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I think the lesson here isn't so much about April Fools as it is about user interface design. Google put an orange warning on the button to let users know that

by loudmax 11y ago

I think the lesson here isn't so much about April Fools as it is about user interface design. Google put an orange warning on the button to let users know that the button would do something different, and people still clicked it out of habit. We users simply don't expect that buttons will suddenly change functionality. Google felt that the warnings they had in place were sufficient. Clearly they weren't.

tmptmp 11y ago
What if tomorrow some fools at Google think it is okay to play April fools prank with their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes berserk due to that? This type of foolish pranks should backfire more strikingly. If they cannot treat their main (or at least one of the very important) business seriously, then they may face some very unpleasant things later.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  What if tomorrow some engineers at Google think it is okay to do a normal update to their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes berserk due to that?
  - tmptmp 11y ago
    I did not say that this is impossible. It seems you are confused between accidental bugs and deliberate pranks. So, to address your issue: 1) it would not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their cars/robots should have passed some serious and rigorous testing/verification and the business/physical impact on end-user experience must have been assessed before rolling the "normal" updates; 2) and a serious business entity will not allow any such deliberate/damaging prank to slip through such a process.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      > 1) it would not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their cars/robots should have passed some serious and rigorous testing/verification and the business/physical impact on end-user experience must have been assessed before rolling the "normal" updates; So your point here is that safety-critical updates need to be rigorously tested? I agree with that, but I don't see any connection to whether it's okay to have pranks. I'm not confusing bugs and pranks, my entire point is that they're quite separate. Your bug risk is there with or without pranks. So if you feel like adding a prank, go ahead, just subject it to the same safety testing. That they released a UI update that annoys people does not imply anything about their ability to do safety testing. > 2) and a serious business entity will not allow any such deliberate/damaging prank to slip through such a process. I'll split "deliberate/damaging" into multiple cases. Deliberate pranks: those are deliberate, they don't "slip through". Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here. Non-safety-related damages: this getting through does not imply they have bad safey testing, so the comment about cars/robots going berserk is a non-sequitur.
      - tmptmp 11y ago
        >>Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here. Please define safety. People lost their jobs due to this irresponsible prank. People might have missed replies from their doctors due to such foolishness. If now Google says that that's according to their "terms and conditions" then well, it clearly shows that Google is unreliable.
        Dylan16807 11y ago
        'Safety' being the kind of worry you were trying to project when you mentioned cars and robots going berserk.
        tmptmp 11y ago
        That's your notion of safety. For me (and I am sure for many others too) it means a product that is critical to my my workflow and the one on which my financial, health and other such critical aspects of life depend, if such a product (here Gmail) goes berserk due to some foolish prank played by the company then the company (here Google) is irresponsible and unreliable. Cars and robots present only some kinds of safety problems, not all.
erroneousfunk 11y ago
>We users simply don't expect that buttons will suddenly change functionality. I see this over and over again. Users don't read things they assume are static. Users navigate by item placement, rather than color/text/size/shape. This is interface design 101. On black Friday last year, I ordered a nice sheet set as a Christmas present for my SO, and the website was set up such that you could click through all the different colors and sizes for each sheet set and the same product page would simply update with Ajax to include new images/prices. So I found the sheets that I wanted and clicked "Add to Cart" -- the location of the button never changed, so I didn't really have to look at it in order to do this. I found out only much later that the "Add to Cart" button updated on a few of the sheet sets to include a small "Will ship on <date two months in the future>" message above it, indicating that they were out of stock. The button itself remained unchanged, and in the same position. The company was like "well, we warned you on the ordering page" I had to go back to the website to figure out what they were talking about. They ended up changing their policy of offering out of stock items for sale, in response to massive customer backlash. If they actually wanted to notify users, they could have grayed out the "Add to Cart" button and created a new "Reserve for <Date>" or "Pre-Order, ships <Date>" button in a different location (probably below the "Add to Cart"). ALWAYS assume users won't notice your message, unless you force them to do something different than what they're used to.
tyingq 11y ago
Personally, I think it's more about responsible policy when your email client has a roughly 16% market share. They have to know that people occasionally use gmail for things that matter. Given the size of the user base, any kind of easter egg/joke/prank is going to create issues.
Manishearth 11y ago
There's a flipside to this too. On one end of the spectrum, you have people who use gmail all the time who expect a button to be someplace and will just click it from peripheral vision. Some may not even notice that it's orange, others may subconsciously ignore the orange since these days UI changes all the time but nobody's going to put a prominent button at the bottom of an email form that's not "Send", right? On the other end of the spectrum, you have folks who are not used to the internet at all, and only use a couple of sites (like gmail) after being instructed how to by friends or relatives. These folks know to click a "send" button. A "send" button with a little microphone drawing looks totally ok to click from this POV.
muraiki 11y ago
Also, as a colorblind user, that "orange warning button" was instead a "really bright click me button".

by loudmax 11y ago

tmptmp 11y ago

What if tomorrow some fools at Google think it is okay to play April fools prank with their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes berserk due to that? This type of foolish pranks should backfire more strikingly. If they cannot treat their main (or at least one of the very important) business seriously, then they may face some very unpleasant things later.

Dylan16807 11y ago
What if tomorrow some engineers at Google think it is okay to do a normal update to their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes berserk due to that?
- tmptmp 11y ago
  I did not say that this is impossible. It seems you are confused between accidental bugs and deliberate pranks. So, to address your issue: 1) it would not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their cars/robots should have passed some serious and rigorous testing/verification and the business/physical impact on end-user experience must have been assessed before rolling the "normal" updates; 2) and a serious business entity will not allow any such deliberate/damaging prank to slip through such a process.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    > 1) it would not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their cars/robots should have passed some serious and rigorous testing/verification and the business/physical impact on end-user experience must have been assessed before rolling the "normal" updates; So your point here is that safety-critical updates need to be rigorously tested? I agree with that, but I don't see any connection to whether it's okay to have pranks. I'm not confusing bugs and pranks, my entire point is that they're quite separate. Your bug risk is there with or without pranks. So if you feel like adding a prank, go ahead, just subject it to the same safety testing. That they released a UI update that annoys people does not imply anything about their ability to do safety testing. > 2) and a serious business entity will not allow any such deliberate/damaging prank to slip through such a process. I'll split "deliberate/damaging" into multiple cases. Deliberate pranks: those are deliberate, they don't "slip through". Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here. Non-safety-related damages: this getting through does not imply they have bad safey testing, so the comment about cars/robots going berserk is a non-sequitur.
    - tmptmp 11y ago
      >>Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here. Please define safety. People lost their jobs due to this irresponsible prank. People might have missed replies from their doctors due to such foolishness. If now Google says that that's according to their "terms and conditions" then well, it clearly shows that Google is unreliable.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        'Safety' being the kind of worry you were trying to project when you mentioned cars and robots going berserk.
        tmptmp 11y ago
        That's your notion of safety. For me (and I am sure for many others too) it means a product that is critical to my my workflow and the one on which my financial, health and other such critical aspects of life depend, if such a product (here Gmail) goes berserk due to some foolish prank played by the company then the company (here Google) is irresponsible and unreliable. Cars and robots present only some kinds of safety problems, not all.

erroneousfunk 11y ago

>We users simply don't expect that buttons will suddenly change functionality. I see this over and over again. Users don't read things they assume are static. Users navigate by item placement, rather than color/text/size/shape. This is interface design 101. On black Friday last year, I ordered a nice sheet set as a Christmas present for my SO, and the website was set up such that you could click through all the different colors and sizes for each sheet set and the same product page would simply update with Ajax to include new images/prices. So I found the sheets that I wanted and clicked "Add to Cart" -- the location of the button never changed, so I didn't really have to look at it in order to do this. I found out only much later that the "Add to Cart" button updated on a few of the sheet sets to include a small "Will ship on <date two months in the future>" message above it, indicating that they were out of stock. The button itself remained unchanged, and in the same position. The company was like "well, we warned you on the ordering page" I had to go back to the website to figure out what they were talking about. They ended up changing their policy of offering out of stock items for sale, in response to massive customer backlash. If they actually wanted to notify users, they could have grayed out the "Add to Cart" button and created a new "Reserve for <Date>" or "Pre-Order, ships <Date>" button in a different location (probably below the "Add to Cart"). ALWAYS assume users won't notice your message, unless you force them to do something different than what they're used to.

tyingq 11y ago

Personally, I think it's more about responsible policy when your email client has a roughly 16% market share. They have to know that people occasionally use gmail for things that matter. Given the size of the user base, any kind of easter egg/joke/prank is going to create issues.

Manishearth 11y ago

There's a flipside to this too. On one end of the spectrum, you have people who use gmail all the time who expect a button to be someplace and will just click it from peripheral vision. Some may not even notice that it's orange, others may subconsciously ignore the orange since these days UI changes all the time but nobody's going to put a prominent button at the bottom of an email form that's not "Send", right? On the other end of the spectrum, you have folks who are not used to the internet at all, and only use a couple of sites (like gmail) after being instructed how to by friends or relatives. These folks know to click a "send" button. A "send" button with a little microphone drawing looks totally ok to click from this POV.

muraiki 11y ago

Also, as a colorblind user, that "orange warning button" was instead a "really bright click me button".