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Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I

Google seem to keep making worse the thing that matters most to me. What I want is to conveniently read. I want to see content, from a variety of sources. I want density. I want to catch up and be aware. It was like that in the earlier days. Every update kept reducing the amount of visible content, and severe reductions in density. Here is a screenshot of my screen - http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png http://i.imgur.com/fM2WIVf.png (1920x1200) - almost two million pixels. There are a total of 7 (yes seven) sentences of article and 5 sentences of comments. I have to click and/or scroll to see anything more. (This is their densest layout - the single column version has a total of 4 sentences.) With Reader they had a community of people who read a lot, and an interface design that worked well for doing that. They took that away. By not having access via an open standard like RSS for G+ streams, they don't even allow alternative interfaces that can address their problems. I can only conclude that the people who persevere with G+ do so despite it, not because of it. They must also be very patient and do a heck of a lot of scrolling.

toyg 11y ago
It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook.
- yoodenvranx 11y ago
  The new reddit mobile page has the same problem. On the old http://i.reddit.com http://i.reddit.com I usually get 1-3 more links per page than on the new http://m.reddit.com http://m.reddit.com Who actually thinks that all that padding and those stupid navbars are a good idea? On mobile my screen estate is very valuable and I don't want to waste it on unnecessary things.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    And yet they already have just what you want, why are they wasting time re-inventing it! http://reddit.com/.compact http://reddit.com/.compact
    - yoodenvranx 11y ago
      Http://i.reddit.com is the same as adding ".compact" to a link. I also don't understand the redesign. The old version is way better then the new version, but I guess it just does not look flat and material enough.
      - andrepd 11y ago
        As a major point in their favour, at least they kept the old version. They could have just redesigned the webpage and put it on i.reddit.com. Instead I can keep using the same good old layout while those who want can use the new m.reddit.com. That's more than I can say for many, many other things, where whether I like it or not I'm forced to have the latest design fad (flat, pastel colours, long and inefficient animations and huge, unnecessary padding nowadays) shoved down my throat.
        x1798DE 11y ago
        I know nothing about this, but there's a flag on https://m.reddit.com https://m.reddit.com that says "Beta", and on https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com there's a link to "try the beta", so I think it remains to be seen whether the old version is still available when m gets out of beta.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Designers from San Francisco, that's who. Current design trends favor "negative space", so text has to be spaced widely, with huge margins and hairsbreadth-thin fonts.
    - nosuchthing 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - GrantS 11y ago
    It's true, but it's such a shame. I still remember the day metacritic switched away from their original design [1] where every movie currently in theaters was in that single column on the left hand side. You visited one page, you looked at it for 15 seconds and you were done. Apparently this was not the best way to make money, but it was so useful. [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20090117041216/http://metacritic.com/film https://web.archive.org/web/20090117041216/http://metacritic...
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      That's how for-profit world works. It's not about providing value to customer - it's to provide as little value as you can get away with wile still getting paid. If a company can sabotage their customer's experience and make him pay more at the same time (whether directly or via ads), the company will pick that option. This is the incentive gradient that's present everywhere, especially on the Internet - that's why I personally won't mind if ad blocking will kill all ad-supported websites. I'll call it good riddance.
- nostromo 11y ago
  I was with you until you dissed Pinterest. Pinterest is very information dense. It utilizes every inch of screen space, and it does so without looking cramped at all. It's a huge design success.
  - sp332 11y ago
    It seems very image-oriented though. I wouldn't try to read news on it.
    - FoeNyx 11y ago
      "A picture is worth a thousand words"
      - 6d0debc071 11y ago
        Depends on the words, the picture and the audience. I wouldn't attempt to understand your API's system contract via a picture of the computer. One of the concerns I have is that we may end up moving to a very image-oriented media that finds it difficult to meaningfully communicate certain thoughts - and perhaps encourages an audience largely unable and/or unwilling to meaningfully attempt to understand them.
        Animats 11y ago
        That's television. The web is a step up from TV in that regard.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        And they said the same thing about TV just a decade ago. I'm pretty sure it's still bullshit, just like it was wrt. TV.
    - adimitrov 11y ago
      Well, but it's not for news — it's not supposed to be, and that's OK. I don't use pinterest much, except for creative pursuits. For example, browsing for inspiration for calligraphic scripts is a lot of fun on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=textura+quadrata https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=textura+quadrata https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=cadel+flourish https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=cadel+flourish https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=caligrafitti https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=caligrafitti I treat it as a source of inspiration, not information.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Hang on, the problem with Pinterest is the aggressive user hostile "sign in" stuff on the apps and mobile pages. But Pinterest is, for what it is, really freaking good. If you want humanitarian faces or Japanese ceramic or Scandi Furniture or etc you'd be daft to ignore Pinterest.
  - bobwaycott 11y ago
    >> the problem with Pinterest is the aggressive user hostile "sign in" stuff on the apps and mobile pages. Spot on. Desktop pages are just as bad. It seriously annoys to no end. If it was a paid service, I could understand.
- vijayr 11y ago
  Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows That crowd is way bigger than the crowd that hangs out at places like HN. So it would make sense for G+ to go after them, no? This is a numbers game.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    Sadly yes. Doesn't mean I can't feel sad that is the case, though.
  - izacus 11y ago
    That crowd is already camping out on Facebook, while G+ was being adopted by more techy people. Companies running for the same average Joe and forgetting about other groups of people leads to quick deaths of services.
    - drumdance 11y ago
      I've always thought Google should buy Github and make that the basis for a new G+. It's too late now but a few years ago who knows.
  - ajmurmann 11y ago
    I don't think it's either or. I obviously read hacker news, but I'm also very passionate about ceramics especially Japanese and Korean ceramics and Pinterest is a treasure trove for images of work other people have done as well as new techniques. For contrast: I don't have a Facebook account.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Google have been tremendously coy about what their success metrics for G+ are, though they've played highly disengenuous all-but-utterly-fake numbers games in playing up "engagement" since the very beginning. I'd argue that the issue isn't numbers, but relevance. G+ is lousy in many ways but has a few small areas of success, notably its Notifications mechanic, a community which, for me, works fairly well, and a search which while pathetically under-featured is comprehensive and fast. Winning the numbers game for social vs. Facebook in its current incarnation is a fool's errand. Numerous people have pointed this out, including ex-Googlers pointing at the "Interest Graph" (though suggestions for following / pursuing this date to the first few months of G+). If Google does grab the Cosmo crowd, that's fine, so long as it doesn't also chase off the Nature/PLOS crowd in the process. Unfortunately, Google's proven more than happy to sling absolute snot (as in the G+ "What Snot" feature ... oh, no, that's "What's Hot"). Power users learn how to disable that instantly.
- andrepd 11y ago
  What's wrong with Pintrest?
- yitchelle 11y ago
  If there is a service that converts your G+ feed into a rss feed, would you use it?
  - rogerbinns 11y ago
    There were a few, but none worked reliably at all. I do use a external service that converts twitter to RSS (something they dropped a while back), but also have to redo those every year or so as the various services break or stop functioning. The thing about RSS is that it is a good match for providing a feed. By Google not providing that sort of thing, you have to use their user interface. Others can't try experiments, cater to certain usage styles, or introduce new ways of using the service. You'll note that twitter had that vibrant experimentation and growth, until they decided to cut that possibility in 2011 - http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/twitter-jack-dorsey-apology/ http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/twitter-jack-dorsey-apology/
    - yitchelle 11y ago
      A service like this will always be a band aid solution. You are at the mercy of the provider of the source data, and they can easily screw you up (as you have pointed out.)
- jmspring 11y ago
  Same goes for the Skype Client. These apps seem to want to treat PCs like mobile devices where the app owns the whole screen.
- yid 11y ago
  > Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. If this is the case, then it probably means that a majority of people find the less-dense layout easier to read. It would also explain why Reader didn't have enough usage to keep Google interested.
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
    > If this is the case, then it probably means that a majority of people find the less-dense layout easier to read. Maybe. But the service doesn't exist for the people using it to read, or to post either for that matter. They're not paying for it. If Google knows people would rather a different layout but don't care, it's because the people who are paying for it prefer it this way.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- agentdrtran 11y ago
  > they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook. Inferring a bit much there?
- techbullets 11y ago
  You'll like the condensed presentation of https://techbullets.com/ https://techbullets.com/ It's tech updates summarized into bite-sized updates which you can easily expand to explore deeper.
erispoe 11y ago
Packing the maximum of text on a screen is not what design is about. Having less content on a screen is a perfectly reasonnable choice if it means better interaction. I'm not saying they achieve this here, but interaction should be the criterion, not sheer density. Otherwise, get a Bloomberg Terminal.
gdulli 11y ago
Maybe I just don't see it in that screenshot but it looks like it doesn't have that option like Keep has where you can change the multi-column layout to a single one. Although in Keep sometimes you can change the view and it just ignores your setting, reverting back to the default layout. Keep seems like one of those things they never dogfooded. Like the way you open Keep on the web and it loads your entire history in the initial page load. Making the page load take 20-30 seconds (and stall the browser in the meantime) if you have a significant history. And being sluggish no matter what you want to do with it after that. Even if you just want to see your last few notes quickly, or add a new one, which is what I usually want to do. How could a product possibly get created like that if the creators are using it with a non-trivial amount of data?
- rogerbinns 11y ago
  > ... you can change the multi-column layout to a single one It is a setting. I mentioned in my comment that you can switch to that layout and get a total of 4 sentences on the screen. And a lot of white space. My pet peeve with Keep is how it keeps rearranging lists as the page is loading. I can't work out what the criteria is, but can rule out most recently changed and most recently used.
jhoechtl 11y ago
Preparing to make more space for advertisment
SquareWheel 11y ago
Just because you can fit more information into a space, doesn't mean you should. At a certain point it hurts user experience. http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Shots/BRU_Main_Screen.gif http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Shots/BRU_Main_Screen.gif UI design is largely about directing flow. Scrolling down is certainly not the end of the world, and hiding less-commonly used features helps make those which are used stand out.
- andreasvc 11y ago
  Yes that interface is bad. I think Reddit is a good example of an interface with high density that works. A page is simply a list of 25 links, while in your example there is the complexity of different kinds of elements and their relationships.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Thanks to such UX guidelines we don't have tools anymore, we have only toys and fluff. One of the most important characteristics of a tool is that you need to learn how to use it. Today's design is focused on making everything effortless from the get-go. But there's only one way to achieve this - and that is to dumb the thing down and cut out features until what you get is a very limited / pretty useless trinket. BRU is an extreme case, but it's clear that it is a tool. Spend 5 minutes looking at it / reading a manual, and you'll be infinitely more productive with it than with whatever the beautiful UX artpiece du jour is. And honestly, I'm tired of this dumbing down (= making useless) of everything. General-purpose computing is a very powerful technology and we're absolutely underutilizing it.
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    Very informative, and I would agree with this. A car dashboard seems complicated when you get into a car, but after you have had lessons, the car is a great tool. Nobody seems to be arguing that the cockpit needs simplification, yet in the computing industry (as you state) everything is dumbed down to etch-a-sketch simplicity for fear of alienating new users. Mixing consoles also look complicated to a first-time user but I don't think anyone would argue that they need simplification. Interestingly, Apple News app on the iPad uses cards and a simple layout, yet seems to work well and with no stuttering. This cannot be said for Google+ (and no, I don't want to join communities, stop showing them to me).
agumonkey 11y ago
Since the web has gone into distributed application / magazine, density has dropped. http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://justinjackson.ca/words.html TBC
- moonchrome 11y ago
  >http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ >You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi. Except that it's really hard to read on a wide screen. I get it - it's a satire - but it goes too far and fails to make a convincing point because it's not really a functional layout. There are good reasons for things in design like column/page width/ratios, margins, line spacing, font family/size etc. purely from usability standpoint (ignoring subjective/stylistic choices). You don't need to add 10MB of images and JS/CSS but making sure your sentence doesn't span over 20 something inches isn't over designing things. Third link is much better.
  - Liru 11y ago
    You may be interested in http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
    - moonchrome 11y ago
      Yes that really drives in on those points glad someone took the time to actually present them like that :)
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Why not make your window narrower?
    - brazzledazzle 11y ago
tdkl 11y ago
This is why my opinion of Material design is that it's pile of garbage. The mobile YouTube app being a prime example.
makomk 11y ago
I actually gave up using Google search on mobile a few weeks ago because of basically this. The information density had got to the point where it was basically useless - and this was search, their main product! (On the positive side, all the extra whitespace pushed the non-sponsored links way off the bottom of the screen. That must be profitable for them.)
danols 11y ago
If you become a power user of any Google product you are on deep water and are setting yourself up to be disappointed when they pull the rug under your feet retiring features or even products that you have learned to depend on. Never depend on a Google product or feature unless you are in the 80% regular user category.
- foxylad 11y ago
  One of the challenges of being a power user is accepting you're going to hit the boundaries of whatever product from whatever company it is. And "Google pulling the rug from under your feet"... please let's stop this ridiculous meme. Any company is entitled to withdraw a free service, and if you don't agree then go right ahead and develop a replacement for Reader. After five years of development and hosting costs with thankless users demanding new features and old interfaces all for free, I bet you'd pull the plug too.
  - danols 11y ago
    Sure they are obviously free to do what ever they want with their products and maybe "pulling the rug under your feet" is a bit dramatic but it is true that they are pulling features left and right (not only Reader) that unless it is used by the 80% enough is under hard scrutiny. But if the top 20% which is also the people that are going to help you innovate are getting tired of getting used to a product working in a certain way and then it no longer does they will be wary of being too dependent on products from that company.
drumdance 11y ago
It's funny because literally five minutes ago I was talking with our designer about how we need to take a cue from Reddit and put more information in less space.
sytelus 11y ago
I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is absolutely the core fundamental key to keep user interested. This is such a simple and basic design issue that I'm surprised no one is talking about and no one is fixing it. Making consumption choice-free, decision-free and friction-free should be the guiding principle in all social apps. Once you fix this problem, more users can start posting and vicious cycle can start to roll on. of course, the other issue is that G+ discourages cross posting, 3rd party apps and related APIs which again limits people who are willing to take on further friction. These issues are easily solvable and too glaring to ignore.
- sirtastic 11y ago
  > The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. I disagree-- it would appear to be exactly the opposite if you look at current design trends (checkout dribbble.com), cards look to be a very big yes-yes in the design community. I believe googles implementation of the cards within Google+ very poor UX. If they made each card the same height so your eyes can move about the page more orderly it might make Google+ more palatable. You are right in that it is very hard to digest the content with that design.
  - sytelus 11y ago
    Trending design ≠ efficient design. Lot of me-too designers try to copy what's on popular websites even though it's clearly a wrong approach and that's how bad designs become viral (Jumbotrones is another example which has become viral but has measurably lower engagement metrics). Also many designer falls in to side-by-side measurement trap while what they should be measuring is users engagement metrics. Card layout looks pretty in PowerPoints and SBS numbers would generally shine but any designer who have actually measured actual engagement metrics with card layout would agree that it's horrible idea. BTW, I'm taking about card design where there are more than one horizontally laid-out cards.
largote 11y ago
That screenshot is from the previously existing site, not the new version launched today.
macu 11y ago
I wonder if this keeps people mystified when they visit the news feed, wondering what's beyond the fold and scrolling their hours away.
tsurantino 11y ago
The experience is pretty awful. I am on a community of Computer Science students and it's hard to find threads I get updates for in my e-mail because they are horribly categorized. On the view you attached, you'll find it incredibly hard and annoying to focus on a particular thread. When viewing within a thread, you still have to expand each comment, and so on. Definitely a case of style over function. It's really frustrating.
cseelus 11y ago
Information density is one thing. For me the size of the text is just too small to read it comfortably, especially with longer posts.
NN88 11y ago
if they bring back google reader, i'm golden
- vubuntu 11y ago
  I moved to digg reader and it is pretty good.
wahsd 11y ago
It's not just G+, it's all across Google assets. The white-space drives me nuts. I'm convinced that along with the basic color palate Google thinks it's customers are 4 year olds or something.
- nailer 11y ago
  I personally prefer it than Facebooks super dense 'UNIX window manager from 2003' look.
- tdkl 11y ago
  You need to mask the fact you're collecting data somehow and what's better then cute Google doodles and colorful graphics ?
ocean3 11y ago
I do like the interface. I usually just scan the contents hence the card layout works fine. But don't like card interface for sites like hackernews/reddit. There i am mainly interested in user comments.
frik 11y ago
Please split YouTube comments from Google+. The YouTube comments used to be a traditional comment system, amd was a good source for infos related to the video. When the merged it with Google+ the comment quality tanked. Nowadays you read a lot of "hey my friends have a look at this video" with replies from friends. A very bad decision and user experience.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  That sucks from both ends. YouTube doesn't want to see G+'s comments. G+ users don't want their threads overwhelmed by YT comments. And, frankly, I've got less than zero interest in my activities on YouTube being public in any regard. I've created a randomly generated name for my latest Android device and even there I cannot compile lists of vidoes for my own use without making them public. At least not on YouTube itself. So I don't do that.
nilkn 11y ago
This is actually part of why my recent switch from Android to iOS was so refreshing. While material design looks great on some level, it seems to be so remarkably wasteful of space. Google+ actually feels claustrophobic to me in a way: there's so much content, and yet you can see so little of it at a time. It creates a feeling of being constantly lost.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
niutech 11y ago
You can use the basic version of Google+ - https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/ https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/

toyg 11y ago

It's not just a Google thing. Recently there was a HN thread on devmag.io -- they have the same problem. I measured it: in the same space HN gives me 18 stories, Devmag.io gives me barely 2. Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. They don't want people who know what RSS is, people who care about information density; they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook.

yoodenvranx 11y ago
The new reddit mobile page has the same problem. On the old http://i.reddit.com http://i.reddit.com I usually get 1-3 more links per page than on the new http://m.reddit.com http://m.reddit.com Who actually thinks that all that padding and those stupid navbars are a good idea? On mobile my screen estate is very valuable and I don't want to waste it on unnecessary things.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  And yet they already have just what you want, why are they wasting time re-inventing it! http://reddit.com/.compact http://reddit.com/.compact
  - yoodenvranx 11y ago
    Http://i.reddit.com is the same as adding ".compact" to a link. I also don't understand the redesign. The old version is way better then the new version, but I guess it just does not look flat and material enough.
    - andrepd 11y ago
      As a major point in their favour, at least they kept the old version. They could have just redesigned the webpage and put it on i.reddit.com. Instead I can keep using the same good old layout while those who want can use the new m.reddit.com. That's more than I can say for many, many other things, where whether I like it or not I'm forced to have the latest design fad (flat, pastel colours, long and inefficient animations and huge, unnecessary padding nowadays) shoved down my throat.
      - x1798DE 11y ago
        I know nothing about this, but there's a flag on https://m.reddit.com https://m.reddit.com that says "Beta", and on https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com there's a link to "try the beta", so I think it remains to be seen whether the old version is still available when m gets out of beta.
- bitwize 11y ago
  Designers from San Francisco, that's who. Current design trends favor "negative space", so text has to be spaced widely, with huge margins and hairsbreadth-thin fonts.
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- GrantS 11y ago
  It's true, but it's such a shame. I still remember the day metacritic switched away from their original design [1] where every movie currently in theaters was in that single column on the left hand side. You visited one page, you looked at it for 15 seconds and you were done. Apparently this was not the best way to make money, but it was so useful. [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20090117041216/http://metacritic.com/film https://web.archive.org/web/20090117041216/http://metacritic...
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    That's how for-profit world works. It's not about providing value to customer - it's to provide as little value as you can get away with wile still getting paid. If a company can sabotage their customer's experience and make him pay more at the same time (whether directly or via ads), the company will pick that option. This is the incentive gradient that's present everywhere, especially on the Internet - that's why I personally won't mind if ad blocking will kill all ad-supported websites. I'll call it good riddance.
nostromo 11y ago
I was with you until you dissed Pinterest. Pinterest is very information dense. It utilizes every inch of screen space, and it does so without looking cramped at all. It's a huge design success.
- sp332 11y ago
  It seems very image-oriented though. I wouldn't try to read news on it.
  - FoeNyx 11y ago
    "A picture is worth a thousand words"
    - 6d0debc071 11y ago
      Depends on the words, the picture and the audience. I wouldn't attempt to understand your API's system contract via a picture of the computer. One of the concerns I have is that we may end up moving to a very image-oriented media that finds it difficult to meaningfully communicate certain thoughts - and perhaps encourages an audience largely unable and/or unwilling to meaningfully attempt to understand them.
      - Animats 11y ago
        That's television. The web is a step up from TV in that regard.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        And they said the same thing about TV just a decade ago. I'm pretty sure it's still bullshit, just like it was wrt. TV.
  - adimitrov 11y ago
    Well, but it's not for news — it's not supposed to be, and that's OK. I don't use pinterest much, except for creative pursuits. For example, browsing for inspiration for calligraphic scripts is a lot of fun on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=textura+quadrata https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=textura+quadrata https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=cadel+flourish https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=cadel+flourish https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=caligrafitti https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=caligrafitti I treat it as a source of inspiration, not information.
DanBC 11y ago
Hang on, the problem with Pinterest is the aggressive user hostile "sign in" stuff on the apps and mobile pages. But Pinterest is, for what it is, really freaking good. If you want humanitarian faces or Japanese ceramic or Scandi Furniture or etc you'd be daft to ignore Pinterest.
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  >> the problem with Pinterest is the aggressive user hostile "sign in" stuff on the apps and mobile pages. Spot on. Desktop pages are just as bad. It seriously annoys to no end. If it was a paid service, I could understand.
vijayr 11y ago
Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows That crowd is way bigger than the crowd that hangs out at places like HN. So it would make sense for G+ to go after them, no? This is a numbers game.
- andrepd 11y ago
  Sadly yes. Doesn't mean I can't feel sad that is the case, though.
- izacus 11y ago
  That crowd is already camping out on Facebook, while G+ was being adopted by more techy people. Companies running for the same average Joe and forgetting about other groups of people leads to quick deaths of services.
  - drumdance 11y ago
    I've always thought Google should buy Github and make that the basis for a new G+. It's too late now but a few years ago who knows.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  I don't think it's either or. I obviously read hacker news, but I'm also very passionate about ceramics especially Japanese and Korean ceramics and Pinterest is a treasure trove for images of work other people have done as well as new techniques. For contrast: I don't have a Facebook account.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Google have been tremendously coy about what their success metrics for G+ are, though they've played highly disengenuous all-but-utterly-fake numbers games in playing up "engagement" since the very beginning. I'd argue that the issue isn't numbers, but relevance. G+ is lousy in many ways but has a few small areas of success, notably its Notifications mechanic, a community which, for me, works fairly well, and a search which while pathetically under-featured is comprehensive and fast. Winning the numbers game for social vs. Facebook in its current incarnation is a fool's errand. Numerous people have pointed this out, including ex-Googlers pointing at the "Interest Graph" (though suggestions for following / pursuing this date to the first few months of G+). If Google does grab the Cosmo crowd, that's fine, so long as it doesn't also chase off the Nature/PLOS crowd in the process. Unfortunately, Google's proven more than happy to sling absolute snot (as in the G+ "What Snot" feature ... oh, no, that's "What's Hot"). Power users learn how to disable that instantly.
andrepd 11y ago
What's wrong with Pintrest?
yitchelle 11y ago
If there is a service that converts your G+ feed into a rss feed, would you use it?
- rogerbinns 11y ago
  There were a few, but none worked reliably at all. I do use a external service that converts twitter to RSS (something they dropped a while back), but also have to redo those every year or so as the various services break or stop functioning. The thing about RSS is that it is a good match for providing a feed. By Google not providing that sort of thing, you have to use their user interface. Others can't try experiments, cater to certain usage styles, or introduce new ways of using the service. You'll note that twitter had that vibrant experimentation and growth, until they decided to cut that possibility in 2011 - http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/twitter-jack-dorsey-apology/ http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/twitter-jack-dorsey-apology/
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    A service like this will always be a band aid solution. You are at the mercy of the provider of the source data, and they can easily screw you up (as you have pointed out.)
jmspring 11y ago
Same goes for the Skype Client. These apps seem to want to treat PCs like mobile devices where the app owns the whole screen.
yid 11y ago
> Unfortunately, I think Google people know and they just don't care. If this is the case, then it probably means that a majority of people find the less-dense layout easier to read. It would also explain why Reader didn't have enough usage to keep Google interested.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  > If this is the case, then it probably means that a majority of people find the less-dense layout easier to read. Maybe. But the service doesn't exist for the people using it to read, or to post either for that matter. They're not paying for it. If Google knows people would rather a different layout but don't care, it's because the people who are paying for it prefer it this way.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
agentdrtran 11y ago
> they are going after the Pinterest crowd, the sort of people who read Cosmopolitan, watch reality shows, and post drunken pics on Facebook. Inferring a bit much there?
techbullets 11y ago
You'll like the condensed presentation of https://techbullets.com/ https://techbullets.com/ It's tech updates summarized into bite-sized updates which you can easily expand to explore deeper.

erispoe 11y ago

Packing the maximum of text on a screen is not what design is about. Having less content on a screen is a perfectly reasonnable choice if it means better interaction. I'm not saying they achieve this here, but interaction should be the criterion, not sheer density. Otherwise, get a Bloomberg Terminal.

gdulli 11y ago

Maybe I just don't see it in that screenshot but it looks like it doesn't have that option like Keep has where you can change the multi-column layout to a single one. Although in Keep sometimes you can change the view and it just ignores your setting, reverting back to the default layout. Keep seems like one of those things they never dogfooded. Like the way you open Keep on the web and it loads your entire history in the initial page load. Making the page load take 20-30 seconds (and stall the browser in the meantime) if you have a significant history. And being sluggish no matter what you want to do with it after that. Even if you just want to see your last few notes quickly, or add a new one, which is what I usually want to do. How could a product possibly get created like that if the creators are using it with a non-trivial amount of data?

rogerbinns 11y ago
> ... you can change the multi-column layout to a single one It is a setting. I mentioned in my comment that you can switch to that layout and get a total of 4 sentences on the screen. And a lot of white space. My pet peeve with Keep is how it keeps rearranging lists as the page is loading. I can't work out what the criteria is, but can rule out most recently changed and most recently used.

jhoechtl 11y ago

Preparing to make more space for advertisment

SquareWheel 11y ago

Just because you can fit more information into a space, doesn't mean you should. At a certain point it hurts user experience. http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Shots/BRU_Main_Screen.gif http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Shots/BRU_Main_Screen.gif UI design is largely about directing flow. Scrolling down is certainly not the end of the world, and hiding less-commonly used features helps make those which are used stand out.

andreasvc 11y ago
Yes that interface is bad. I think Reddit is a good example of an interface with high density that works. A page is simply a list of 25 links, while in your example there is the complexity of different kinds of elements and their relationships.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Thanks to such UX guidelines we don't have tools anymore, we have only toys and fluff. One of the most important characteristics of a tool is that you need to learn how to use it. Today's design is focused on making everything effortless from the get-go. But there's only one way to achieve this - and that is to dumb the thing down and cut out features until what you get is a very limited / pretty useless trinket. BRU is an extreme case, but it's clear that it is a tool. Spend 5 minutes looking at it / reading a manual, and you'll be infinitely more productive with it than with whatever the beautiful UX artpiece du jour is. And honestly, I'm tired of this dumbing down (= making useless) of everything. General-purpose computing is a very powerful technology and we're absolutely underutilizing it.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  Very informative, and I would agree with this. A car dashboard seems complicated when you get into a car, but after you have had lessons, the car is a great tool. Nobody seems to be arguing that the cockpit needs simplification, yet in the computing industry (as you state) everything is dumbed down to etch-a-sketch simplicity for fear of alienating new users. Mixing consoles also look complicated to a first-time user but I don't think anyone would argue that they need simplification. Interestingly, Apple News app on the iPad uses cards and a simple layout, yet seems to work well and with no stuttering. This cannot be said for Google+ (and no, I don't want to join communities, stop showing them to me).

agumonkey 11y ago

Since the web has gone into distributed application / magazine, density has dropped. http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://imgur.com/MRnd81J http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://justinjackson.ca/words.html http://justinjackson.ca/words.html TBC

moonchrome 11y ago
>http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ >You dumbass. You thought you needed media queries to be responsive, but no. Responsive means that it responds to whatever motherfucking screensize it's viewed on. This site doesn't care if you're on an iMac or a motherfucking Tamagotchi. Except that it's really hard to read on a wide screen. I get it - it's a satire - but it goes too far and fails to make a convincing point because it's not really a functional layout. There are good reasons for things in design like column/page width/ratios, margins, line spacing, font family/size etc. purely from usability standpoint (ignoring subjective/stylistic choices). You don't need to add 10MB of images and JS/CSS but making sure your sentence doesn't span over 20 something inches isn't over designing things. Third link is much better.
- Liru 11y ago
  You may be interested in http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
  - moonchrome 11y ago
    Yes that really drives in on those points glad someone took the time to actually present them like that :)
- mikeash 11y ago
  Why not make your window narrower?
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago

tdkl 11y ago

This is why my opinion of Material design is that it's pile of garbage. The mobile YouTube app being a prime example.

makomk 11y ago

I actually gave up using Google search on mobile a few weeks ago because of basically this. The information density had got to the point where it was basically useless - and this was search, their main product! (On the positive side, all the extra whitespace pushed the non-sponsored links way off the bottom of the screen. That must be profitable for them.)

danols 11y ago

If you become a power user of any Google product you are on deep water and are setting yourself up to be disappointed when they pull the rug under your feet retiring features or even products that you have learned to depend on. Never depend on a Google product or feature unless you are in the 80% regular user category.

foxylad 11y ago
One of the challenges of being a power user is accepting you're going to hit the boundaries of whatever product from whatever company it is. And "Google pulling the rug from under your feet"... please let's stop this ridiculous meme. Any company is entitled to withdraw a free service, and if you don't agree then go right ahead and develop a replacement for Reader. After five years of development and hosting costs with thankless users demanding new features and old interfaces all for free, I bet you'd pull the plug too.
- danols 11y ago
  Sure they are obviously free to do what ever they want with their products and maybe "pulling the rug under your feet" is a bit dramatic but it is true that they are pulling features left and right (not only Reader) that unless it is used by the 80% enough is under hard scrutiny. But if the top 20% which is also the people that are going to help you innovate are getting tired of getting used to a product working in a certain way and then it no longer does they will be wary of being too dependent on products from that company.

drumdance 11y ago

It's funny because literally five minutes ago I was talking with our designer about how we need to take a cue from Reddit and put more information in less space.

sytelus 11y ago

I think the biggest issue is the design. The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. It presents too many choices for the reader for where to focus. Users don't like to make choices because it represents friction in consumption. The FB layout is one item at a time with small column so eyes doesn't have to scan right to left too much. If user doesn't like item you just move on. The ranking of posts is absolutely the core fundamental key to keep user interested. This is such a simple and basic design issue that I'm surprised no one is talking about and no one is fixing it. Making consumption choice-free, decision-free and friction-free should be the guiding principle in all social apps. Once you fix this problem, more users can start posting and vicious cycle can start to roll on. of course, the other issue is that G+ discourages cross posting, 3rd party apps and related APIs which again limits people who are willing to take on further friction. These issues are easily solvable and too glaring to ignore.

sirtastic 11y ago
> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. I disagree-- it would appear to be exactly the opposite if you look at current design trends (checkout dribbble.com), cards look to be a very big yes-yes in the design community. I believe googles implementation of the cards within Google+ very poor UX. If they made each card the same height so your eyes can move about the page more orderly it might make Google+ more palatable. You are right in that it is very hard to digest the content with that design.
- sytelus 11y ago
  Trending design ≠ efficient design. Lot of me-too designers try to copy what's on popular websites even though it's clearly a wrong approach and that's how bad designs become viral (Jumbotrones is another example which has become viral but has measurably lower engagement metrics). Also many designer falls in to side-by-side measurement trap while what they should be measuring is users engagement metrics. Card layout looks pretty in PowerPoints and SBS numbers would generally shine but any designer who have actually measured actual engagement metrics with card layout would agree that it's horrible idea. BTW, I'm taking about card design where there are more than one horizontally laid-out cards.

largote 11y ago

That screenshot is from the previously existing site, not the new version launched today.

macu 11y ago

I wonder if this keeps people mystified when they visit the news feed, wondering what's beyond the fold and scrolling their hours away.

tsurantino 11y ago

The experience is pretty awful. I am on a community of Computer Science students and it's hard to find threads I get updates for in my e-mail because they are horribly categorized. On the view you attached, you'll find it incredibly hard and annoying to focus on a particular thread. When viewing within a thread, you still have to expand each comment, and so on. Definitely a case of style over function. It's really frustrating.

cseelus 11y ago

Information density is one thing. For me the size of the text is just too small to read it comfortably, especially with longer posts.

NN88 11y ago

if they bring back google reader, i'm golden

vubuntu 11y ago
I moved to digg reader and it is pretty good.

wahsd 11y ago

It's not just G+, it's all across Google assets. The white-space drives me nuts. I'm convinced that along with the basic color palate Google thinks it's customers are 4 year olds or something.

nailer 11y ago
I personally prefer it than Facebooks super dense 'UNIX window manager from 2003' look.
tdkl 11y ago
You need to mask the fact you're collecting data somehow and what's better then cute Google doodles and colorful graphics ?

ocean3 11y ago

I do like the interface. I usually just scan the contents hence the card layout works fine. But don't like card interface for sites like hackernews/reddit. There i am mainly interested in user comments.

frik 11y ago

Please split YouTube comments from Google+. The YouTube comments used to be a traditional comment system, amd was a good source for infos related to the video. When the merged it with Google+ the comment quality tanked. Nowadays you read a lot of "hey my friends have a look at this video" with replies from friends. A very bad decision and user experience.

dredmorbius 11y ago
That sucks from both ends. YouTube doesn't want to see G+'s comments. G+ users don't want their threads overwhelmed by YT comments. And, frankly, I've got less than zero interest in my activities on YouTube being public in any regard. I've created a randomly generated name for my latest Android device and even there I cannot compile lists of vidoes for my own use without making them public. At least not on YouTube itself. So I don't do that.

nilkn 11y ago

This is actually part of why my recent switch from Android to iOS was so refreshing. While material design looks great on some level, it seems to be so remarkably wasteful of space. Google+ actually feels claustrophobic to me in a way: there's so much content, and yet you can see so little of it at a time. It creates a feeling of being constantly lost.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

niutech 11y ago

You can use the basic version of Google+ - https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/ https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/