excited to design icons as your primary job, either, if you thought your job was to manage the entire product.

Do we know that's the case, that a product manager did this? Seems odd if they all accidentally designed very similar icons across the products. More likely this was a sweeping design centralisation change.

And do we know they were misled about their roles? You might think "manage" means "lead", but it doesn't.

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

#302

Post by robertlagrant »

mosfets wrote: post #218
robertlagrant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Course you can. Just have an opt-in new UI. Confluence has done that really well, for example. CircleCI have been doing it. Sometimes I'd love to work at Google to really understand how it works. I'm sure change is hard, but I can't understand why from the outside.

Once you have worked with a product doing these kind of things, you'll understand you'll need to double or even triple the efforts to be able to support two branches of the same feature. Of course this doesn't apply to simple applications.

Yes, I know.

If you're implying Google can't afford it but CircleCI can, then while I understand your logic, I disagree with your understanding of reality.

If you're not, then I disagree with your understanding of logic.

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

#303

Post by robertlagrant »

bigtones wrote: post #241
robertlagrant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Course you can. Just have an opt-in new UI. Confluence has done that really well, for example. CircleCI have been doing it. Sometimes I'd love to work at Google to really understand how it works. I'm sure change is hard, but I can't understand why from the outside.

That Atlassian Confluence model you gave had some serious issues, they they are going to turn off the option to keep the old UI as well, and it is an enormous strain on Engineering resources to keep two different versions of an entire application UI up to date. One company that had done this a bit better was Salesforce with the old UI / Lightening UI switch.

Yeah but it's necessary. The old UI would cause people to leave; the new one is actually really good.

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

#304

Post by robertlagrant »

oblio wrote: post #220
robertlagrant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Course you can. Just have an opt-in new UI. Confluence has done that really well, for example. CircleCI have been doing it. Sometimes I'd love to work at Google to really understand how it works. I'm sure change is hard, but I can't understand why from the outside.

Confluence removed quite a few features from the new UI. I don't know Circle CI but they probably have 2 orders of magnitude fewer users. Also in my experience with CI tools, few users actually manage them for many people and those people are either experienced or quickly become experienced with the UIs. They are usually not the average user getting confused by UI changes.

> Also in my experience with CI tools, few users actually manage them for many people and those people are either experienced or quickly become experienced with the UIs. They are usually not the average user getting confused by UI changes.

Well regardless, they still pulled off the harder technique.

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

#305

Post by loftyal »

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…

Why can't they support multiple interfaces? Allow people to switch to one if they like

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

#306

Post by wccrawford »

eulers_secret wrote: post #213
wccrawford wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This makes them feel unsafe at work." It means they worry about losing their job when they're criticized. Like most things, it was supposed to mean actual physical danger, or at least real mental danger, but now it just means anything that threatens them in some way. It's ironic, because that feedback could help make them better at their jobs and keep them from being fired. Instead, they force a situation where thei…

I wonder if this is an American phenomena and might be different in a place with a stronger social safety net? Frankly, losing your job IS an actual physical danger and a real mental danger. No income, no insurance, have to play the interview game again... Time running out, savings getting gutted (too bad COBRA costs are so high). If you can't find work, well homelessness is a very real possibility (there goes years…

There are different ways to fight for you job.

One way is to reject all criticism and attack anyone who dares to try, hopefully preventing future criticism so that maybe, just maybe, your boss won't notice your incompetence.

Another is to accept the criticism, get better, and then not have to worry about your job because you do it well.

If someone isn't capable of actually doing their job, they can't really pick the second choice. In that case, it's in everyone else's best interest to expose the situation and stabilize the company, saving their own jobs.

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

#307

Post by inetknght »

oblio wrote: post #219
inetknght wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback. Sure you can. Empower your users instead of taking features away. Make it modular with the default modules being the old interface. Make reporting spam actually useful instead of feeling like it gets ignored. Make it easier to manage a list of _thousands_ of filters. Provide better IMAP integration instead of…

> Serious blowback happens when you break something for some segment of your users. You don't have to break things to provide new features. Do you work in software development? 1. With that many users, you are going to break something for someone. Probably for tens of millions of someones, at the minimum. 2. At some point you will have to break something. Some of the new stuff will be incompatible with the old stuff.…

> Do you work in software development?

I've written software for over 20 years. C++ mostly, a lot of Python, some Xojo.

> With that many users, you are going to break something for someone. Probably for tens of millions of someones, at the minimum.

Maybe. I don't think it's a given though.

> At some point you will have to break something. Some of the new stuff will be incompatible with the old stuff. No one has a crystal ball.

Why? At no point does making something modular have to break something. Usually when something breaks during modularization it's because it was already broken and modularization simply made it need to get fixed.

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

#308

Post by KirinDave »

mpalmer wrote: post #292
KirinDave wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're not talking about 3rd party opinions here, we're talking about colleagues at the same institution being aggressive and destructive with professional designers.

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

#309

Post by KirinDave »

hyperdimension wrote: post #300
KirinDave wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Really, so this quote by ewmiller that I responded to:

> I wonder how long my employment would last if I just stopped doing a good job and then said that as a response to any effort by my manager or teammates to criticize my output.

was not a direct attack on the notion that professional conduct should include some degree of psychological safety?

Or perhaps this post [0] that says:

> In regular companies, employees who are bad at their jobs shouldn't feel safe, as they are likely to be fired.

I'm a Google SRE. I'm not actually a big fan of the Gmail interface either (and it'd be better if they actually followed material design, imo).

But this spirit is fundamentally opposed to people in corporate environments doing good work. Blameless portmortems exist for a reason. Because otherwise, every systemic or personal failure devolves into a scapegoating competition designed to find and remove the most vulnerable member of the team. My criticism is directed specifically at folks suggesting that internally peers at my workplace should harass designers.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25422855

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

#310

Post by catwind7 »

cjblomqvist wrote: post #209
catwind7 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great answer - and this doesn't just affect products with hundreds of millions of users. It's a classic case of Innovators Dilemma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma ).

If you've read the research properly behind the Innovators Dilemma - I'd argue it's not such a case. CCs theory on disruption might be the most misused and overhyped stuff I've ever come to research. (did my MSc thesis on it, with support from a professor whose main research area was disruption...) - unless there are underlying new technological paradigm shifts underpinning those UX changes, but I doubt that. This is…

I see - just curious, in what way is it mostly misused and can you be specific about how I've misuse it? I'm still not convinced I've misused it but would like to know so I don't do it again
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