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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

#91

Post by egsmi »

remus wrote: post #84
egsmi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback... but it is often difficult to justify the benefits of an improved UX versus the productivity hit to all of the existing users. What you wrote is not wrong. But if Microsoft can change the office UX then Google can do it too.

There's still threads on hacker news today bemoaning the ribbon UI and harking back to the good old days of drop down menus, and how great it was to be a power user back then. If you're after an example of a UI change with minimal blowback then I think this is a poor example!

I didn't say anything about minimizing blow back. I agreed that there will be blow back. But life moves on.

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

#92

Post by Minor49er »

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…

Not only is Drive's search poor, but Google's own search results have been getting notably worse. Somewhat recently, they rolled out a change where some keywords in your query will be left out to generate results for something unrelated. I've been having to wrap everything in quotes, add plus signs, and/or click on the "no, what I submitted really was what I wanted to search for, thanks" links on the results pages. I really hate to say it, but half of my searches are done on Bing now where I don't notice this kind of behavior taking place.

Also, if you want to talk about bad UX on Google products, I could write a book on frustrations I have with using Maps.

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

#93

Post by hyperdimension »

KirinDave wrote: post #75
ewmiller wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

#94

Post by artvark11 »

KirinDave wrote: post #75
ewmiller wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

This website, like all other online communities, exists in a bubble and is very far from reality.

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

#95

Post by Spivak »

inglor_cz wrote: post #40
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." This is modern office equivalent of nuking the opponent in war.

I like how someone at work says "hey this isn't the normal level of professional criticism and feedback you get from coworkers -- the level of anger I receive makes me genuinely fear for my safety." and the response is to assume that it's an overreaction. If someone is saying this they're taking a huge risk because it if people don't take them seriously it's over for them.

Like we've all been on the internet in tech forums right? Some guy on Github literally threatened to kill me if I didn't implement some feature he wanted. This shit is rampant and it spills over to companies populated by the kind of people who hang out on tech forums. Like our community isn't that big -- that hackerdude70 who threatened to rape you on your issue tracker because because you dropped sysv support is someone's coworker.

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

#96

Post by 0x53 »

jeffbee wrote: post #74

The criticism of the Gmail desktop web interface seems insubstantial. There's a screenshot with some boxes drawn over it, but what's actually wrong with it? Ask yourself also whether the desktop web interface of gmail is the most important one, or if its audience has been surpassed by that of the Android or iOS apps.

I think the point of the screenshot was to highlight that there are a lot of buttons, but no labels or any way to know what they do.

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

#97

Post by IggleSniggle »

KirinDave wrote: post #75
ewmiller wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

#98

Post by egsmi »

bigtones wrote: post #79
egsmi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback... but it is often difficult to justify the benefits of an improved UX versus the productivity hit to all of the existing users. What you wrote is not wrong. But if Microsoft can change the office UX then Google can do it too.

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.

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

#99

Post by jeffbee »

bkandel wrote: post #6

I usually think these "Google is the worst" posts are over the top, but I genuinely find Gmail's mobile interface bewildering. There are two three-dot/ellipsis icons when you read an email and after using mobile Gmail for years I have no idea which actions are in which. "Move to Inbox": upper icon. "Add star": lower icon. "Mark important": upper icon. "Mark unread": lower icon. I'm sure there's some explanation or at…

That's just a reflection of the data model, which is internally consistent but probably doesn't exist in the minds of all users.

The reason "move to [label]" is at the top of the screen is because that action affects the whole thread, not one message in the thread.

Star is attached to a message or a thread, so that should be in both menus, but in practice the mobile (iOS) app only lets you star a thread from the threadlist, while desktop web lets you star a thread while reading it. This is inconsistent.

Important is again in the thread's menu because it's an attribute of threads, not messages.

Read-ness is again an aspect of messages, not threads.

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

#100

Post by asciident »

sofixa wrote: post #81
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…

> 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. Because it's a waste of very expensive time to develop…

Electron is a nice option these days. Slack and VS Code are first-in-class applications, and while there's a slight performance hit compared to native, it's still a better experience than web (otherwise, people would have stuck with slack.com)
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