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Google's UX/design now reminds of MSN/Hotmail/Yahoo of 10 years ago. All the pointless image-heavy neutral visual noise. Why on earth are you showing me that wa

Google's UX/design now reminds of MSN/Hotmail/Yahoo of 10 years ago. All the pointless image-heavy neutral visual noise. Why on earth are you showing me that waterfall background? I don't want your watered down elevator music. Google needs to remember why Gmail, Reader, etc ended up destroying the aforementioned products in terms of UX, and change the direction it's headed at.

rsuelzer 11y ago
Gmail has by far the work UX out of any of the popular applications I use. It's an eye sore.
- gomox 11y ago
  I don't think GMail is pretty, but it's very functional. Good UX != visual beauty. As a result of a fairly recent job change, I have been forced into desktop IMAP clients again. I have to admit I have discovered a whole new level of appreciation for GMail. Just the fact that it actually runs filters server-side and it has a (conceptually speaking) equivalent application for mobile devices trumps everything else. You can actually get it do to what you want. The company I work for has a very heterogeneous systems landscape and I can say without much hesitation that GMail + Gcal's only serious alternative is Outlook. Everything else seems to me like a digital version of pen and paper.
  - pyre 11y ago
    I think that IMAP-serverside filtering is possible: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter I haven't really looked into exactly what it's doing though (and I'm no expert on the IMAP spec).
    - gomox 11y ago
      Seems like that is just a command-line version of an e-mail client filter: it connects to the server, runs a query, and moves stuff to folders. Based on my experience with the average IMAP server search performance, I wouldn't let my users use this if I was in control of the server.
- sssilver 11y ago
  I actually agree, if you mean the present Gmail. I referred to the original Gmail.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Google had a nice distortion field. I recently tried Bing maps by accident and having a fast, light and smooth UI felt so good. Inertia and brand makes me still go to Google maps but I miss the old one. 2nd system effect is a damn curse.
JoshMnem 11y ago
Google has some of the worst UIs in the tech industry. Materials Design is not good. Google Plus is so bloated with JS that it wouldn't run on my netbook with 4 Gb of RAM. The animations and "cute" easings make me feel uncomfortable whenever I open a Google product. Gmail is only tolerable when loaded through Thunderbird. Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data). Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."

rsuelzer 11y ago

Gmail has by far the work UX out of any of the popular applications I use. It's an eye sore.

gomox 11y ago
I don't think GMail is pretty, but it's very functional. Good UX != visual beauty. As a result of a fairly recent job change, I have been forced into desktop IMAP clients again. I have to admit I have discovered a whole new level of appreciation for GMail. Just the fact that it actually runs filters server-side and it has a (conceptually speaking) equivalent application for mobile devices trumps everything else. You can actually get it do to what you want. The company I work for has a very heterogeneous systems landscape and I can say without much hesitation that GMail + Gcal's only serious alternative is Outlook. Everything else seems to me like a digital version of pen and paper.
- pyre 11y ago
  I think that IMAP-serverside filtering is possible: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter I haven't really looked into exactly what it's doing though (and I'm no expert on the IMAP spec).
  - gomox 11y ago
    Seems like that is just a command-line version of an e-mail client filter: it connects to the server, runs a query, and moves stuff to folders. Based on my experience with the average IMAP server search performance, I wouldn't let my users use this if I was in control of the server.
sssilver 11y ago
I actually agree, if you mean the present Gmail. I referred to the original Gmail.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Google had a nice distortion field. I recently tried Bing maps by accident and having a fast, light and smooth UI felt so good. Inertia and brand makes me still go to Google maps but I miss the old one. 2nd system effect is a damn curse.

JoshMnem 11y ago

Google has some of the worst UIs in the tech industry. Materials Design is not good. Google Plus is so bloated with JS that it wouldn't run on my netbook with 4 Gb of RAM. The animations and "cute" easings make me feel uncomfortable whenever I open a Google product. Gmail is only tolerable when loaded through Thunderbird. Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data). Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."