It looks like Google has finally pulled the plug on the old GMail UI. There’s no more “revert to the old look temporarily” button, so I guess they’re finally forcing us laggards onto the new theme. I’ve been a mostly happy GMail user since the very early days, but I strongly dislike the new UI.
As far as i can tell, this redesign is just change for the sake of change. I can’t see a single improvement! But I can spot three distinct un-provements *:
- The featureless white void: the old interface had colored borders and variations in background color which served to deliniate navigation from content and provide visual landmarks that helped me find my way around the page. It had visual ‘texture’. The new interface lacks that visual texture. Without borders or landmarks, everything blends together into a featureless sea of white and light grey. It requires more work for me to parse visually, to figure out what I’m looking at or to find the link I want to click.
This is what happens when the cult of “minimalism” goes too far.
- The “importance” marker is now right next to the stars. I find the (algorithmically-applied) importance marker completely useless and would remove it if I could, but I use the stars quite heavily. In the old interface the importance marker was to the right, so I could ignore that column and scan the left column for stars. In the new interface, the two markers — being the same size, color, and location — blend together visually. I can no longer scan for stars; i have to look closely at each line to tell stars apart from importance markers.
- The new icons are inferior to the old text buttons. The text buttons were self-describing. The new icons are not. I’m not usually a fan of toolbar icons; they’re never as self-explanatory as their designers think they are, so they usually need text labels to be decipherable. At that point, why not cut out the middleman and just show the text label instead of the icon?
But these icons are particularly bad. Again with the cult of minimalism: the icons are so streamlined and featureless that they all look the same: a row of meaningless, square, grey objects. When I want to mark something as spam, I used to be able to click the “spam” button. Now I have to mouse over each square grey object one at a time, looking for the one that pops up a “Report Spam” tooltip. (It’s the stop sign. Why a stop sign? I don’t know. Years of using GUIs have trained me to interpret a stop sign as an error message.)
Why were these changes made? I don’t know. According to the Gmail blog, the goals of the redesign included: to put mugshots of people into conversation view, to make the density adjustable, to make themes fancier, to make the left sidebar customizable, and to add an advanced search panel.
Assuming for the moment that these features were actually needed (which I think is arguable), the fact is that any of these features could have been added without making the interface a featureless white void or replacing helpful labels with cryptic icons.
Just today I read this blog post from a Google UX designer about “Change Aversion”, or the supposedly irrational tendency of users to fear change. The underlying attitude here is that users will like the new UI just fine once they try it, but they don’t want to give it a chance because they’re stubborn, like toddlers refusing to try an unfamiliar food.
I’ve certainly encountered this attitude before. Mozilla UX designers like to use the example of tabs-on-top: when we moved the tabs above the navigation bar in Firefox 4, many users balked at the change. But nobody could give a reason why tabs-on-top was worse — they just didn’t like it because it was unfamiliar.
The problem with this attitude is that sometimes the users may just be stubborn, but other times the users are encountering a real serious problem with the design; something they can feel is wrong, but can’t quite articulate precisely. Your users aren’t trained as designers, so they may not be able to argue their case convincingly in the language of design. If you dismiss all negative user feedback as mere stubbornness, you’ll miss important warning signs when you’re about to make a mistake. People have certainly been telling Google that they don’t like the new GMail interface, but it doesn’t seem like Google has been listening.
Change aversion might be a real thing, but designer arrogance is a real thing too.
* – “un-provements”: a word that I just made up because English lacks a word for discrete ways in which something has gotten worse. What would you say here? “three degradations”? “three backslides”? “three worsenings”?
EDITED TO ADD: GMail UX designer Jason Cornwell has helpfully provided an explanation of the reasoning behind the changes.
April 26, 2012 at 10:04 pm
That bit about change aversion at the end basically sums up why I feel like everyone — even non-designers — should read this blog, mentally replacing every word about “design” with whichever field they work in. Politicians, for example.
April 26, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Personally I prefer the new view.
Try the following, you might find it improves it to the point where you also like it:
1) In settings, change ‘button labels’ to ‘text’.
2) In settings, change ‘snippets’ to ‘no indicators’ (hides the importance markers).
3) Try out a few of the newly added extra themes in settings – I find them less bland than the default theme.
April 27, 2012 at 12:23 am
“I find the (algorithmically-applied) importance marker completely useless and would remove it if I could”
I think you can – if you go into settings, and then the “inbox” section, there is a setting for turning the markers off. At least I have that…
April 27, 2012 at 12:43 am
Google isn’t listening? You mean the same way that Mozilla doesn’t listen?
All companies do this. Change for change sake and users be damned.
April 27, 2012 at 12:48 am
“You mean the same way that Mozilla doesn’t listen?”
Yes, I mean the same way that Mozilla doesn’t listen. I agree with you that this is a problem, especially in the last year or so. I’m working on a post about that.
April 27, 2012 at 1:08 am
You can hide the “importance markers” in Settings – Inbox.
April 27, 2012 at 3:14 am
I love change. I do ui and ux for a living. I loath and despise this redesign for the exact points you mention. I want ui that’s useful for productivity apps, and this feels less useful even after months of use. I have had to memorize the location of stuff because it’s all hidden under a “pretty” layer instead of obvious. Interfaces should be useful, and then and only then pretty. This is across my organization a fairly disliked redesign, but Google doesn’t seem to care. We went so far as to put a help ticket in about it, but the response was pretty lame. Basically, Google doesn’t care is the impression we were left with. Can we please have contrast, visual separation and text labels back Goog? It’s worse ux, and a blunder that really makes my day less pleasurable…
April 27, 2012 at 3:34 am
Agreed. You can change icons->text in the settings so that helps some. Try the following Stylish theme to undo more of the damage (brings back the old color scheme and many of the visual cues. Sadly not all):
http://userstyles.org/styles/64637/gmail-google-mail-classic-blue-theme
April 27, 2012 at 3:36 am
i’ve never understood the use of icons in place of simple, obvious, descriptive text. no one ever implements tooltips for text icons – they don’t have to tell the user “this is what i actually mean”
April 27, 2012 at 3:50 am
I’m just a gmail user for many years – since 9/7/2004 to be exact, and I was very happy with it – even the improvements over the years have enhanced the experience. However, my response to this imposed ‘new look’ is not “aversion to change”, it is aversion to lack of choice! The ‘classic’ gmail look is a very readable template and the new options do not even approximate the ease on the eyes – I cannot find a mode that is visually comprehensible and am using html for my gmail… it doesn’t really work as well but at least I don’t get lost on the page. With regret I am looking for another mail service.
April 27, 2012 at 3:51 am
Re: un-provements, I think you’re looking for the word “regressions.”
April 27, 2012 at 3:52 am
The new design is a step backwards. Changes to the message list is bad, but I think the changes to the message viewing pane are worse. They removed all lines, making hard to orient yourself. Were these changes inspired by Metro?
April 27, 2012 at 4:14 am
You dislike the supposed designer’s assumption that all negative feedback is stubbornness, but you’re fine with the generalization that these design changes were made in accordance with some “cult of minimalism” and “designer arrogance”. Perhaps designers trained and experienced in user experience are considering something more than just “making it pretty” … and perhaps they’re right: give it some time and you’ll like it, maybe even better than the old look. I know I do. And it sounds like your specific complaints can be easily resolved by changing a few settings.
April 27, 2012 at 4:17 am
Yup, I agree with all of this. I also think the new rich-text controls are a big un-provement—especially the font, text size, text color, and highlight color controls.
All of this is why I wrote “How to cope with the Gmail redesign”: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
April 27, 2012 at 4:25 am
Right there with you, bro, for all the same reasons. Thanks for writing this!
April 27, 2012 at 4:39 am
Another thing to add, is that, at least for me, the new UI is less responsive. Shinier. Slower.
April 27, 2012 at 4:44 am
Jesus you sound like a douchebag in this.
April 27, 2012 at 4:45 am
After reading Ed M’s response I can’t help but think that the writer is completely wrong about her assessment of what’s wrong with the redesign, namely missing the point that upon redesign launch there simply should have been a click-away overlay window telling users how to use settings.
April 27, 2012 at 4:45 am
Accuses Google of not paying attention to user concerns
Does not pay attention to the very obvious “high contrast” theme available in options… lol…
April 27, 2012 at 4:49 am
The worst thing of this new design is that the contrast is too low. Black text on grey background! My eyes are bleeding! (I have a perfect eyesight.)
April 27, 2012 at 4:51 am
disprovement?
I use gmail because it has nicely threaded conversations, which is more important to me than the web page layout. The last email interface I though was really great was nmh. Now, I view my email as just another perishable, hard-to-recall-info-from inflow stream, despite threading and search.
I copy everything I really want to preserve and remember into backed-up, distributed text files, and tag it with keywords for an index layer above grep (like delicious, but in my local and usb and dropboxed filesystems, with no 1000-char limit for commentary, using utf8 text to avoid portability problems, and to parse with unix tools).
April 27, 2012 at 5:00 am
“regression” is the technical term for when a new version breaks something that used to work in the previous version.
April 27, 2012 at 5:05 am
Agree completely on the icons being worse but the rest is just aesthetics. The new theme looks a lot more attractive to me.
April 27, 2012 at 5:09 am
You may want to try Gmelius.
http://techie-buzz.com/tips-and-tricks/gmelius-gmail-extension-2.html
April 27, 2012 at 5:11 am
3 regressions?
April 27, 2012 at 5:20 am
Tabs on top was worse for people who didn’t like more mouse travel and was well documented in bugzilla that people had problems with that. Do agree that Gmail icons suck so bad I that after several months of doing the same thing of looking at tooltips I just changed the view back to text instead of icons. Gmail UX team should have been more careful!
April 27, 2012 at 5:26 am
I hit the delete instead of archive, pop all my email gone. Hate the new buttons.
April 27, 2012 at 5:39 am
Your opinion. I’m certain that they have AB tested the changes and results show it is better for the majority.
April 27, 2012 at 5:42 am
You can’t scan for stars? But starred emails in inbox get pulled up in a separate space. If not in inbox, then you search for star. I cant see how that cannot be a reggression. I love that important/starred emails are truly really set apart from the rest in the UI and I use it all the time.
Isn’t regression the word that you’re looking for?
April 27, 2012 at 5:52 am
Someone should just make a stylish sheet / greasemonkey script so we can be done with this for good.
I think we should give credit where credit is due: Of your three gripes, two are completely controllable via Gmail’s settings.
April 27, 2012 at 5:57 am
Icons, used as buttons, which aren’t anywhere near as intuitive as designers think they are … there’s nothing new in that kind of bad change. Alan Cooper named them “buttcons” almost 20 years ago.
April 27, 2012 at 6:00 am
Nobody appreciates the irony that this post is kinda arrogant? Above you claim with absolution whether certain design elements are better or worse for the user, with no research provided. As you said, you don’t know why the changes were made – and if you don’t know the reason, how can you claim to know it’s efficacy? Saying you, personally, dislike certain parts of the design is a lot different than saying the design is “wrong” or, worse, calling the designers arrogant and cultish.
Sometimes it is a designer’s role to know what’s better for the average user — Even if the user’s kneejerk reaction isn’t 100% positive. Hence the article from Google’s designers.
April 27, 2012 at 6:05 am
“People have certainly been telling Google that they don’t like the new GMail interface” – or maybe they are used to the old interface.
The first time i used macbook i hated using it compared to PC laptops. After few years of usage i can’t work on PC laptops.
I like the new interface, Nenver bothered with important markers. Icons instead of text i can agree on that.
People are good at learning.
April 27, 2012 at 6:07 am
For the opposite of “improvement” I’ve mostly used “regression”, but unprovement is fine by me 🙂
And if I were using the gmail web UI (instead of Thunderbird, as it were) and I too realized I had a problem with those importance-marker-thingies, my solution would probably have been to try to have AdBlockPlus’ extension Element Hiding Helper just hide those elements.
(Yes I am a horrible, horrible ad-blocking person)
April 27, 2012 at 6:10 am
The refrain of “They don’t listen!” is a common one among disgruntled users, but it’s also arrogant in two ways: Firstly, in assuming that the unhappiness is shared with the majority of users; secondly, in assuming that their view is obviously more correct than the designers’. (I note, for example, that while your three major points are well explained, two of them are entirely subjective.)
Google is well known for being incredibly data-driven in all its decisions. Maybe they’re analysing the wrong things, or asking the wrong questions, or whatever. However, I find it incredibly hard to believe that they would put a large amount of work into a redesign without some good reasons.
(Personally, I don’t always like redesigns, but I like this one. I genuinely prefer the roomier layout, and was annoyed at how long it took to show up on my employer’s Google for Business accounts.)
It’s not that they don’t listen. It’s that they don’t agree.
April 27, 2012 at 6:12 am
I too hate the Gmail changes, but I actually wanted to comment on the tabs-on-top point because I hated that decision and thankfully it’s optional anyway…
The reason it’s not a good UX choice (and I’m a UX guy at work so I have at least SOME clue what I’m talking about) is that the tabs tie into the content whereas the menubar, address bar and bookmark bars don’t. In other words, whatever content I’m currently looking at, whatever site, is associated with a tab. To switch to other content, vis a vis, another site, I select another tab. They’re very much related. Putting the tabs all the way at the top disconnects them, they’re no longer logically connected.
This is part of the reason I don’t care for Chrome either because they went the same tab-on-route (before Firefox is memory serves), but at least Mozilla was nice enough to give us the option to change that behavior, Google “knows better” and so there’s no option (that I could ever find anyway). In either case it’s a bad UX pattern on the basis of a logical disconnect between elements. I think it’s really that simple, and actually not even debatable as such (whether there’s some benefit that you want to argue overcomes that is another discussion).
April 27, 2012 at 6:47 am
Great points, and I agree fully.
Jason Crawford recently wrote with advice for people like us:
How to cope with the Gmail redesign
http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
Crawford’s article was discussed at length on Hacker News:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3873271
And now your article is being discussed on HN as well:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3897133
Is anybody from the Gmail team reading this stuff?
April 27, 2012 at 6:47 am
The most annoying feature: no contrast at all in any theme. The whole page is clunky and muddy. A minimal Gmail interface would be nice, but the previous one was actually more minimal than this square box clunkiness.
April 27, 2012 at 6:49 am
And the margins! Margins for christ sake! There is no top margin in the mail list so it always feels like you scrolled. I regularly miss emails because of this – I feel I am on the top but I am not.
April 27, 2012 at 6:52 am
Seriously… I suppose you think that the web sites were better back in 1995 because everything had thick beveled borders and clearly separated content with ugly block lines?
This “new” theme is not new and iv been using it for about a year now. I had no problems transitioning to it and it sounds like your just having a moan about minor details that are just a transitioning curve.
It’s posts like this that hold back people from experimenting and trying cutting edge techniques because some old curmudgeon will complain that his button now has a 2px #ccc border instead of a 4px #444 border.
I quite like the “new” theme. It’s elegant and looks like it has been styled by someone who doesn’t consider eclipse to be a design tool.
Learn the keyboard commands if the new buttons confuse you that much. Personally I think you just buy some stronger reading glasses. The buttons stand out as clear as day to me, you even have options to heavily pad the layout or compress it up to fit more on the screen. It’s brilliant
April 27, 2012 at 7:02 am
Good points. I particularly liked the old interface better since it had good contrast with the blue. I wish they provided a similar theme. Also, as others have pointed out, you can turn off the importance indicators.
April 27, 2012 at 7:03 am
Thanks for putting the right words and the precise anlysis on the vague feeling I had being *very* uncomfortable with the new UI
April 27, 2012 at 7:04 am
Importance markers can be removed.
The tablet-style icons, that may make it easier for a new user
but makes power users waste precious time can be replaced with text. Or text+icons if you care to install something like gmelius (http://gmelius.com/)
Along with the high contrast theme and compact display (still not compact enough for my liking but whatever), I find GMail to be more usable
April 27, 2012 at 7:11 am
I have been designing UI for more than 20 years. I have been using Gmail recently for a couple of those years, two accounts and 100’s of thousands of emails. I don’t really feel a single twinge of any of those pains you decry as criminal.
(Maybe I’m too old too feel, or maybe you are too sensitive. Perhaps these conditions are not mutually exclusive.)
April 27, 2012 at 7:14 am
Try gmedius? http://gmelius.com/
April 27, 2012 at 7:16 am
I think the word you are looking for is regression.
April 27, 2012 at 7:29 am
@Ed M
In my Google Apps inbox, the “Importance markers” setting is found under Inbox
April 27, 2012 at 7:29 am
try high contrast theme plus turn on text labels for buttons as was recommended and it’s usable again, but since they (evil Google corporation which doesn’t give customers option just to stick with good old design, if they can’t sell me new design and they have to force me into it there must be something wrong…) forced me to this change last sunday i am almost every day logged to my backup accounts at Hotmail, Yahoo and Zoho considering where to move. actually I would not hesitate a second with design of Zoho if they had darker high contrast themes (it’s the only reason why I didn’t move there from GMail), but their actual themes are burning my eyes in night plus I am annoyed that at Yahoo and Live.com I have to sign with full e-mail address which I don’t get at all and UI of these 2 is still more horrible than new GMail. but after introduction of Google Drive Google finally motivated me to rediscover Skydrive, thanks google for publicity stunt for cloud services so I can move away 🙂
April 27, 2012 at 7:33 am
You have to admit that not everybody think the same way. You can either provide a webmail that makes everybody quite happy or provide a webmail that makes some people very happy and some others angry.
I think google does not want to seduce everybody (like microsoft). Google wants to provide a perfect product that will fit perfectly some people, in particular the one that want clean interfaces. I think it is not only a question of design, but of the way people think. There are many form of intelligences, there should be many ways to design a webmail.
Gmail is just one of them. Yahoo is designed for a very different kind of people. Make your choice and rejoice that you have many different choices and that not everybody sell the same stuff.
April 27, 2012 at 7:56 am
Reblogged this on Anand Jeyahar's blah..blah..radio static…..
April 27, 2012 at 8:03 am
I hate new gmail icons too 😉
April 27, 2012 at 8:20 am
I now open my mail like I open a link to a pdf : with a brief instant of desperation (for different reasons).
Sure I can still read my mail. It just will be in a blurry screen with white and darker white.
April 27, 2012 at 8:49 am
I think the fact that it only took 2 comments to tell you how to get rid of everything you disliked about the new design means that google doesn’t need to listen because it’s already given you enough customization options to make it look however you want.
April 27, 2012 at 8:54 am
The importance markers are great, for me it filters out all the newsletter and notifcation stuff and just marks mail from family, friends and such as important.
April 27, 2012 at 9:01 am
” It requires more work for me to parse visually, to figure out what I’m looking at or to find the link I want to click.” I’ve been submitting this in the “feedback on the new layout” box for as long as I could, but I havent seen a single improvement. I totally agree, there is NO improvement
April 27, 2012 at 9:07 am
Another “un-provement”: In the inbox view the stars are on the left, but in the message (thread) view the star is on the right. This doesn’t make any sense, especially since it was on the left in the previous design.
Other than that, I think that changing to text buttons (like Ed M mentioned) makes the new design bearable.
April 27, 2012 at 9:30 am
Minimalism is the new Baroque with a difference: in the Baroque era you had a huge number of possibilities among which to choose. In minimalism the only thing you can do is TAKE AWAY THAT DECORATION NOW!
Curves are beautiful. Decoration is good. Minimalists are against both.
April 27, 2012 at 10:10 am
There are good reasons for user resistance to change. People are overwhelmed by their computer tools. Once they get to a point of survival with them, change just means stress and angst once more til they figure out the new stuff.
Change is justified if you give the user new superpowers. But without that, it’s just a pain. Classic case: the MS Office ribbon UI. No new superpowers. A pain to learn where one’s old commands are now hiding. Everyday users [I run a general computer practice for small businesses, families, and schools] HATE IT !!!
April 27, 2012 at 10:15 am
you can change the buttons and importance tags in settings
April 27, 2012 at 10:19 am
Though I agree with the sentiment about the very poor contrast, labels and positioning of elements, I disagree with your comment about tabs in top. There is definitely one good reason that has been discussed to death, and that is real estate.
With a wide screen monitor (which I think recently surpassed 1024×768), I have fields of white on the left and right of every web page, lots of space for a column of tabs that are wide enough to read the titles of. What I get now is a whole lot of /Ar…\ /Du…\ /Fe…\ the moment I’m doing any sort of research and have more than 6 tabs open.
April 27, 2012 at 10:24 am
Another thing I hate with the new design… the “back to inbox” arrow looks very similar to the “reply” arrow when viewing a message: both left pointing arrows.
April 27, 2012 at 10:26 am
Great post, I agree with every point. And, what about the Google Reader UI redesign? Because that is another example of un-provement.
April 27, 2012 at 11:08 am
Hi Jono,
you should give a try to Gmelius: http://gmelius.com, a cross-browser extension that cleans Gmail UI and tries to fix some of the points you make in your post.
April 27, 2012 at 11:24 am
It’s all subjective. Your gripes aren’t my gripes. I happen to like the new UI, mostly. The only thing I don’t like is the auto-collapsing sidebar. Sometimes when it collapses it cuts a word in half and it looks funky. It’s a functionality issue though, not design.
You can control much of what you dislike in Settings, as people above me as mentioned. Apply a new theme – or create your own – if you don’t like the default. As a user experience designer myself, I know that you can’t please everyone – especially on something at this scale (the WORLD). Google has user testing teams and probably tries to cover the vast majority of its assumed (statistically) users.
And finally, Google is provided us with a FREE service. So, be grateful you have an updated, supported, active company providing you with means of checking your email anywhere, anytime.
April 27, 2012 at 11:27 am
“three regressions”
April 27, 2012 at 11:28 am
Youf last two points I agree with, but given they are optional and can be switched off I think those criticisms are not only misplaced but suggest a sense of entitlement similar to the designer’s arrogance you bemoan.
On your first point though you are simply wrong. The thing you incorrectly call ‘visual texture’ is actually clutter.
The borders for individual table rows are superfluous as the baseline of the text draws that line regardless. Additional borders duplicate these baselines and demand that a user reads twice as many visual elements in order to interpret an interface.
The same is true for coloured backgrounds. If a distinction of utility has already been inferred by shape and proximity then to add an additional visual cue adds little more than another layer of complexity. This is unnecessary visual information that a user has to decode. Time that could be better spent performing the tasks they’ve actually come to the app to do.
I’d suggest having a read of Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information to get a better grasp on these concepts.
April 27, 2012 at 11:29 am
You can change the icons back to text labels in Settings. But I agree with you overall, it seems to be change for the sake of change.
April 27, 2012 at 11:45 am
Since the earlier hint about turning on text labels helped me out, I’ll return the favor by noting that you can choose a different color icon for the emails you “star” instead of the default yellow. In case anyone wants both indicators present but more easily distinguished.
April 27, 2012 at 11:54 am
You wrote: “…English lacks a word for discrete ways in which something has gotten worse…” If true, that would be unfortunate! However, I think it is just a sign of the *deterioration* of our vocabularies, the *downtrend* of the art of wordsmithing. Perhaps our language is in *decline*?
(Sarcasm aside, I agree that many of these terms draw from the metaphors of movement — forward and backwards, up and down, rather than a metaphor of ‘customer fit’ or ‘appropriate design.’)
April 27, 2012 at 12:03 pm
This is typical developer lazyness and BS. Instead of adding basic functionality that users have been asking for – for years – Devs perfer to muck around with ‘style’ rather than function. It gives them immediate positive feedback. They could care less about customer requests. Their managers are too clueless to not be con-ned by the Devs arguments for these kinds of projects. Devs will always choose a project that they can be the judge of over adding functionality that users will judge.
April 27, 2012 at 12:15 pm
“I’m not usually a fan of toolbar icons; they’re never as self-explanatory as their designers think they are, so they usually need text labels to be decipherable. At that point, why not cut out the middleman and just show the text label instead of the icon?”
Toolbars are a “power users” feature (like keyboard shortcuts), they fall into the “something that has to be learned” category – menus usually don’t (as their text is descriptive)… once you be come a power user, which is quicker to process, finding the “Edit” menu then selecting “Copy”, hitting ctrl+c or recognising some iconography?
I’m willing to bet iconography.
Just my 2p.
April 27, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Very unhelpful update, gmail took two steps back.
April 27, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I’m an accountant by trade, and I yearn for the days when programmers used to create UIs, rather than “UI designers” and “UX experts”. This goes for almost all of the software I use, from the firm’s custom software to Firefox to GMail to Windows to Office.
Maybe the UIs created by the programmers didn’t have as much “visual flair” and weren’t as “pretty” as the newer UIs, but they were far more usable.
There’s no more consistency any more. Each web app is vastly different from every other. Desktop apps no longer have consistent menus, tool bars or status bars. This makes the learning curve so much higher, and it hides so much useful functionality from users.
I sincerely hope that we start seeing UIs designed and created by programmers again. They were a lot better than what we have to deal with now.
April 27, 2012 at 12:45 pm
I have tried to like the new UI. I have tested every available ‘theme’, I have changed icons to texy and I have tried to like it once again but I cannot. It is horrible! So I go with designer arrogance…
April 27, 2012 at 12:46 pm
So based on Ed’s comment I have changed my Icons to Text (of course I had to find the gadget thing icon to even get to settings…Oh and that one stays as a cog after you select text). High Contrast them helps take care of the bland…. but most users won’t even know they can make these changes – I agree with all points made about the core base design.
April 27, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Are you going to address the guy who just debunked your entire post by pointing out that you can revert all the things you hate in settings?
April 27, 2012 at 12:48 pm
I would read what you had to say…except I was struck by your free 2005 WordPress theme and thought “this person really must know design”. Not.
April 27, 2012 at 12:57 pm
I couldn’t agree more. New Gmail design feels just like annoying unnecessary change.
April 27, 2012 at 1:20 pm
TL;DR: They moved my cheese, and I am pissed off!
April 27, 2012 at 1:41 pm
I agree with most of your points. Gmelius improves this situation a bit, but I still prefere the old interface.
April 27, 2012 at 1:43 pm
You should try out Gmelius. I’ve been using it for a week and I love it! It fixes a few things about Gmail, in particularly the buttons with no text. http://gmelius.com/#get-it
April 27, 2012 at 1:48 pm
I’m not a fan of the new UI either but here’s what I’ve done to make it tolerable.
April 27, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Sorry to tell you, but you’re the poster child for “Change Aversion”, dude. As has been noted, the three things you’re bitching about can be turned off or changed.
Text buttons: http://vurl.me/RJFJ
Importance markers: http://vurl.me/RJFO
Themes: http://vurl.me/RJFN
“Designer Arrogance” indeed.
April 27, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Frankly, I don’t think the void of grey is much worse than the void of pale blue.
It seems wise to embrace change from software (especially free web software) almost unconditionally. I turned on the new Gmail look as soon as it was available as a theme. There’s no point fighting this kind of thing, and the longer you hold out the more painful the transition is going to be. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, WordPress.com — all these guys make the changes *they* think are best, and very rarely will any of these ‘improvements’ get rolled back.
April 27, 2012 at 1:58 pm
1) Pick another theme: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/?shva=1#settings/themes (I personally prefer Dusk);
2) Setup a filter to mark all e-mails Unimportant;
3) I think that someone with average intelligence is able to learn the icons in a while;
so what is the problem here?
April 27, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Points 2 and 3 can be rectified as has already been pointed out. Point 1 can be changed with the “high contrast” theme. So I’m trying to figure out exactly what the problem is…
April 27, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Well said!
April 27, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Regressions. “I can spot three distinct regressions.” Although “un-provements” does have a ring to it.
April 27, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Jono, you just summed it up for me quite beautifully when you said that users can feel something is wrong but can’t quite articulate it.
Though it looks much cleaner, the lack of clear distinction between each section meant much more thought is put in to trying to ensure we’re not clicking on the wrong thing. I like the cleaner look but I agree that the visual cues that are no longer that have a negative impact on my experience.
April 27, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Aside from the settings Ed referred to, the “Remove Label” text button appears to have been restored.
April 27, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I read about 2 years ago that Google had lost their UI guy. I chalk up all of the changes to this loss of personel. The new guy (whoever that is) redesigned everything to his personal agenda and screwed it all up.
Personally I miss the days of when the buttons at the top were just links. I used to be able to click on the link that said “unread” and have all of the unread emails selected, but now it’s a two-step process. Definately a de-evolution if you ask me.
April 27, 2012 at 3:16 pm
@Kaply
but gmail is a website, you can use css userstyles and userscript to edit something but most is fixed. Mozilla make native applications with source code, extensions and configurations. If they make something strange you can always turn back.
April 27, 2012 at 3:39 pm
I have an 75 year old relative who uses gmail- just about barely though. I had spent months together showing him how to send mails, where to click on the page, etc. The new design has just put to smothers all the time that old folks had spent learning their way around the gmail UI.
I’m sure the 20+ something designers tested this on other 20 and 30 yr olds. But spend a few moments in a technical novice’s shoes and you’ll realize how much real-pain this new UI is going to cause them. The bouncy Chat+Labels thing at the bottom right corner is EXTREMELY annoying and makes that section completely unusable as even I (who spends 6-7 hrs online a day) is finding difficult to adapt to.
Change is not just about moving with the times- it needs to be done keeping the entire audience in mind. This UI is definitely going to make things harder for a generation which is barely trying to keep up with the times.
April 27, 2012 at 3:56 pm
You’ll hate the new look, and buttons for about a month. Eventually, you’ll identify the commonly used buttons by spacial position and it won’t matter what they look like.
Also, the longer you use an email provider, the more lock-in they have with you. So, maybe they won’t convert Y! people, but they likely won’t lose many users.
Tip: try a theme like Desk, it helps with the no-edge problem.
April 27, 2012 at 4:08 pm
“Google isn’t listening? You mean the same way that Mozilla doesn’t listen?”
This. When has Mozilla ever listened to users? Feature requests and bug reports get ignored for years, while new features roll out that no one wanted or asked for.
Google’s sucking more and more all the time because of a mindless crusade to “beat Facebook” and shove a Google+ ecosystem down our throats, even though the users don’t want it and it reduces the functionality of the things they do want.
Firefox is sucking more and more because of a mindless crusade to beat Chrome. Why the switch to a barrage of new version numbers that mean nothing? Did users ask for it? Did users want it? Does it make the experience for users better? No. It’s just cargo cult mimicking of Chrome in the hopes that copying Chrome’s features will bring users back.
People are switching to Chrome because it’s faster, not because of the version numbers or automatic upgrades.
April 27, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Thanks Ed M! I never knew you could turn the icons back to text. I’ve never really explored the settings page before.
April 27, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I forced myself to spend a month with the new look, even before I was forced into it. (Well, ok, I didn’t do that until after I found out how to switch to compact mode, because the ridiculous whitespace was intolerable. And that was after they fixed a bug that made it possible for me to even see that control. But I digress.)
I never did figure out those cryptic icons. Nor did I warm up to the bleached look. I switched to a blue theme just to make it superficially more similar to the old look, but there’s no way to recover the meaning and functionality that the old color scheme provided.
That’s my main beef, really. I totally understand how you can paint yourself into a corner and make theming unnecessarily hard. I can’t blame them for feeling they needed to do a scorched earth redesign; I don’t know what the issues were. But they removed actual functionality, and as far as I can tell there is no way for a theme to bring all of it back. Sure, the functionality was subtle and visual, but it was real.
But all in all, after I killed the silly importance indicators, switched icons back to text, and switched themes, it ended up just being a clear but minor degradation. The keyboard shortcuts still work, so it’s good enough for me.
Perhaps it should be seen as an opportunity for our dev tools. If it were easy to tweak CSS styles and then save the changes out to a userChrome.css file (or whatever it is), we could make a lot of friends out of this. Probably too late at this point for the main release, so it’d need to be an addon. And I don’t know how often the gmail CSS names mutate; everything’s minified, so for all I know everything will mutate randomly when they rebuild.
April 27, 2012 at 4:31 pm
Un-provements: How about three deteriorations?
April 27, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Hey, Jono.
When I read the headline and saw the source of URL, did a mental fist pump, and hoped you’d address Mozilla’s infection. By the end of the post, I was disappointed. Your last comment (#5) resulted in an even heartier mental fist pump.
Given what you mention–such as the perceptions around tabs on tob, your almost-aphoristic “Change aversion might be a real thing, but designer arrogance is a real thing too”, and in your last comment (the… particulars of it)–I’m positive that we’re close to being on the same page. I’m almost giddy.
(Though I do think “cult of minimalism” is only sweeping enough to summarize a part of the “Misunderstanding Apple” chapter. The part that it does cover is a significant one, but it’s not all of it.)
April 27, 2012 at 5:10 pm
I have switched to accessiblility mode, which more closely resembles the old design. Not because I particularly object to the new design, it’s just too slow. It repeatedly kept on getting stuck at the loading bar.
April 27, 2012 at 6:16 pm
You know what is driving me nuts with the new design?
I click my name in the upper right corner to sign out, up comes a dialog. “Sign out” used to be on the left side in the dialog. But now, there is “Add new account” on the left and “Sign out” has been moved to the right!
I’ve clicked “Add new account” at least a dozen times when trying to sign out.
I’ll get used it to it, but still.
Also, I just don’t like the new look at all. The old, while “old”, was just so much easier on the eyes. I don’t understand why Google can’t keep it as one of the themes you can choose.
April 27, 2012 at 7:09 pm
I think you’re grasping for straws with your complaints. You say they made changes just to make change. I think you’re complaining just to complain.
It’s free. Get over it or use something else; there are hundreds of options.
April 27, 2012 at 7:20 pm
The English word is regressions.
April 27, 2012 at 8:14 pm
In the settings you can change the icons back to text label-type buttons.
April 27, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Jono – All three of your issues are relatively easy to address in settings: pick a solid color theme, turn off importance markers, enable the setting to show text on buttons in lieu of icons.
I gave a pretty detailed description of the rationale behind the new design here, if you’re interested:
http://www.quora.com/Gmail/What-was-the-purpose-of-the-recent-Gmail-redesign
This was very much not “change for change’s sake.” Google’s products had diverged too much and were all over the map, both from a visual and interaction design perspective. The Gmail redesign was part of a huge effort to bring Google’s disparate products into alignment via a common design framework.
April 28, 2012 at 1:16 am
I suspect this has to more to do with AdWords click through rates in Gmail than anything else. A bland background helps Google’s ads stand out better thus increasing clicks.
April 28, 2012 at 2:42 am
Three regressions
April 28, 2012 at 6:19 am
Interesting that the “Change Aversion” portion of the blog post seems to have been censored…
Also on that blog, a couple of “more technical than usual” posts on developing and testing the new look which I found irritatingly condescending: if those are technical, I’d hate to read something that they considered non-technical…
April 28, 2012 at 8:25 am
Reblogged this on Kikechclinton's Blog.
April 28, 2012 at 8:41 am
Yahoo mail did the same thing recently. And the worst culprit of all is the new ‘optional’ (until it became compulsory) youtube layout (so that’s google again).
I’ve wondered about the psychology of this optional-now-not-optional tactic. Take for example, youtube’s ENORMOUS ad banner at the top of your subs’ latest videos page when your signed in. They give us the option of closing it. This makes us feel it is not such an intrusion. But closing it requires a mouse click on a tiny “X close” corner of the ad. It’s quicker to just scroll down and leave the ad displayed.
I bet youtube get stats on how many people actually bother to close this ad banner. And I bet once that figure drops below a certain percentage they will take away the option to close it.
BTW “unimproved” is in the dictionary, although not unimprovement.
April 28, 2012 at 9:07 am
I’ve swithced to basic HTML. I personnally find it better than the new interface.
April 28, 2012 at 12:46 pm
I’m dyslectic and used use the yellow on black design of the old interface. All visual hints were great to help me read. Among the new themes they provided a “high contrast” theme. But this theme is useless, because it misses all the color hinting and the actual content is grey on grey.
April 28, 2012 at 11:14 pm
thank god.
I thought i was the only one! i agree 100% with what you said. the buttons now mean nothing….
April 29, 2012 at 10:25 am
About the icons:
Archive – Folder icon with down arrow
Report as spam – Alert icon
Delete – Trash can icon
Move to – Folder icon
Labels – Tag/label icon
Can these icons be any more conventional?
April 30, 2012 at 6:02 am
I had a similar response when the changes came out, wrote to google expressing my disappointment with the new design and bad icons, and received some bland response. Just one of those things. Eventually the negatives will mount up far enough that I’ll find an alternative…
April 30, 2012 at 6:02 am
Although the new UI doesn’t hurt my work in any way, but it does need some time getting used to. Personally, I’d prefer the old over the new one. For one, the blank white background and the content, as jonoscript has correctly pointed out, was in a much better proportion in the old UI.
April 30, 2012 at 6:55 am
Un-provements – maps directly to unimprovements.
April 30, 2012 at 7:28 am
“this redesign is just change for the sake of change” its true …
I have found “Compact design” too, but the result is some steps or miles back … As programmer and designer of CSS I don’t understand the terrrible color combinations.
April 30, 2012 at 8:24 am
I’ve stopped using the GMail web interface a long time ago! I literally hate it now. I only log into it when I’m accessing mails from a PC other than mine.
Thunderbird FTW!!
April 30, 2012 at 11:02 am
I have a large list of labels and auto hiding is annoying. I can’t click the required lable at single click, instead i have to hover in the lable zone, wait till label list expands, scroll and then click.
April 30, 2012 at 11:04 am
I believe one antonym for ‘improvement’ is ‘regression’
April 30, 2012 at 11:23 am
You came out and you said it! Thank you!!
April 30, 2012 at 11:25 am
Thanks to Ed M.
I changed buttons to text, and theme to high contrast. This helps a lot. I have watched in dismay this minimalist trend.As a sixty-three year old, I am having a tough time seeing light gray on a white background. The high contrast theme fixes that. Hopefully, others will realize older folks are not only hard of hearing, they’re hard of seeing, too.
April 30, 2012 at 12:25 pm
I have also tried the new look (before being forced to use it), and definitely did not like it. Like everybody else,I dislike the amount of white space, and the icons; on top of that, the scroll bars are too narrow for my taste, but what I hate the most is the “Move to” – it has fewer labels showing; before, I knew how many times to click on the scroll bar to get to the label I wanted (to move an email) – now I have to click more times, and never get it right – I use a lot of labels!
Before forcing everybody to the new look, they might have better followed users use of the new and old look, and maybe – if not drop the new look – make adjustments based on feedback. Just my opinion.
April 30, 2012 at 12:27 pm
You can at least revert the buttons to text with an option, just like you can put tabs back on the bottom, where they belong.
April 30, 2012 at 12:45 pm
@Ed M: Thanks for the tip about showing button text instead of icons. Your second suggestion doesn’t do what you suggested though. Disabling snippets keeps the UI from showing the first few words/sentences of text next to the subject; it doesn’t affect the importance indicator at all.
April 30, 2012 at 1:06 pm
“Change aversion might be a real thing, but designer arrogance is a real thing too.”
One million times this. And let’s say that your precious UX change is just absolute perfection. If your users don’t like it, calling them stubborn probably isn’t going to help you sell your product (or sell your ads or whatever your revenue stream is). Microsoft is going through the same thing with Windows 8. Some of it can demonstrably improve user workflow. But so what? If the user doesn’t want it, it’s crap. End of story. Users are king. UX designers apparently have never heard of “the customer is always right.”
April 30, 2012 at 1:26 pm
The only thing I hate about the new the design is the way scrolling works. I want just one scroll bar for the whole damn page instead of an inner scroll bar for the text.
April 30, 2012 at 1:30 pm
The change to the new UI is the main reason why I set up my own mail server and now have my Gmail mail forwarded on to it. For the same reason, I’m building a Facebook wrapper app that eliminates the extra cr4p that Facebook put on your page.
April 30, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“Change aversion”? The idea that users “irrationally fear” change? In other words, if we don’t like their so-called improvements, there’s something wrong with us — we’re being irrational, trembling in fear, not thinking clearly. That’s insulting, to say the least. And yes, it is arrogance on their part — the belief that they know what’s good for us better than we do.
Sure, having a new look and interface can turn a familiar product into one that seems new, sexy, and exciting. But for every user who thinks, “I’ve got a new toy to play with — cool!” there’s another user like me who thinks, “Jesus F. Christ, now I’ve gotta learn this thing all over again.”
What some people apparently haven’t figured out is that computers and the Internet are there to serve people, not the other way around. When I check my email, I want to do just that — check my email. I don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out a pointless new interface just to do something that should only take me two minutes to do. It’s just email, nothing more, and it shouldn’t take any more effort to deal with it than it does to deal with the snail mail I still get every day.
April 30, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Schlimmbesserung (German): A schlimmbesserung is a supposed improvement that makes things worse.
April 30, 2012 at 2:26 pm
When I read ‘Designer Arrogance and the Cult of Minimalism’ I thought you made a mistake and meant Apple, not Gmail. Every Apple product has examples of this, such as the one home button with 5 different functions Iphone, but the difference is Apple had Steve jobs convincing his followers that they didn’t “Get it.” if they thought the cult of minimalism had gone too far.
April 30, 2012 at 2:33 pm
There’s a feature of the new interface that I find very useful – “move to label”, i.e., apply label and archive in one place. I am not 100% sure it wasn’t available in the old interface but certainly it was not prominent as it is now.
April 30, 2012 at 2:40 pm
+1 on change aversion. I found myself infuriated at Target this weekend; I knew exactly where carseats and pillows were last year (this is what I came for), but since then they have rearranged the store. Presumably to confuse people into traversing around and finding new garbage to buy, but it ruined my UX.
April 30, 2012 at 2:53 pm
I agree, good points. If anyone reading this uses Eclipse, be warned that the same is about to happen with Eclipse 4. Point 1 above describes it exactly – a featureless sea of white and grey – and there are other problems too. Overall it’s a dreadful mess, not just looking bad but hard to use for a long, long list of reasons. Yes, it’s possible (for now) to switch back to the “classic” appearance. But that doesn’t make it OK to have a terrible default. As for the tabs on top issue, I think that IS worse. The reason is because the tab is then disconnected from the page which it’s supposed to be “part of”, separated from it by the address field and maybe toolbar. I think that it looks wrong (not just different), it’s harder to use and it breaks the analogy with a tabbed document as well. How is that better? Some people saying so doesn’t make it so, no matter who they are. History is full of examples of how the “experts” are not always right.
April 30, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Thanks to Ed M for the Settings tips. Vastly improved my gmail ui!
April 30, 2012 at 3:16 pm
If I were so unhappy, I’d ask for my money back.
Oh, wait….
April 30, 2012 at 3:19 pm
They may have discovered that new users prefer the new look and current users will live with it. Similar logic MS took with their toolbar.
April 30, 2012 at 3:23 pm
i want to point out some users have a valid reason for not liking tabs on top.
in my case i wouldnt be opposed to it if they just made f6 go to the frikken address bar with tabs on top. i have to disable tabs on top because if i don’t f6 goes to the tabs not the address bar.
now part of it is that i don’t like things being different, i can accept it if you can show me its not just different but BETTER.
the minimalist design firefox adopted for instance, i dont like it. i like my menu bar, i like my status bar i dont care if the tabs are above or below the address bar as long as f6 still takes me to the address bar.
i make my firefox look pretty much like it always did because there was nothing wrong with how it looked to begin with.
April 30, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Yeah, what’s with this “go flat” design thinking? Same thing with Windows Metro. VS2011 … same thing. They’ve gone with flat, featureless GUI design for that too. WTF?
April 30, 2012 at 4:18 pm
It was a real pain for couple weeks. It still is painful. I have become very unproductive with my failing eyesight, trying to decipher the email content from the user interface.
1. If you have list of labels longer than a page, it goes back to default every time! Selection takes about 3 or 4 clicks after you figure out how to turn on the scroll bar every time!
2. Try copying from a long text message :!) the interface inserts the …. button at the end. And one cannot scroll and select past these. The only way out i figured is start selecting from the bottom!
These are just a few…also all the formatting goes awya if you cut and paste from internet explorer to chrome.
April 30, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Thanks so much “Ed M.” for your 1,2,3 points (plus Inbox/markers) above. Much nicer now. I can almost tolerate the changes. Using the Classic “Tree” theme too which is muted gray with lines and w/current city weather behind.
April 30, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Joe S wrote: “If I were so unhappy, I’d ask for my money back. Oh, wait….”
Are you saying that we cannot criticize the design of a product, if that product makes money from advertising instead of from sales?
An odd principle. What about games that are free-to-play, but supported by in-app purchases? Are we allowed to criticize design there?
April 30, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Glad to help 🙂
April 30, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Tuseroni wrote: “i dont care if the tabs are above or below the address bar as long as f6 still takes me to the address bar.”
I don’t know if this is helpful to you or not, but you can focus the address bar with ctrl-L (cmd-L on mac) regardless of the position of the tab bar. That’s one of my most-used shortcuts.
“i can accept it if you can show me its not just different but BETTER.”
Agreed! The rationale for tabs being on top is that it more logically shows that the navigation bar applies to the current tab, not the browser globally. However, that small benefit applies only to people who are learning the UI for the first time – the change is no benefit at all to people who have already learned the old interface.
April 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Eric wrote: “When I read ‘Designer Arrogance and the Cult of Minimalism’ I thought you made a mistake and meant Apple, not Gmail”
I’m sure you can find lots of Apple examples! But I’m not personally familiar with many of the new ones since I’ve stopped buying Apple products.
It does seem like a lot of designers in the industry have “Apple envy” lately, and are trying to make things more Appleish, with mixed results.
April 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Unstumpped wrote: “Schlimmbesserung (German): A schlimmbesserung is a supposed improvement that makes things worse.”
What a fantastic word! Thanks.
April 30, 2012 at 5:44 pm
I couldn’t agree more.
As to the word, I think a better etymological case could be made for de-provement, but I on’t want to be overly chnge verse 🙂
April 30, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Codebased wrote: “Can these icons be any more conventional?”
They could certainly stand to be a lot more identifiable, which is to say visually distinct from each other. Icons only save time compared to text if they are visually distinct enough to be found at a glance. If they’re too similar to each other, as is the case with “Folder icon with down arrow” and “folder icon”, then I have to mouse over to figure out what they are. That, not conventionality, is my main objection.
April 30, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Codebased wrote: “Can these icons be any more conventional?”
I’ve never seen the folder with a down arrow before, though I’ll admit its meaning is pretty clear: it means download the folder, right?
The alert icon is also very clear, and it means there’s something to watch out for. It is rarely used to take an action, and when it is, it means to get more detail about the problem.
The trash can is fine. And largely useless for gmail. I know they’ve given up on pushing people into it, but it really does make more sense to only archive and never delete. Not that I’ll argue that here. But the trash and refresh icons are the only two that make sense to me.
The folder icon clearly has something to do with folders, though gmail is tag-based so I’m not sure what folders mean in that context. “Folder” = “exclusive tag” makes sense, but this is the first I’ve seen of that, and I’m still not sure that’s what they mean.
The tag/label icon might make sense if I could figure out what it’s supposed to be. Hardly conventional, though, since I haven’t seen it before.
I’ll echo jono in saying that it’s also problematic that they’re so hard to distinguish. I might have some hope for learning their meanings if they looked different from each other.
And the ones that are identifiable already have existing conventions that do not match what they’re being used for.
April 30, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Amen!
April 30, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Easton wrote: “It’s free. Get over it or use something else”
Firefox is free* too. Does that mean nobody’s allowed to complain about Firefox design decisions either? The Mozilla UX team will be so happy when I give them the news.
*(Actually, neither product is free; they’re both ad-supported.)
April 30, 2012 at 7:24 pm
+1
April 30, 2012 at 7:26 pm
Is there any way to stop the trend toward more arrogant condescending foolishness in the Gmail experience? I undid some of the changes in the latest wave by twiddling Settings to remove Importance markers (useless waste of space) and condense the presentation (a setting I don’t need to ever put at any other value on any of my screens). It is slower than ever. So I am back to Yahoo mail and Thunderbird, maybe try Hotmail next week.
April 30, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Hi Jason,
Thank you very much for your response. And thanks for clarifying your motivations with that link; I’ll add it to the original post.
“All three of your issues are relatively easy to address in settings”
That’s great, but the purpose of this post wasn’t to teach people how to customize their GMail settings, as helpful as such advice may be. The reason for this post was to explain why I think the new defaults are worse than the old ones. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you why the defaults are so important; “defaults matter” is one of the most basic lessons in usability.
April 30, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Juan wrote: “Sorry to tell you, but you’re the poster child for “Change Aversion”, dude.”
I am happy to accept this title. I can provide image files if anybody wants to start printing up “Change Aversion” posters with my face on them.
“the three things you’re bitching about can be turned off or changed.”
I know. But that’s irrelevant to my main point, which is that they made the defaults worse. Defaults matter! I’ve learned this the hard way at Mozilla: if somebody doesn’t like the default settings in Firefox, they can spend time learning how to customize those settings, or they can switch to a competing browser with defaults they like better. Guess which one is easier most of the time?
April 30, 2012 at 7:47 pm
Seriocomic wrote: “I would read what you had to say…”
So you left a comment without reading the post? That’s constructive. Not.
April 30, 2012 at 7:56 pm
William wrote: “Are you going to address the guy who just debunked your entire post by pointing out that you can revert all the things you hate in settings?”
If you point out a usability problem with default Firefox UI, and I retort that you can fix the usability problem by editing three preferences in about:config, would you say I had “debunked” your problem?
Or would you say “Why don’t you fix Firefox by making the default settings correct, instead of telling users to fix it themselves?”
April 30, 2012 at 7:58 pm
Pete wrote: “I yearn for the days when programmers used to create UIs”
Huh, that’s a really interesting perspective. I usually hear people say the exact opposite.
I myself spend a lot of time in Emacs or the command line, so I’m used to programmer-created UIs, but I don’t expect most other people to want to learn them.
April 30, 2012 at 8:08 pm
Shoppingtown wrote: “I’d suggest having a read of Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information to get a better grasp on these concepts.”
I have read them. Multiple times, in fact. Attended the seminar and everything.
“The same is true for coloured backgrounds…. This is unnecessary visual information that a user has to decode. Time that could be better spent performing the tasks they’ve actually come to the app to do.”
My subjective experience is the opposite – it takes me more time to visually decode the new interface. Why do train schedules use colored backgrounds in alternating lines, if it doesn’t improve readability of tabular data?
This disagreement could be objectively resolved if we had some quantitative A-B user-testing data, but Google isn’t publishing any, as far as I know.
April 30, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Geoff writes: “There’s no point fighting this kind of thing, and the longer you hold out the more painful the transition is going to be.”
So you’re saying we just have to take whatever punishment software companies decide to dish out? That sounds like a very defeatist attitude to me.
I’m interested in the question of how we can make software better. This means analyzing the pain that software companies currently inflict on their users, and thinking about ways to avoid inflicting it.
April 30, 2012 at 8:24 pm
Chris Rodriguez wrote: “It’s all subjective.”
If it’s all subjective, then UI design is a pointless exercise, and software companies shouldn’t waste money hiring designers.
“And finally, Google is provided us with a FREE service.”
Not true. There’s no such thing as a free lunch — I “pay” for GMail with my private information, which Google uses to make a lot of money, via advertising. Even if it really were free, though, that wouldn’t mean that we can’t critique its design.
“So, be grateful you have an updated, supported, active company providing you with means of checking your email anywhere, anytime.”
Actually I have several such companies – Yahoo and Microsoft provide the same service. Usability is the main differentiator. In a competitive market, no company should be taking its users for granted.
April 30, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Simon wrote “I have fields of white on the left and right of every web page, lots of space for a column of tabs that are wide enough to read the titles of.”
Have you tried the add-on “Tree-style tabs”? It does this, and it’s pretty good. But that’s an add-on — as I keep pointing out, the default behavior is what’s most important. I think you could make a pretty good case that Firefox ought to make tree-style tabs the default.
April 30, 2012 at 8:31 pm
“Reader” wrote: “It’s posts like this that hold back people from experimenting and trying cutting edge techniques because some old curmudgeon will complain that his button now has a 2px #ccc border instead of a 4px #444 border.”
I think you’re attributing way more influence to me than I actually have. 😉
I doubt anybody has ever avoided trying a cutting-edge technique just because they thought I would complain about it.
April 30, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Frank wrote: “the tabs tie into the content whereas the menubar, address bar and bookmark bars don’t. In other words, whatever content I’m currently looking at, whatever site, is associated with a tab. To switch to other content, vis a vis, another site, I select another tab. They’re very much related. Putting the tabs all the way at the top disconnects them, they’re no longer logically connected.”
Thanks for this feedback. I hadn’t heard it put that way before.
However, I disagree that the address bar doesn’t tie into the content — the URL bar shows the URL of the current tab, a URL entered there will load in the current tab, and the forward and backward buttons affect the current tab, not the browser as a whole. I think that was the main rationale behind putting them visually “inside” the tab. Nevertheless, I can see your point.
April 30, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Max Ponte wrote: “Accuses Google of not paying attention to user concerns
Does not pay attention to the very obvious “high contrast” theme available in options… lol…”
See my responses to the other comments re: the importance of default settings.
April 30, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Anonymous wrote: “Jesus you sound like a douchebag in this.”
Oh, if you think I sound like a douchebag now, you should hear me when I’m talking about something that really bothers me. This is pretty mild.
April 30, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Troy wrote: “give it some time and you’ll like it, maybe even better than the old look. I know I do.”
Could you explain what you like about it, specifically? I’m looking for the improvements and having trouble finding any.
April 30, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Jono sez: “So you’re saying we just have to take whatever punishment software companies decide to dish out? That sounds like a very defeatist attitude to me. I’m interested in the question of how we can make software better. […]”
I don’t think these companies are punishing us (though perhaps Mozilla are — I’ll defer to you on that). I imagine Google think they are looking for ways to make software better too.
My attitude isn’t defeatist. It’s realistic. I’ve installed plugins, apps and held off upgrading to keep things just how I like them, and spent plenty of time fighting change. Ultimately, at some point, the hack breaks, the Greasmonkey developer gets bored, Firefox deactivates another raft of plugins and you have to start using the new thing anyway. Usually, it’s not so bad. Often, it’s actually better.
April 30, 2012 at 10:15 pm
>>>>>>>>
According to the Gmail blog, the goals of the redesign included:
to put mugshots of people into conversation view,
>>>>>>>>
Why would I want to scare people to death with my mugshot?
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to make the density adjustable,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
to make themes fancier,
>>>>>>>>
Their idea of fancier themes is a huge, have to download every time
you connect, graphic for the back ground that slows the connection and causes the page to not load.
>>>>>>>>
to make the left sidebar customizable, and
>>>>>>>>
That sounds neat, how do I customize the sidebar?
OH yeah, I don’t get to customize the sidebar. That customization is predetermined by some one who knows their design will cause me immense pain, eyestrain and lead to blindness. And that’s the real reason for the bad choice of colors.
>>>>>>>>
to add an advanced search panel.
>>>>>>>>
Why do I need an advanced search panel that works just as poorly as the simplified search panel? Heck, why do I need a search panel at all?
While I agree that some users refuse change out of stubbornness, the true reason that users resist change is due to the history of change that turned out to be a reduction in actual usefulness.
Contrary to Mozilla’s complaint that user’s could not tell why they didn’t like the tabs on top, one user put it quite to the point. “I have to move the mouse further in order to change tabs.”
Putting the tabs of a browser at the top of the application means one must mouse up above the Navigation Toolbar, continue up above the address bar and continue further still above the menu bar in order to switch to a different tab. This is not only less convenient to the user, it is less efficient when browsing the web using tabs.
Their is that insane, egotistical, delusional camp that dictates that the only thing that should be at the top of a browser are the tabs. There should be no navigation bar for your most common links, there should be no menu bar to access your most common functions, and there should be no address bar so that you can see what site you are actually on.
While the navigation bar and the menu bar can be debated, the removal of the address bar cannot. The only reason that I can see for someone to want to remove the address bar is so that they can divert my browser to a phishing site without my knowing it in order to gain access to my personal and financial information so that said person or persons can steal my identity.
I refuse to use any browser that does not allow me to have the tabs at the bottom, and my choice of tool-bars visible in the or hidden in the rows I want them displayed including the menu-bar, the address bar and the navigation bar.
Why do these developers make such a howl over users wanting to keep things where they are most efficient for the user? Why is it that we are inundated in society by so many liers and their lies?
A nation of liers can never be a great nation. For such deceive themselves regarding their greatness and the true cost of being great.
Scott A. Tovey
April 30, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Scott wrote: “Putting the tabs of a browser at the top of the application means one must mouse up above the Navigation Toolbar, continue up above the address bar and continue further still above the menu bar in order to switch to a different tab. This is not only less convenient to the user, it is less efficient when browsing the web using tabs.”
Actually something that’s at the very top of the screen is faster to hit than something that’s almost at the top of the screen. If the target is almost at the top, you have to move the mouse carefully to avoid overshooting, but if it’s at the very top, you can just slam the mouse all the way up there and be sure of landing on it. This has been pretty solidly established by many experiments. (More detailed explanation: Fitts’ Law and Infinite Width).
Putting the tabs at the very top of the Firefox (or Chrome) window provides this benefit, but only if 1. you’re on Windows, and 2. your Firefox window is either maximized, or bumped up against the top edge of the screen. Our designers assumed this was the most common use case. But I can see how the change could be frustrating for you if you’re not on Windows and/or you don’t maximize the window.
“While the navigation bar and the menu bar can be debated, the removal of the address bar cannot. The only reason that I can see for someone to want to remove the address bar is so that they can divert my browser to a phishing site without my knowing it in order to gain access to my personal and financial information so that said person or persons can steal my identity.”
I agree with you here. Hiding the address bar crosses the line from bad UI to being actually dangerous for the user.
April 30, 2012 at 11:11 pm
For what it’s worth, I didn’t the new Gmail design at first. But after using it a couple weeks there’s NO WAY I’d switch back to the old version.
May 1, 2012 at 1:48 am
Well, the new buttons are bigger and targets users surfing on portable devices…yes, its does require the user to get familiar with those first.
May 1, 2012 at 7:50 am
My wife hated the new scrollbars so much that I built a chrome add-in to make them wider in gmail and google reader. You can download the Gmail Scrollbar Width add-in from the chrome store for free;
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lolknoliceldgbbnbmdjjmnndmbgphid
May 1, 2012 at 6:40 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>
jonoscript Says:
Putting the tabs at the very top of the Firefox (or Chrome) window provides this benefit, but only if 1. you’re on Windows, and 2. your Firefox window is either maximized, or bumped up against the top edge of the screen.
>>>> Our designers assumed this was the most common use case.
But I can see how the change could be frustrating for you if you’re not on Windows and/or you don’t maximize the window.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Based on what?
One of the biggest problems with websites is the fact that designers make faulty assumptions and proceed from their. As a result of the faulty assumptions of designers, one must side scroll. As a result of faulty assumptions of designers, websites are loaded with bloated graphics that slow down a pages load time.
For what ever delusional reason, designers think that just because they have a gigabit connection at work or home, such a connection is commonplace throughout the world.
I have a DSL connection, albeit a low end DSL connection. Way to often I find myself waiting for a page to load because there is just to much unnecessary garbage on the site.
When I connect to gmail in the morning, Fifty percent of the time I have to reload the page because all of those labs that I do not have activated, prevent the page from loading properly and I get a warning that the labs will be deactivated.
Why is gmail deactivating a lab that 1. I did not activate. and 2. Is not shown to be activated when I look at the list in the settings?
My suggestion to your designer assumptions: file then in the recycle bin.
Developers should not ever follow assumptions. Assumptions give you stupid scenarios that cause a melt down in the global market. Yes, it was assumed that wall street would act in wall streets best interest rather than following after faulty misconceived assumptions that were based on greed rather than sound economic policies.
So let us assume that 90 percent of internet users have a flat panel 32 inch monitor sitting on their desk at home. Should web designers design sites that are as wide as the typical 23 inch monitor? Absolutely not. A design should never be implemented that will inconvenience the lower end users who cannot afford the mid to upper end hardware. Proper design always considers the fact that not everyone maximizes their browser to the window or has that humongously large monitor. A proper design allows for flexibility so that the user’s experience is not decremented.
The most frustrating designs are those that assume I have the highest resolution set on my monitor. I do not! That resolution strains my eyes to no end and causes me severe eye pain and headaches.
I deem developers idiotic imbeciles when I open an options window and it stretches down passed the task bar. Said idiocy is even more obvious when said options window cannot be adjusted to a shorter height, or does not save it’s adjusted parameters, thereby preventing one to access all the options in the window because some worthless lowlife made the assumption that everyone has a resolution set at 1920 x.1080. I set my resolution at a comfortable 1280 x 800 and I don’t get eyestrain or headaches from it. In addition to this, I rarely allow an application to be maximized and take up the entire screen area.
Assumptions are stupid and only useful when the assumption is obvious due to clear limitations and an inability of there being an alternative. A useful and correct assumption would be assuming that of all wheels are round. That of course is only valid during the period that no other options are available or possible.
Scott A. Tovey
May 1, 2012 at 11:09 pm
Completely agree with the author. Me and my wife hate it so much that I am thinking of giving up gmail. Bunch of gray meaningless buttons, no borders and hard to find anything.
May 2, 2012 at 11:41 am
Word up: Montgomery Ward made arrogant changes that disregarded customer comfort and preference. After 100+ years in business, Montgomery Ward folded. Google can, too.