8 ms·

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 fo

by 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.
  - newsignup 11y ago
    Pinterest? Design is only a part of the experience, most of the value comes from usefulness.
    - felipeerias 11y ago
      It depends on the content and the users' goals. Pinterest is mainly focused on pictures and its users like to scroll at leisure through long lists, collecting items that catch their eye. On the other hand, G+ is more focused on reading single articles: notice an interesting headline, read the first few lines, click to read more. This distinction between grazing for images and hunting for text articles is why lack of horizontal alignment makes Pinterest more enjoyable and G+ harder to use.
  - sirtastic 11y ago
    Didn't say it was the right thing to do but that is surely up for debate though it is definitely a current design yes-yes. Personally, I like the card trend. It makes designing for responsive a bit easier and I enjoy the material looks which plays well with "cards'.
vilhelm_s 11y ago
But Google+ used to be single column! Then one day they switched to the two-column card layout, the content was exactly the same but suddenly you needed to scroll up and down to be able to read both columns. (i.e. when you finish reading an item in one column you have to scroll back up to get to the beginning of the next item in the other column). I really wonder why they decided to change it.
- RyanZAG 11y ago
  It definitely looks better when viewed as a screenshot or in a graphic design presentation. Of course actual usability is far worse, but nobody cares about that. Only how shiny it is. The people making the decisions on which design to go for are given screenshot or mockup presentations in 5 minutes and asked to choose which design to go for. They will always go for the shiniest one, and you end up with stuff like this. There's some comment about the low attention span we force on executives by making them take 1000s of decisions per day that they aren't even experts in and rewarding them for it in all this.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    Somewhat counterintuitive... I mean Google knows better than relying on stills for what is interactive content, right?
    - tajen 11y ago
      I don't know, did they ever hire an Apple designer? Ah, no, they had a no-poach agreement. Perhaps they had to revert on poaching Pinterest designers, though.
  - 21echoes 11y ago
    ... you honestly think Google has no analytics on whether or not design changes affect UX? And that they'd stick with a significantly worse-performing page?
    - nissehulth 11y ago
tapp 11y ago
> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Interesting. Could you provide any links/citations for this? I ask because it feels like practically every designer I talk with these days wants to force a card layout onto everything (even text-oriented sites) and I'd love to hear the other side.
- XJOKOLAT 11y ago
  +1 for a damned list ... I mean look at the front of hacker news. Speed. Read.
  - bhaumik 11y ago
    HN isn't considered great design by majority of users outside this community.
    - krapp 11y ago
      It isn't necessarily considered great design inside either, judging by how popular Hacker News plugins and readers are. But a pretty strong argument can be made that, for sites focused primarily on text and reading, simple layouts may sometimes sometimes be better than complex ones.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        HN is kept this way on purpose. That the GenPop doesn't like it is a feature, not a bug. As for designing sites focused on reading, I wholeheartedly agree with this: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com.
        phaemon 11y ago
        Almost. I agree more with this: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
markdown 11y ago
> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Pinterest.
- sytelus 11y ago
  Pintrest is different use case. Pins typically have little other content than images for consumption and card design works great where major content is images.
- bluthru 11y ago
  That's different. You're supposed to peruse like a catalogue.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  A site I hate, avoid like the plague, and block via /etc/hosts where possible. But thanks for the example.
  - markdown 11y ago
    I'm sure Pinterest appreciates that. Users outside the target market drain resources for no benefit.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
kldavenport 11y ago
Amazon's UX designers feel the same way. G+'s card layout does not make it easy to infer what's the latest vs the most commented on item and what the logic is behind it's positioning laterally. I think basic gestalt principles in cognitive science would support the problem with laterally adjacent but vertically edge overlapping tile placement.
mattlutze 11y ago
It's in vogue in the design community where the primary use case is passively consuming images and media. This seems to be where Google is sending Google+, and how all the feeds I still have followed on it are using the service -- sentence of text + image/video. From what I understood in the post and a few reviews of it, Google don't (and shouldn't) want to compete with Facebook in friend cross-posting interaction activities. > Making consumption choice-free, decision-free and friction-free should be the guiding principle in all social apps. In what world is that true? The point of social interaction enabling apps is to increase the likelihood of users regularly choosing to abandon passive consumption and interact with things. Friction is the only thing in your maxim that makes sense I'm afraid.
michel-slm 11y ago
As one of those loyal Reader users, I have since switched to Inoreader via Feedly. For me, there is no single view that works for everything, really -- and the nice thing about a proper feed reader is that you can have a customized display per feed group. My articles are normally either in list or magazine views, and only graphically-heavy feed groups (like comics or photos) are in card view.

by sytelus 11y ago

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.
- newsignup 11y ago
  Pinterest? Design is only a part of the experience, most of the value comes from usefulness.
  - felipeerias 11y ago
    It depends on the content and the users' goals. Pinterest is mainly focused on pictures and its users like to scroll at leisure through long lists, collecting items that catch their eye. On the other hand, G+ is more focused on reading single articles: notice an interesting headline, read the first few lines, click to read more. This distinction between grazing for images and hunting for text articles is why lack of horizontal alignment makes Pinterest more enjoyable and G+ harder to use.
- sirtastic 11y ago
  Didn't say it was the right thing to do but that is surely up for debate though it is definitely a current design yes-yes. Personally, I like the card trend. It makes designing for responsive a bit easier and I enjoy the material looks which plays well with "cards'.

vilhelm_s 11y ago

But Google+ used to be single column! Then one day they switched to the two-column card layout, the content was exactly the same but suddenly you needed to scroll up and down to be able to read both columns. (i.e. when you finish reading an item in one column you have to scroll back up to get to the beginning of the next item in the other column). I really wonder why they decided to change it.

RyanZAG 11y ago
It definitely looks better when viewed as a screenshot or in a graphic design presentation. Of course actual usability is far worse, but nobody cares about that. Only how shiny it is. The people making the decisions on which design to go for are given screenshot or mockup presentations in 5 minutes and asked to choose which design to go for. They will always go for the shiniest one, and you end up with stuff like this. There's some comment about the low attention span we force on executives by making them take 1000s of decisions per day that they aren't even experts in and rewarding them for it in all this.
- r00fus 11y ago
  Somewhat counterintuitive... I mean Google knows better than relying on stills for what is interactive content, right?
  - tajen 11y ago
    I don't know, did they ever hire an Apple designer? Ah, no, they had a no-poach agreement. Perhaps they had to revert on poaching Pinterest designers, though.
- 21echoes 11y ago
  ... you honestly think Google has no analytics on whether or not design changes affect UX? And that they'd stick with a significantly worse-performing page?
  - nissehulth 11y ago

tapp 11y ago

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Interesting. Could you provide any links/citations for this? I ask because it feels like practically every designer I talk with these days wants to force a card layout onto everything (even text-oriented sites) and I'd love to hear the other side.

XJOKOLAT 11y ago
+1 for a damned list ... I mean look at the front of hacker news. Speed. Read.
- bhaumik 11y ago
  HN isn't considered great design by majority of users outside this community.
  - krapp 11y ago
    It isn't necessarily considered great design inside either, judging by how popular Hacker News plugins and readers are. But a pretty strong argument can be made that, for sites focused primarily on text and reading, simple layouts may sometimes sometimes be better than complex ones.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      HN is kept this way on purpose. That the GenPop doesn't like it is a feature, not a bug. As for designing sites focused on reading, I wholeheartedly agree with this: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com http://motherfuckingwebsite.com.
      - phaemon 11y ago
        Almost. I agree more with this: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

markdown 11y ago

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Pinterest.

sytelus 11y ago
Pintrest is different use case. Pins typically have little other content than images for consumption and card design works great where major content is images.
bluthru 11y ago
That's different. You're supposed to peruse like a catalogue.
dredmorbius 11y ago
A site I hate, avoid like the plague, and block via /etc/hosts where possible. But thanks for the example.
- markdown 11y ago
  I'm sure Pinterest appreciates that. Users outside the target market drain resources for no benefit.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

kldavenport 11y ago

Amazon's UX designers feel the same way. G+'s card layout does not make it easy to infer what's the latest vs the most commented on item and what the logic is behind it's positioning laterally. I think basic gestalt principles in cognitive science would support the problem with laterally adjacent but vertically edge overlapping tile placement.

mattlutze 11y ago

It's in vogue in the design community where the primary use case is passively consuming images and media. This seems to be where Google is sending Google+, and how all the feeds I still have followed on it are using the service -- sentence of text + image/video. From what I understood in the post and a few reviews of it, Google don't (and shouldn't) want to compete with Facebook in friend cross-posting interaction activities. > Making consumption choice-free, decision-free and friction-free should be the guiding principle in all social apps. In what world is that true? The point of social interaction enabling apps is to increase the likelihood of users regularly choosing to abandon passive consumption and interact with things. Friction is the only thing in your maxim that makes sense I'm afraid.

michel-slm 11y ago

As one of those loyal Reader users, I have since switched to Inoreader via Feedly. For me, there is no single view that works for everything, really -- and the nice thing about a proper feed reader is that you can have a customized display per feed group. My articles are normally either in list or magazine views, and only graphically-heavy feed groups (like comics or photos) are in card view.