43 ms·

Google's userinterface, in gmail.com, at least, has gotten progressively worse, and worse, and worse, and worse since its inception in my experience and everyon

Google's userinterface, in gmail.com, at least, has gotten progressively worse, and worse, and worse, and worse since its inception in my experience and everyone I've asked about this. ... don't know what else to say. I question if their designers use their own products. Latest bugs worth mentioning: Chrome still has an issue that can cause microphone to not work in Hangouts. Gmail.com has added a "Your plug-in google talk will no longer be supported soon" ...

raisedbyninjas 11y ago
Have they added a way to select which microphone to use yet? I mean a way to do it outside of an active call.
DanBC 11y ago
Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.
- austinjp 11y ago
  Amen.
- brianfryer 11y ago
  The loading times on Google maps are a lot higher than they used to be, for sure.
  - hrnnnnnn 11y ago
    I recently tried OSM and was sharply reminded of how fast Google Maps used to be. OSM has almost no perceivable lag.
- thecatspaw 11y ago
  I never had any issue with Google maps apart from slow loading maps (which is probably my connections fault). What issues are you experiencing?
- qq66 11y ago
  What changes would you make to Google Maps, with a basic set of assumptions? (let's say, you can't dramatically increase the cost, you can't hurt Google revenue sources, and you have a team of ~20 engineers to work on the changes).
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    I'd change it back to the way it was prior to the redesigns. It used to work fine. The big problem with the current version is the almost complete absence of legible affordances. There are all kinds of buttons with logos on them that do stuff. But until you learn what they do, their functions are mysterious. Basic things like Traffic used to be obvious, one-click features. Now they're hidden in the burger menu, so at best they're two clicks away, and at worst a non-trivial percentage of users has no idea they exist. (Etc.)
    - tammer 11y ago
      I second all of the above. For me, though, the major regression is the priorities of the search field. Prior to the redesign Maps seemed to know the exact location I needed regardless of the amount of detail I included in the query (i.e. tossing in the name of an intersection without street/ave/blvd info). Now, I seem to need to almost always include exact details (zip, precise USPS-blessed street address) for it to find what I'm looking for. Not all the time, but enough of a difference that it feels seriously hindered post redesign.
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Sticking the UI over top of the map really is silly. The 10 pixels of map I can still see between the search box and the border of the screen are completely useless, but make the page considerably noisier (more edges/transitions).
      - tajen 11y ago
        I too enjoyed the side bar. It's mysterious but it made me feel like there was more real estate. The map wasn't covered with boxes, whereas in the new design the 40% left handside of the map is unusable. Also, when searching a place, it resets the zoom, it zooms until I see the inside of that place (such as, the city center), whereas I generally want to see where the city is located with a bit more context. Same for a path: it puts the origin and destination on the viewport edges, whereas I generally want to locate the route, therefore see slightly more context. Slightly enough that it's painful.
- brainburn 11y ago
  I think above all they test on fast internet connections.
  - TylerE 11y ago
    Honestly, I have an ~110Mb cable connection (From a fast CDN I can acheive downloads in excess of 13MB/sec) and new Google Maps is still a dumpster fire that is inferior to old Google Maps in every way I can imagine.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      Ditto and I have a gigabit connection. Slooooow. I just profiled the maps start page and it transferred 2.5MB in 182 requests and took 2.56s to load. This compared to 544ms for the Google homepage. It's like their optimization team never got invited to Google Maps.
  - kzhahou 11y ago
    It's a CPU+GPU hog.
- 7952 11y ago
  It always feels like they concentrate on the mobile navigation product and ignore the desktop which has a much wider range of uses.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- arikrak 11y ago
  In their bid to keep things clean and automatic, they really made everything more confusing. I know people who have gotten lost because they didn't realize Google maps was hiding directions. They always try to do things instantly instead of letting the user press enter. (This is especially annoying on Google Express.) There's something to be said for the old web when you clicked and then got results...
  - scintill76 11y ago
    I hate that feeling of having to type as fast as possible, so the instant fetching won't waste bandwidth or distract me before I've finished giving it all the information it will need. Multi-step processes like getting directions can be annoying this way, as it reloads every time you change a parameter (like entering an address, swapping source and dest. addresses, or changing transportation mode), so if you have to do all three to get what you actually want you're really going to be waiting. Am I just a weird user? I mean, I know my frustration isn't very rational, but is user frustration ever rational? It hurts the product either way. Sometimes I just do a general Google search (from Chrome's omnibar with Instant searching disabled) for the directions I need. It usually auto-detects it's a maps query and has a card ready to go with options. Then I don't have to wait for suggestions to load or for the map to pan around.
    - arikrak 11y ago
      I just tried a one-step query in Google Maps itself, and it worked, so that's helpful ("From Address 1 to Address 2").
- chrismarlow9 11y ago
  Use it through voice. Eg, "Navigate to XXX". Easiest way I've found to use it.
  - shdon 11y ago
    That works reasonably well if you're in an English speaking country. In other countries, not so much. Especially when trying to specify an address.
- krick 11y ago
  To be fair, are there good web maps? OSM is much worse, for instance. Google maps are pretty usable by comparison.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess. Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly. And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2] [1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
    - plonh 11y ago
      Apropros of the other Google thread today, the here.com link completely fails: it shows an full screen ad for the mobile app, with no way to get to the map.
      - kuschku 11y ago
        For me it works just fine.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      Thanks for the alternative!!
- sixothree 11y ago
  Google Maps on the iPhone really is awful. Sometimes you swipe to close something, sometimes you click a teeny tiny little x, sometimes you click a left arrow as in going back.
- jbrooksuk 11y ago
  I get so confused with Google Maps every time I use it to find trip lengths. I can never work out how to add a destination.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Does anyone reading this work at Google?
alooPotato 11y ago
I'm curious, do you have any specifical examples of things that got worse? I.e. density, new compose moles? Why are they worse for you specifically.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  The nine dot menu instead of a small header row was a terrible change. First because it is an extra click every time for a commonly used task and second because no one had any clue what the hell nine dots were supposed to mean. A friend of mine that worked at google told me the official name is "app drawer". I have no idea how that's supposed to look like a drawer. More generally the entire move from words to pictograms looks to me like a regression to a technology that was superseded by a superior one 5000 years ago.
  - alooPotato 11y ago
    Really? That seems smart to me. How often do you use the links in that drawer? Seems better to remove all that text up top and replace with a small icon for something that is rarely used.
    - YoureWrong 11y ago
      Well, I for one used those links to navigate between Google properties: from Gmail to YouTube, for instance. Now I just don't go to YouTube when something on Gmail piques my interest. That one click was a huge amount of effort for casual browsing, and forces a re-evaluation of idle browsing between properties.
    - mattmanser 11y ago
      Ugh, you definitely do not use more multiple google services if you think that. Even today, years afterwards, I was on the phone checking my calendar and I totally lost the train of the conversation as I was hunting in that dumbass thing for the calendar. The worst part is that, yes, the top was getting stuffed, but instead of letting you choose what you wanted in your menu, they added that navigation monstrosity instead.
CydeWeys 11y ago
Everyone at Google uses gmail.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vectorjohn 11y ago
Well, you didn't ask me, but I think it's gotten progressively better, and better, and better. Different, sure, and if your definition of worse is "different than before", well, you aren't going to like it. So, just to give a counter point.
lackbeard 11y ago
I agree and I wish I had insight into what exactly is going on inside Google. A couple of hypotheses: 1. Someone (or a group of people) within mistakenly believes this design aesthetic[1] is good and have gained a lot of political power. I guess they like things that look pretty in screenshots instead of things that are actually useful or intuitive? 2. They're heavily optimizing for some metric (engagement, user growth, whatever) that is orthogonal to (or has a small component along) the usability vector. [1] Simplistic defaults, not easily configurable, flat, tons of whitespace, etc...
inthewoods 11y ago
When you say gmail.com has gotten worse, do you mean the overall quality of the application or the user interface design? You say the first but the examples you mention sound like bugs.
- kodr 11y ago
  try the new inbox, I find it pretty slow, with all the sliding tabs, and with less features (no raw text, hard to edit inline, etc...)
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  The priority inbox thankfully can be turned off. It was trying to solve a problem that didn't exist - the ability to sort messages. The tagging of incoming mail with tags sorted that problem, and search made finding mail a moot point too. I disabled priority inbox on browser and mobile devices and it's very usable again, so thanks to whoever kept that as an option.
SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
Also they recently removed the ability to save images directly from Google Image Search in Chrome on Android. In what world does removing functionality make life better for anyone?
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  This appears to be an irritating trend. Look at the gedit redesign on GNOME3 and see how the removal of all buttons and features is heralded as a GOOD thing?!?!?! I understand the "let's not confuse the user" approach but simplifying everything down to have zero features reduces the computer to a useless tool, as all the features have gone. It's like a Swiss army knife where they decided that all the blades and options were too fiddly and confusing so they just give you a spork instead.

raisedbyninjas 11y ago

Have they added a way to select which microphone to use yet? I mean a way to do it outside of an active call.

DanBC 11y ago

Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

austinjp 11y ago
Amen.
brianfryer 11y ago
The loading times on Google maps are a lot higher than they used to be, for sure.
- hrnnnnnn 11y ago
  I recently tried OSM and was sharply reminded of how fast Google Maps used to be. OSM has almost no perceivable lag.
thecatspaw 11y ago
I never had any issue with Google maps apart from slow loading maps (which is probably my connections fault). What issues are you experiencing?
qq66 11y ago
What changes would you make to Google Maps, with a basic set of assumptions? (let's say, you can't dramatically increase the cost, you can't hurt Google revenue sources, and you have a team of ~20 engineers to work on the changes).
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I'd change it back to the way it was prior to the redesigns. It used to work fine. The big problem with the current version is the almost complete absence of legible affordances. There are all kinds of buttons with logos on them that do stuff. But until you learn what they do, their functions are mysterious. Basic things like Traffic used to be obvious, one-click features. Now they're hidden in the burger menu, so at best they're two clicks away, and at worst a non-trivial percentage of users has no idea they exist. (Etc.)
  - tammer 11y ago
    I second all of the above. For me, though, the major regression is the priorities of the search field. Prior to the redesign Maps seemed to know the exact location I needed regardless of the amount of detail I included in the query (i.e. tossing in the name of an intersection without street/ave/blvd info). Now, I seem to need to almost always include exact details (zip, precise USPS-blessed street address) for it to find what I'm looking for. Not all the time, but enough of a difference that it feels seriously hindered post redesign.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Sticking the UI over top of the map really is silly. The 10 pixels of map I can still see between the search box and the border of the screen are completely useless, but make the page considerably noisier (more edges/transitions).
    - tajen 11y ago
      I too enjoyed the side bar. It's mysterious but it made me feel like there was more real estate. The map wasn't covered with boxes, whereas in the new design the 40% left handside of the map is unusable. Also, when searching a place, it resets the zoom, it zooms until I see the inside of that place (such as, the city center), whereas I generally want to see where the city is located with a bit more context. Same for a path: it puts the origin and destination on the viewport edges, whereas I generally want to locate the route, therefore see slightly more context. Slightly enough that it's painful.
brainburn 11y ago
I think above all they test on fast internet connections.
- TylerE 11y ago
  Honestly, I have an ~110Mb cable connection (From a fast CDN I can acheive downloads in excess of 13MB/sec) and new Google Maps is still a dumpster fire that is inferior to old Google Maps in every way I can imagine.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Ditto and I have a gigabit connection. Slooooow. I just profiled the maps start page and it transferred 2.5MB in 182 requests and took 2.56s to load. This compared to 544ms for the Google homepage. It's like their optimization team never got invited to Google Maps.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  It's a CPU+GPU hog.
7952 11y ago
It always feels like they concentrate on the mobile navigation product and ignore the desktop which has a much wider range of uses.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
arikrak 11y ago
In their bid to keep things clean and automatic, they really made everything more confusing. I know people who have gotten lost because they didn't realize Google maps was hiding directions. They always try to do things instantly instead of letting the user press enter. (This is especially annoying on Google Express.) There's something to be said for the old web when you clicked and then got results...
- scintill76 11y ago
  I hate that feeling of having to type as fast as possible, so the instant fetching won't waste bandwidth or distract me before I've finished giving it all the information it will need. Multi-step processes like getting directions can be annoying this way, as it reloads every time you change a parameter (like entering an address, swapping source and dest. addresses, or changing transportation mode), so if you have to do all three to get what you actually want you're really going to be waiting. Am I just a weird user? I mean, I know my frustration isn't very rational, but is user frustration ever rational? It hurts the product either way. Sometimes I just do a general Google search (from Chrome's omnibar with Instant searching disabled) for the directions I need. It usually auto-detects it's a maps query and has a card ready to go with options. Then I don't have to wait for suggestions to load or for the map to pan around.
  - arikrak 11y ago
    I just tried a one-step query in Google Maps itself, and it worked, so that's helpful ("From Address 1 to Address 2").
chrismarlow9 11y ago
Use it through voice. Eg, "Navigate to XXX". Easiest way I've found to use it.
- shdon 11y ago
  That works reasonably well if you're in an English speaking country. In other countries, not so much. Especially when trying to specify an address.
krick 11y ago
To be fair, are there good web maps? OSM is much worse, for instance. Google maps are pretty usable by comparison.
- kuschku 11y ago
  I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess. Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly. And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2] [1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
  - plonh 11y ago
    Apropros of the other Google thread today, the here.com link completely fails: it shows an full screen ad for the mobile app, with no way to get to the map.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      For me it works just fine.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Thanks for the alternative!!
sixothree 11y ago
Google Maps on the iPhone really is awful. Sometimes you swipe to close something, sometimes you click a teeny tiny little x, sometimes you click a left arrow as in going back.
jbrooksuk 11y ago
I get so confused with Google Maps every time I use it to find trip lengths. I can never work out how to add a destination.
hellbanner 11y ago
Does anyone reading this work at Google?

alooPotato 11y ago

I'm curious, do you have any specifical examples of things that got worse? I.e. density, new compose moles? Why are they worse for you specifically.

bradleyjg 11y ago
The nine dot menu instead of a small header row was a terrible change. First because it is an extra click every time for a commonly used task and second because no one had any clue what the hell nine dots were supposed to mean. A friend of mine that worked at google told me the official name is "app drawer". I have no idea how that's supposed to look like a drawer. More generally the entire move from words to pictograms looks to me like a regression to a technology that was superseded by a superior one 5000 years ago.
- alooPotato 11y ago
  Really? That seems smart to me. How often do you use the links in that drawer? Seems better to remove all that text up top and replace with a small icon for something that is rarely used.
  - YoureWrong 11y ago
    Well, I for one used those links to navigate between Google properties: from Gmail to YouTube, for instance. Now I just don't go to YouTube when something on Gmail piques my interest. That one click was a huge amount of effort for casual browsing, and forces a re-evaluation of idle browsing between properties.
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    Ugh, you definitely do not use more multiple google services if you think that. Even today, years afterwards, I was on the phone checking my calendar and I totally lost the train of the conversation as I was hunting in that dumbass thing for the calendar. The worst part is that, yes, the top was getting stuffed, but instead of letting you choose what you wanted in your menu, they added that navigation monstrosity instead.

CydeWeys 11y ago

Everyone at Google uses gmail.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

vectorjohn 11y ago

Well, you didn't ask me, but I think it's gotten progressively better, and better, and better. Different, sure, and if your definition of worse is "different than before", well, you aren't going to like it. So, just to give a counter point.

lackbeard 11y ago

I agree and I wish I had insight into what exactly is going on inside Google. A couple of hypotheses: 1. Someone (or a group of people) within mistakenly believes this design aesthetic[1] is good and have gained a lot of political power. I guess they like things that look pretty in screenshots instead of things that are actually useful or intuitive? 2. They're heavily optimizing for some metric (engagement, user growth, whatever) that is orthogonal to (or has a small component along) the usability vector. [1] Simplistic defaults, not easily configurable, flat, tons of whitespace, etc...

inthewoods 11y ago

When you say gmail.com has gotten worse, do you mean the overall quality of the application or the user interface design? You say the first but the examples you mention sound like bugs.

kodr 11y ago
try the new inbox, I find it pretty slow, with all the sliding tabs, and with less features (no raw text, hard to edit inline, etc...)
72deluxe 11y ago
The priority inbox thankfully can be turned off. It was trying to solve a problem that didn't exist - the ability to sort messages. The tagging of incoming mail with tags sorted that problem, and search made finding mail a moot point too. I disabled priority inbox on browser and mobile devices and it's very usable again, so thanks to whoever kept that as an option.

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago

Also they recently removed the ability to save images directly from Google Image Search in Chrome on Android. In what world does removing functionality make life better for anyone?

72deluxe 11y ago
This appears to be an irritating trend. Look at the gedit redesign on GNOME3 and see how the removal of all buttons and features is heralded as a GOOD thing?!?!?! I understand the "let's not confuse the user" approach but simplifying everything down to have zero features reduces the computer to a useless tool, as all the features have gone. It's like a Swiss army knife where they decided that all the blades and options were too fiddly and confusing so they just give you a spork instead.