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GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

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Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#51

Post by anthonyb »

All of the things that he's complaining about are changeable in settings. And not even buried three levels deep -- they're right on the first settings page!

1. Pick a different theme. I have one with a blue background, not the default light/white one.

2. Go into the general settings, and change your star to a different colour, ie. enable the red, or blue one, or the green checkbox. Now they stand out.

3. Go into the general settings. Change the 'Button Labels' radio from 'Icons' to 'Text'.

If you're going to bag someone's interface, you should at least spend some time figuring out how you can change it...

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#52

Post by DavidAbrams »

aresant wrote: post #20

I overwhelmingly agree as a UX guy w/the comments in this thread about the poor choices from a design perspective. But since this new design rolled into beta I've found myself slowly depending on Gmail more and more vs. my desktop client. I don't know why but the "lack" of proper interface design here makes it feel blazing FAST to me, which is really the #1 thing I care about when trying to keep up with a slew of ema…

Nope. The asinine hiding of most of your mail folders makes it way slower to navigate. And there's no indication that they exist. No control with which to reveal them.

This regression in UI standards that evolved and stayed in place for decades reveals that there aren't enough decent designers to do the required work today. And they don't have even a moderate level of experience or common sense, or they wouldn't make such glaring errors.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#53

Post by nchlswu »

jdietrich wrote: post #19

It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing. I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width. Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster. U…

When Brin took the lead, the design culture inside Google changed.

My facts may be slightly off, but Brin essentially gave a lot more freedom to designers. As part of the Google redesign (or +ifying), Brin gave all the design responsibilities to the same division that's been producing some Google's commercials. This is undoubtedly a division that appreciates design more, but arguably doesn't appreciate the data as much.

After this, we all saw the obvious redesigns across Google's products. With such a drastic redesign, I am doubtful they did any large scale a/b testing that they typically do (for individual features or otherwise).

Its pretty evident something changed, and I personally have no doubt it's due to changes in the way Google goes about design. They've swung from one end of the spectrum (data obsessed) to another side that's too focused on 'artsy' design.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#54

Post by paul »

Well at least there's a giant red COMPOSE button, because every time I see a giant red button, I think COMPOSE!

I'm hoping that they'll do another revision soon to make it look more like the recently updated G+ design, which actually puts some visual separation between content and navigation (and also doesn't have giant red buttons).

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#55

Post by DavidAbrams »

jrockway wrote: post #39

I really do buy the "change aversion" theory. I never used Gmail before the current design, and now I use it every day without problems. I click an email and I can read it. Importance and starring work as expected. And, the interface is very smart about not moving things out from under me when I make a change, much like Chrome's tab bar. Except for the slowness, I think this UI is a fine way to handle email.

Well, I thought the old design sucked, so I welcomed change.

Guess what? The new design sucks far more.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#56

Post by jcc80 »

macspoofing wrote: post #9

I agree with #3. I have a lot of problems deciphering the icons, in the browser client and the ipad client.

You could also use Gmelius to use icons and text plus lots of other options like removing ads. I'm enjoying so far.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dheionainndbbpoacp...

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#57

Post by pedrogrande »

luser001 wrote: post #44
wmeredith wrote: post #23

Does anyone else find it humorous that OP's site is ugly and hard to read? it doesn't diminish he's point (I could take or leave the new Gmail) but maybe his credibility.

What did you find hard to read about the site? I was able to read it just fine. (just double-checked). Nice big text with high, but not too high, contrast. What's not to like?

I'm sorry but the text is tiny! It looks no bigger than 8px. Are you reading it on a mobile device perhaps?

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#58

Post by furyofantares »

mortenjorck wrote: post #26
jdietrich wrote: post #19

It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing. I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width. Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant that their redesigns are a usability disaster. U…

You're probably thinking of Doug Bowman's classic "Goodbye Google" post: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html I think two things are entirely possible here: One, that in reaction to Bowman's high-profile indictment of Google's design culture, there has been a shift over the past few years toward Apple-like, auteur-driven design at Google, that was misapplied in this case, or (I think more like…

So you think the possibilities are that either google ignored the data or the data is wrong with no affordance to the possibility that you are wrong?

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#59

Post by nchlswu »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #52
aresant wrote: post #20

I overwhelmingly agree as a UX guy w/the comments in this thread about the poor choices from a design perspective. But since this new design rolled into beta I've found myself slowly depending on Gmail more and more vs. my desktop client. I don't know why but the "lack" of proper interface design here makes it feel blazing FAST to me, which is really the #1 thing I care about when trying to keep up with a slew of ema…

Nope. The asinine hiding of most of your mail folders makes it way slower to navigate. And there's no indication that they exist. No control with which to reveal them. This regression in UI standards that evolved and stayed in place for decades reveals that there aren't enough decent designers to do the required work today. And they don't have even a moderate level of experience or common sense, or they wouldn't make…

I hobble through that feature so often. You'd think a team that dogfoods this stuff would want to fix it.

That being said, I know the feeling the parent is talking about, but I never got that feeling with Gmail. It was something that worked and that's what I appreciated about it.

Re: GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism

#60

Post by anthonyb »

DavidAbrams wrote: post #52
aresant wrote: post #20

I overwhelmingly agree as a UX guy w/the comments in this thread about the poor choices from a design perspective. But since this new design rolled into beta I've found myself slowly depending on Gmail more and more vs. my desktop client. I don't know why but the "lack" of proper interface design here makes it feel blazing FAST to me, which is really the #1 thing I care about when trying to keep up with a slew of ema…

Nope. The asinine hiding of most of your mail folders makes it way slower to navigate. And there's no indication that they exist. No control with which to reveal them. This regression in UI standards that evolved and stayed in place for decades reveals that there aren't enough decent designers to do the required work today. And they don't have even a moderate level of experience or common sense, or they wouldn't make…

Click on the little arrow next to your folder/label. Under the 'In label list:' part, select 'Show'. Now your folders appear all the time. Also, you can click the "More" at the bottom to expand it.

Why is that so hard?

EDIT: No really - why is it so hard? Better than 90% of the complaining on this page could be solved just by spending a few minutes going through settings, tweaking GMail to your liking. There's even a settings page where you can see all of your labels in one place, and set each folder to show/hide/show if unread. It's specifically designed for the parent's use case, and yet he pretends that it doesn't exist.

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