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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

#51

Post by dheera »

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…

I feel like there isn't even an option to give feedback to Google.

I was trying to join a Google Meet (or is it Hangouts? or is it Hangouts Meet? Or is it Gmail meet?) event this morning. It somehow dialed out of my Gmail app (WTF?) instead of the Meet app, said it was "joining as" my personal account and I had no option to switch it to my work account, and I wasn't able to look at my e-mail during the meeting because the Gmail app was busy dealing with a call.

I don't even know where to begin about how awful of a UX this has become. I'd give them feedback but there isn't even an obvious option to do that.

Also, I truly hate the new UIs from Google where buttons jump around. The order of "Maps", "Images" tabs in search results jumps around depending on the search and that messes with my muscle memory. Buttons just randomly disappear and appear as you scroll up and down. Names of streets and restaurants randomly disappear in navigation mode. Some buttons get bigger and smaller as you scroll. What was the product manager smoking when they called for this BS? As a user I constantly feel like I can never use my phone, and I have no way to even relay this to them. Did they even care to A/B test this stuff and analyze how many times users were e.g. hitting the back button (or other metrics of user fumbling)?

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

#52

Post by polishdude20 »

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…

What sort of email client would you recommend instead?

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

#54

Post by fakedang »

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.

Tbh I find the current FB UI to be very user hostile. The current layout seems unnatural. Granted, I don't use FB that often nowadays either.

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

#55

Post by mrweasel »

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…

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 download Chat". Well that just weird, but okay, I can uninstall Chrome afterwards, no problem. Imagine my surprise when launching Chat also launched Chrome. I disregard this as being something Chat just do on first launch. Existing Chrome however also closed Chat.... Okay. Uninstall Chrome then, that should teach Chat to no fool around with Chrome. Now Chat doesn't work, because what Google doesn't tell you is that Chat is now a progressive web app. The icon is pretty though.

Chat can be a web app all it want, but it doesn't get to launch Chrome, I don't want that abomination running all day. The current fix is apparently to install via Home Brew, that downloads a stand-alone app. Google claims the new version is stand-alone, but if it was to launch Chrome it's not really stand-alone is it.

What struck me about all this is that Google doesn't actually have the ability to develop real desktop application. That's really weird, why wouldn't they want to have the best performing, most powerful applications possible on the desktops? Because they can't. Google as an organisation doesn't have the mental capacity and patience to do real desktop programs.

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

#56

Post by richardfey »

jariel wrote: post #11

I'm a B.Eng. + Masters and in 2020 I can't for the life of me figure out how to set ringing and notifications on my Android. Sometimes it rings for email, sometimes not, when I go to the screen to turn on/off it's all greyed out. I can have 'up to N' rings per day for certain things which simply doesn't make sense in most situations (missing sms?). WTF is going on? We are facing 'complexity disasters' all around us a…

I used to be a master at this, then UI changed at least 5 times. I slowly lost grip on it, defeated by wear and tear.

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

#57

Post by websterisk »

ogjunkyard wrote: post #26
Lutzb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google Inbox was so good. I was honestly shocked that they got rid of what felt like true innovation in the email space (at the time).

And any hands for Google Reader? I don't think any other tool has had that level of impact on my content consumption, prior or since. It was everything it needed to be and not anything more. RIP.

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

#58

Post by lr1970 »

anonygler wrote: post #22
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…

That's because the last decade of improvements at GSuite aren't for you. They're to satisfy made up requirements by Government and Enterprise IT departments, with the rest of the energy sucked out by European Regulations. Data location and retention policies, privacy, logging, data export, legal, etc etc.

Everything you mentioned has nothing to do with UI/UX.

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

#59

Post by kerng »

polishdude20 wrote: post #52
Lutzb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What sort of email client would you recommend instead?

I cant believe I'm saying this but Outlook.

I used to not like Outlook at work, but when I worked for a startup they used GSuites and the Google mail experience is so bad I honestly couldn't believe that anyone would be using it. Threads are mixed together when multiple people reply its impossible to read content anymore and they do also change the formatting of content which puzzled me the most.

Maybe for people that only ever used Gmail it's okay, because they are used to its weirdness and have never seen a more structured and visually appealing way to read email.

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

#60

Post by ewmiller »

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…

> This makes them feel unsafe at work.

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.

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