15 ms·

Why Gmail's new design is unsuitable for heavy use

253 points by jzb 15y ago

chimeracoder 15y ago
Gmail's redesign was what convinced me to finally switch to mutt. I receive a lot of emails. I have to respond to a lot of them quickly. I don't want a slick, modern-art-inspired user-interface - I just want to get in and out of my inbox as fast as possible, with minimal distractions.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Putting an ssh service that runs Gmail through a mutt-like interface is the kind of 20%-time project I would do if I were at Google.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    Alpine is the next best thing (via IMAP)
  - dan00 15y ago
    mutt + gmail + offlineimap
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      Is there a way to get archive, labels, and sending from multiple addresses to work? If so, I think I could abandon the web client completely.
- Jyaif 15y ago
  Well, a modern-art-inspired UI is an UI with minimal distractions.
mtkd 15y ago
I found the icons a bit challenging at first (as a heavy user) but through that now. It's really awesome to use in comparison with any other client I've worked with. If I could change one thing it would be the unread/read background contrast.
- steve-howard 15y ago
  I dunno. Is it ever good UI design to replace clearly labeled buttons with cute but confusing icons? Just because you can get used to it doesn't mean it's a good change.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    Yes, for heavy users, because it makes it easier to see the important textual content on the screen instead of a lot of UI elements.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      Agreed, a minimalistic (but fully functional) interface lacking eye-candy is a positive for heavy users. It reduces noise on-screen.
  - bluehavana 15y ago
    Yes. The time it takes to recognize something with your visual cortex is orders of magnitudes less than reading words. Learning what the icons mean might take a little time and one might argue that spacial patterns are learned when reading anyways.
    - lukeschlather 15y ago
      How do you know my visual cortex can't process words? It's just a few symbols, I doubt that the difference between one symbol and 10 is that different for a learning machine like the human brain. (Especially since the location of the symbols is what matters. They show up in the same place every time, you only need the general shape of the word to confirm that's that right one.)
- cpeterso 15y ago
  I also dislike that the email toolbar's buttons are now modal. (I don't believe they were modal before.) If select an email from a list, then new buttons appear and move the previous buttons to a different position on the page. This breaks users' muscle memory for clicking buttons quickly. I guess I should learn the gmail keyboard shortcuts..
JohnTHaller 15y ago
If you're a heavy email user, you should not be using webmail. You should be using a real email client.
- jzb 15y ago
  Gmail was actually OK for heavy use for a long time. And I've never found a mail client that I actually like - more like clients that suck less than others.
- stevenleeg 15y ago
  What argument do you have to support this? What can a native client do that a web-based one could not?
  - a3_nm 15y ago
    I'm currently using a setup where I can see incoming mail in a taskbar (unread count and subject), press Win-o to spawn mutt, enter to open first unread, z to archive, and qq<enter> to close mutt. With this, a lot of email is dealt with in six keystrokes and under two seconds total (no interruption in workflow). I'm not saying that you wouldn't be able to do this with a web-based mail client, but I think that the machinery to do that would be less natural. (My sense of what is natural might be warped, though.) Also, there is much to be said about the ability to customize your mail client to suit your needs. The very fact that people are complaining about Gmail's new design shows that a lot of people are relying on Google to tell them how they should manage their email, and try to adapt their needs to the tool rather than the other way around. This is not a technical limitation of web-based mail clients, but most webmails I know aren't really hackable.
    - mjschultz 15y ago
      > I'm not saying that you wouldn't be able to do this with a web-based mail client. In fact, using gmail should take fewer strokes than that. Assuming you have a keyboard shortcut to spawn a gmail window, enter will take you to the first message, and 'e' will archive that message. Command-Q/Alt-F4 to quit. Labels can be applied with an 'l' and the label name, next/last message is 'n'/'p'. The full list of keyboard shortcuts is available here: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594 https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594 It would, of course, be better if they let you customize the shortcuts and sped up the loading of the initial page.
2arrs2ells 15y ago
I've found that, using keyboard shortcuts (and with a decent Internet connection), Gmail becomes about as efficient as Pine/Alpine (I've never used mutt). I don't love the redesign (I think the placement/appearance of the "important" and "starred" markers is terrible), but since they didn't change keyboard shortcuts at all, I can still plow through reading/replying/labeling messages.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Yeah, my biggest complaint originally was the lack of density, since being about to see the maximum number of emails has long been a killer feature of Gmail, but they fixed that with the compact view. The contrast issues are there, but it really doesn't bother me because I'm in Gmail hours every day. All I need is consistency, responsiveness and comprehensive keyboard shortcuts.
awakeasleep 15y ago
There should be a publication archiving the superficially thoughtful, hate-filled tirades that occur in reaction to every change that happens to public facing things. Then, when we create something, we can look through the archives and see the volume of ire directed at what we've come to love, and draw a relaxed breath realizing you really can't please everyone.
- 2arrs2ells 15y ago
  A Google search for "Facebook outrage" is enough for me to remember that lesson.
- VMG 15y ago
  Not only that, but there will always be more critics than people who like it. I enjoy the new design but don't have the urge to constantly rave about it.
- airlocksoftware 15y ago
  There's a certain class of people for whom any change to something they are familiar with is automatically negative. I imagine that in 20 years, they'll be the market for phones with a physical dialer.
  - cousin_it 15y ago
    Haha, your argument is of a rare breed: it's self-negating. If the people belonging to your "certain class" automatically grow to enjoy what's familiar to them, then their first reaction to a new UI is the most unbiased information you're gonna get!
  - JabavuAdams 15y ago
    The real problem is that it's a lot easier to dismiss criticism than to sift through it to figure out what's valid and what's not. Yeah, it's just "those people", because everything new is automatically better...
- pbz 15y ago
  While I understand where you're coming from, I feel his criticism is well founded. There is noticeably less contrast and delineation. It also does take more to discover the interface - you have to actually hover over buttons. While you could argue that one would learn the buttons in time, the delineation issue won't go away. There's a reason they put a thin line around posts in G+
J_Darnley 15y ago
I wonder why he doesn't try the basic interface. It still has text buttons and all the "information density" you could need.
thurn 15y ago
I'm a heavy user, and I still have no idea what the buttons do because I exclusively use the keyboard shortcuts. I'd assume most really heavy Gmail users avoid using the mouse.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
I felt this was pretty fairly articulated critique of the changes to Gmail. And the author admits that some of their issue may be part of a resistance to change meme. I've gone on record with my issues about too much white space. And even in 'compact' mode it is less useful to me. Overall its the down side of G+ which has the effect of opening up things to change which perhaps shouldn't be changed. But on the positive side it creates opportunity for folks like Mailgunner to get in. Its the tech version of the circle of life.
tikhonj 15y ago
I actually rather like the new design. It looks better and is more consistent than before. Unlike the poster, I actually really like the simple geometric style it now uses. It's a nice break from the incessant rounded corners and gradients that so many other web sites seem to favor (HN's design is similarly refreshing). The icons are a major change and take getting used to, but I think they improve the experience overall. The one think I find really stupid are the gear icons--one in the top righthand corner for the Google+ style bar and one gmail-specific. Having two identical icons that do the same thing is bad. Apart from that, I think it's a good design. However, while I like the new design, I really dislike the default theme. Some of the gripes about separating content from the UI are addressed the other themes. I particularly like the "dusk" and "dark" ones. Overall, with a few reservations, I like where they're taking the design and hope to see more web apps follow suit.
carterschonwald 15y ago
My biggest issue personally with the new gmail design is that all the current theme options are "two tone". By this I mean that with the old themes, you could have 1 color for the background in the left pane, another for the menu area of the current folder, and possibly another for the background in the email thread/ composition region. For the new gmail look, theres just "background color" and "foreground color". Now I may just be a simple sentient hominid computer user, but most human beings that are neither horse nor hammerhead shark have this wonderful thing called depth perception (and color perception) which allows for more nuance in our perception than just "front bit" and "back thingy", and moreover our brain does a lot of heuristics when giving us our vision, one of which is using contrast in two neighboring objects to detect that they are separated (by those regions called borders). Phrased a bit more directly, I think the biggest problem with the new gmail / reader ui's is not aesthetics. Its not UI standard practice, its not this new found homogeneity or "sparseness", though these all tie into the underlying problem. Rather its that the human brain is optimized for using contrast in depth or color or shade as a core hinting tool in perception. If they're going to stick to general new style, they need to provide more dimensions in how different ui elements can be themed. The closest metaphorical analogue I can think of would be that the current ui approach would be like having the classic cartoon "Samurai Jack" (which has a very nice style that is notable for being one of the few cartoons that lack black outlines at all) being colored with only two very close shades of gray & a smattering of black and white in a few small places. Sure you can still see everything, but your brain has to work harder to actually keep track of it all.
tomrod 15y ago
What? Gmail redesigned? I use a desktop client, so I never really focus on the webside.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
cjfont 15y ago
Some comments: "A major problem that I have with the new interface is that Gmail has gone from text-based buttons to an icon-only design." The text is there, it's simply been converted into tooltips. Are you really going to need to have the text there after using the button a few dozen times? "The bad is that the compact is hard to read, and comfortable displays less information than the classic Gmail design." Perhaps it's because I'm using a custom theme and so my view is different, but I don't really see much different between "compact" and the old design. "Google has also removed the bottom toolbar from the interface. So if you're at the bottom of your inbox, you have to move the mouse back up to the top of the screen to archive, spam, mark messages read, and so forth." Seriously? Are you going to suffer from RSI from moving your mouse up the screen each time you view your inbox? Not sure why your cursor keeps ending up at the bottom of the screen each time you finish checking your inbox. The only points I can really agree with the author on is that the new interface is slower to use than before, and also on the excessive use of whitespace -- there does seem to be a lot of unused area with the new look (although it does make my theme look prettier).
- StuffMaster 15y ago
  >The text is there, it's simply been converted into tooltips. Are you really going to need to have the text there after using the button a few dozen times? Multiply this attitude by a hundred apps/websites and YES I WANT TEXT. I don't use the toolbars of half my apps because I don't know what the buttons do, and I shouldn't have to work to find out.
  - cjfont 15y ago
    There's a balance between using additional screen real estate for more info and the user having to take an extra step to get that additional info, such as hovering over a button. For some people, such as myself, there is more work involved for the eyes that have to scan over that extra content everyday as compared to hovering over an unknown button once in a blue moon.
    - robotresearcher 15y ago
Kev 15y ago
I've been using the new design for about a week and overall I think it's an improvement, but I've been griping non-stop about the chat/contact area hogging space even when you drag it down as small as possible. This comment started out as another one of those gripes, until I decided to make one more attempt to hide the chat area for good. Turns out that clicking on the speech bubble icon closes the contacts list/chat area. Can't believe it took me a week to try that.
davvid 15y ago
What's with the zero pixel left margin? Lots of websites seem to be doing that these days.
- gujk 15y ago
  Usually it is a variable margin that wasn't tested on a screen the width of a normal human's.
FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
I like the cleanliness of the new design and the use of whitespace to separate things. There are two general problems I have. One is the fact that the UI controls tend to blend in with the rest of the page, and the fact they're just icons isn't much help either. The other is inconsistency or otherwise controverting user expectation. The first problem means to mark something as spam I have to first remember where to look for the button that doesn't stand out. I then have to hover over it until the tooltip shows to make sure I've got the right one. The second one manifests itself in the behaviour of the toolbar, some of the UI element positions, and what I would call some rather basic principles: On the actual mail screen, the toolbar has a fixed position, so it always sticks to the top of the page when you scroll. On the inbox, it doesn't. Why not? The star icon is on the left on the inbox page. Why is it on the right when you view the email? (This has persisted from the old design, to be fair.) Why have they taken an Android design cue and put the form submission elements at the top of the page? When you fill in any form, you expect the submit/cancel buttons to be below the form you're filling in, not above. I have been caught out several times trying to scroll the compose page (that no longer scrolls at all), only to realise the button I'm looking for is actually at the opposite end. While Google may be getting a better eye for aesthetic design and simplicity, I think they're still quite a way from mastering intuition.
dylangs1030 15y ago
The title is grossly inaccurate. I agree in principle with the author that Gmail has some legitimate criticisms which can be levied against it, but the title construes a much more serious tone than the article delivers. The first paragraph or so of the article, the opening, doesn't give a real criticism. It gives a short dissemination of why Gmail's theme isn't really fashionable. And while it makes a good segue into claiming Gmail is sacrificing feature for looks, I don't agree if that's the implicit complaint. I think Gmail can support "heavy use" even if it doesn't delineate from the side interface and doesn't give an entirely straightforward icon for every folder and label.
teye 15y ago
Tufte, who we all seem to worship, would praise separation of elements with whitespace instead of dividing lines. This article, like most things from uxmovement.com, would be a lot easier to stomach with data backing up the author's preferences.
- gbog 15y ago
  I don't even know who is Tufte, and don't worship anyone, thanks.
mwsherman 15y ago
I wonder the degree to which user data is driving their choices. On the one hand, they have a lot of it. On the other, it can’t really drive design. Data can be used to support hypotheses, but it will not tell you what to try. Very curious how Google deals with this.
kapilkale 15y ago
I think the visuals are fine. But there are lots of new UI issues. For example, I frequently copy / paste an email address into from an email header into the search bar. Now I can't do that without clicking that tiny little triangle, which is so small I usually miss. It's extremely annoying. If there's a better way to do this I'd love to know. edit- the tiny triangle: http://i.imgur.com/U4qBR.png http://i.imgur.com/U4qBR.png
- nooneelse 15y ago
  If you hover over the person's name, and then click "more" in the popup, there is a "Recent conversations" option that runs a similar search.
antimora 15y ago
My little rant on Gmail's UX. The Gmail's user interface has bloated over the years. I want my email to be simple. I don't want chat, ads, additional info related the recipients or senders on the top right corner, which is created to draw users attention to ads. I don't my top toolbar be fixed; I want it to go away when I scroll down. The only things I like about the gmail over other email clients is: search, conversation, and spam filters, but it's becoming like an Outlook.
notatoad 15y ago
the idea that this tirade is specific to "heavy users" is laughable. if anything, it applies more to light use than to heavy use. "mystery meat" navigation is generally a no-no, but the exception to that rule is in heavily used interfaces like email clients, where whatever is used will be memorized by all users incredibly quickly, and the removal of labels can actually streamline the interface. the author doesn't make a single valid point regarding why the new interface is worse specifically for heavy users. its just a collection of negative reactions to change, like every other criticism since they introduced the new layout.
- watmough 15y ago
  Here's what the mail box toolbars look like in the old versus new, and the author does cover these. I think these pictures speak for themselves. One is a model of clarity and the other is a context-sensitive, icon-infested mess. http://imgur.com/a/X4gdp http://imgur.com/a/X4gdp
saturdaysaint 15y ago
Gmail was never especially pretty, but the redesign and my experience in highly focused mobile apps have pushed me back to Apple's native apps. To me, the most important elements of the screen seem to pop out in Apple's apps, and settings and controls sit thoughtfully in the background. My eyes gravitate to the most salient elements of the screen - the mail list and the currently opened e-mail. The compose window literally pushes to the foreground; I find the effect focusing. You can hide screen elements you don't use! In Gmail I feel like every control demands my attention equally. Having a big red "compose" button might be nice for a novice, but it's irritating to me. I search my e-mails every now and then, but not nearly enough to justify the large search bar. Ditto with Gchat - MMS and Facebook have replaced IM as far as I'm concerned. The "Plus Bar" at the top of the screen is useless if you, you know, actually already have Google's Apps open most of the time (in which case clicking anything gives you an extraneous tab). Huge swathes of my screen are dedicated to things I barely use.
- itcmcgrath 15y ago
  Yes! I find the new interface has made me less efficient and distracted by the screen elements I use the least.
  - saturdaysaint 15y ago
    I don't know why it's taken so long to get on my nerves, but yeah, going from Gmail to native Mac apps really feels like going from a 7" netbook to a full size laptop.
- cjfont 15y ago
  "I search my e-mails every now and then, but not nearly enough to justify the large search bar. Ditto with Gchat - MMS and Facebook have replaced IM as far as I'm concerned." Aside from disagreeing with that last sentence entirely, I see Gchat as being less obstrusive with the new look than with the old one. What used to be a semi-collapsible widget can now be reduced to a single icon on the lower-left.
dlaw 15y ago
I was an intern at Google when this change was first rolled out internally. Google employees had quite similar reactions. The change was not implemented because people liked it, or didn't like it -- it was implemented because there was cold, hard data showing that new users utilized the new design more effectively than the old design.
- typpo 15y ago
  What were the metrics used to determine that the design is "more effective"?
roxtar 15y ago
The one thing which I hate most about Gmail's new design is the damned feedback button is always there the next time, no matter how many times I hit "X".
- gujk 15y ago
  If there is something you don't like about Gmail, just click the feedback button and let Google know. http://ubuntuincident.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/hide-about-the-new-look-send-feedback-in-gmail/ http://ubuntuincident.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/hide-about-th...
  - roxtar 15y ago
    Yes sir, I did do that. Thanks for the link.
yaix 15y ago
On my netbook, Gmail is now almost unusable. All the position:fixed elements at the top and botton and left side take up so much space, that the square left for the actual email message has become rediculessly small. If they offered simply a "super-compact with no fixed bs" option, I would be happy. The rest of the new design I really don't care about.
gcb 15y ago
even though i think windows is wrong by not unpleasing users with design changes for the better... and not agreeing that white space may be ok to separate the tag list and the message, there's no excuse to: 1. the buttons without labels. your user WILL have to hover the mouse every time he forgets one button. 2. the fact that it moved from a huge clickable area to 17x17px button to see the message headers (and that the header information was vastly reduced) maybe some huge user testing proved those right... but my constant cursing says that at least a 5% exist.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
After getting used to the icons and learning to switch on "compact" mode on my laptop, I like it about as well as the old version.
gorloth 15y ago
The new gmail interface really feels like it's made for a touchscreen, problem is a touchscreen UI feels awkward on a system with a mouse. Question for all you web people out there, what would the difficulty of making a stylish/greasemonkey/something script to keep the old layout/look? I'm a programmer but I work on embedded systems in C, I don't have to worry about this fancy internet stuff.
mkramlich 15y ago
I also think the new design is a step backwards in usability. And yes I thought we all learned by now that symbolic icons are not as good as text labels. That's pretty much the point of human languages like English -- they are symbols which have a meaning, and you arrange them in different ways to convey different meanings. Given a choice between some arbitrary shape and the text "STOP", guess which one will more clearly and unambiguously convey "STOP"?
- gujk 15y ago
  The pencil icon, obviously. Or maybe the square with a rectangle on top.
ck2 15y ago
I still do not understand why the old interface cannot be made available for another year or two. The visual changes are obviously just cosmetic with little to no backend modification. It definitely feels like designers were given complete override to engineers.
tghw 15y ago
"There's no divider between the mail contents and the navigation on either side. Too much white space in many areas." Um, the white space is the divider. This really feels like they're complaining because something changed and no one likes change.
- zbowling 15y ago
  Is just whitespace enough to be considered a real divider? You're eyes can't track it every well in a complicated interface. You need a huge amount of whitespace to work like real dividing line.
yarone 15y ago
My #1 complaint: The grabber for expanding the height of the textbox has been deleted! See here: http://i.imgur.com/MEGM1.png http://i.imgur.com/MEGM1.png Previously, I'd expand the textbox to give myself more space (and "breathing room", if you will).
antirez 15y ago
I think this design is very good and better for heavy users compared to the previous one: * The new way to reply to emails makes it a lot faster to reply in the common case. It makes emails more similars to chat conversations where you can reply with just one line or alike, that is a necessary shift today, otherwise no one will reply to emails soon as it is a killer of your time. * The icons will tell you what they do if your pointer is over the icon, since there are a few icons after a week or so you know what every one is doing, and the fact they are very well "exposed" in the UI makes their use comfortable. * New stars make more sense, less different types, more semantically shaped and colored. * When the UI is set to "compact" is the perfect amount of information IMHO, if you receive a lot of emails. But you can change that depending on the amount of conversions you handle and on your tastes. What I really don't like instead? Formatting is not retained on emails, it strips newlines, spaces and so forth in a random way. This is very very bad.
el_presidente 15y ago
People love to whine about changes to websites. OTOH, nobody complains when their TV remote changes layout or when their living room rearranges itself overnight. It's a double standard.
mrleinad 15y ago
So, everyone and their mothers are creating web applications suitable for tablets. Do you really believe there's no room for web applications that could be accessed from a good ol' desktop pc? How come is that?
lwhi 15y ago
I wonder if the interface would have been better received if the tighter density was used as a default setting? Do first impressions of a UI add as much weight to the way we perceive it, as they do when meeting a person for the first time? Personally I think the interface is good .. I like it, and I'm sure I'll grow more comfortable with it as time goes on.

253 points by jzb 15y ago

Gmail's redesign was what convinced me to finally switch to mutt. I receive a lot of emails. I have to respond to a lot of them quickly. I don't want a slick, modern-art-inspired user-interface - I just want to get in and out of my inbox as fast as possible, with minimal distractions.

rbanffy 15y ago
Putting an ssh service that runs Gmail through a mutt-like interface is the kind of 20%-time project I would do if I were at Google.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  Alpine is the next best thing (via IMAP)
- dan00 15y ago
  mutt + gmail + offlineimap
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    Is there a way to get archive, labels, and sending from multiple addresses to work? If so, I think I could abandon the web client completely.
Jyaif 15y ago
Well, a modern-art-inspired UI is an UI with minimal distractions.

mtkd 15y ago

I found the icons a bit challenging at first (as a heavy user) but through that now. It's really awesome to use in comparison with any other client I've worked with. If I could change one thing it would be the unread/read background contrast.

steve-howard 15y ago
I dunno. Is it ever good UI design to replace clearly labeled buttons with cute but confusing icons? Just because you can get used to it doesn't mean it's a good change.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Yes, for heavy users, because it makes it easier to see the important textual content on the screen instead of a lot of UI elements.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Agreed, a minimalistic (but fully functional) interface lacking eye-candy is a positive for heavy users. It reduces noise on-screen.
- bluehavana 15y ago
  Yes. The time it takes to recognize something with your visual cortex is orders of magnitudes less than reading words. Learning what the icons mean might take a little time and one might argue that spacial patterns are learned when reading anyways.
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    How do you know my visual cortex can't process words? It's just a few symbols, I doubt that the difference between one symbol and 10 is that different for a learning machine like the human brain. (Especially since the location of the symbols is what matters. They show up in the same place every time, you only need the general shape of the word to confirm that's that right one.)
cpeterso 15y ago
I also dislike that the email toolbar's buttons are now modal. (I don't believe they were modal before.) If select an email from a list, then new buttons appear and move the previous buttons to a different position on the page. This breaks users' muscle memory for clicking buttons quickly. I guess I should learn the gmail keyboard shortcuts..

JohnTHaller 15y ago

If you're a heavy email user, you should not be using webmail. You should be using a real email client.

jzb 15y ago
Gmail was actually OK for heavy use for a long time. And I've never found a mail client that I actually like - more like clients that suck less than others.
stevenleeg 15y ago
What argument do you have to support this? What can a native client do that a web-based one could not?
- a3_nm 15y ago
  I'm currently using a setup where I can see incoming mail in a taskbar (unread count and subject), press Win-o to spawn mutt, enter to open first unread, z to archive, and qq<enter> to close mutt. With this, a lot of email is dealt with in six keystrokes and under two seconds total (no interruption in workflow). I'm not saying that you wouldn't be able to do this with a web-based mail client, but I think that the machinery to do that would be less natural. (My sense of what is natural might be warped, though.) Also, there is much to be said about the ability to customize your mail client to suit your needs. The very fact that people are complaining about Gmail's new design shows that a lot of people are relying on Google to tell them how they should manage their email, and try to adapt their needs to the tool rather than the other way around. This is not a technical limitation of web-based mail clients, but most webmails I know aren't really hackable.
  - mjschultz 15y ago
    > I'm not saying that you wouldn't be able to do this with a web-based mail client. In fact, using gmail should take fewer strokes than that. Assuming you have a keyboard shortcut to spawn a gmail window, enter will take you to the first message, and 'e' will archive that message. Command-Q/Alt-F4 to quit. Labels can be applied with an 'l' and the label name, next/last message is 'n'/'p'. The full list of keyboard shortcuts is available here: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594 https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594 It would, of course, be better if they let you customize the shortcuts and sped up the loading of the initial page.

2arrs2ells 15y ago

I've found that, using keyboard shortcuts (and with a decent Internet connection), Gmail becomes about as efficient as Pine/Alpine (I've never used mutt). I don't love the redesign (I think the placement/appearance of the "important" and "starred" markers is terrible), but since they didn't change keyboard shortcuts at all, I can still plow through reading/replying/labeling messages.

dasil003 15y ago
Yeah, my biggest complaint originally was the lack of density, since being about to see the maximum number of emails has long been a killer feature of Gmail, but they fixed that with the compact view. The contrast issues are there, but it really doesn't bother me because I'm in Gmail hours every day. All I need is consistency, responsiveness and comprehensive keyboard shortcuts.

awakeasleep 15y ago

There should be a publication archiving the superficially thoughtful, hate-filled tirades that occur in reaction to every change that happens to public facing things. Then, when we create something, we can look through the archives and see the volume of ire directed at what we've come to love, and draw a relaxed breath realizing you really can't please everyone.

2arrs2ells 15y ago
A Google search for "Facebook outrage" is enough for me to remember that lesson.
VMG 15y ago
Not only that, but there will always be more critics than people who like it. I enjoy the new design but don't have the urge to constantly rave about it.
airlocksoftware 15y ago
There's a certain class of people for whom any change to something they are familiar with is automatically negative. I imagine that in 20 years, they'll be the market for phones with a physical dialer.
- cousin_it 15y ago
  Haha, your argument is of a rare breed: it's self-negating. If the people belonging to your "certain class" automatically grow to enjoy what's familiar to them, then their first reaction to a new UI is the most unbiased information you're gonna get!
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  The real problem is that it's a lot easier to dismiss criticism than to sift through it to figure out what's valid and what's not. Yeah, it's just "those people", because everything new is automatically better...
pbz 15y ago
While I understand where you're coming from, I feel his criticism is well founded. There is noticeably less contrast and delineation. It also does take more to discover the interface - you have to actually hover over buttons. While you could argue that one would learn the buttons in time, the delineation issue won't go away. There's a reason they put a thin line around posts in G+

J_Darnley 15y ago

I wonder why he doesn't try the basic interface. It still has text buttons and all the "information density" you could need.

thurn 15y ago

I'm a heavy user, and I still have no idea what the buttons do because I exclusively use the keyboard shortcuts. I'd assume most really heavy Gmail users avoid using the mouse.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

I felt this was pretty fairly articulated critique of the changes to Gmail. And the author admits that some of their issue may be part of a resistance to change meme. I've gone on record with my issues about too much white space. And even in 'compact' mode it is less useful to me. Overall its the down side of G+ which has the effect of opening up things to change which perhaps shouldn't be changed. But on the positive side it creates opportunity for folks like Mailgunner to get in. Its the tech version of the circle of life.

tikhonj 15y ago

I actually rather like the new design. It looks better and is more consistent than before. Unlike the poster, I actually really like the simple geometric style it now uses. It's a nice break from the incessant rounded corners and gradients that so many other web sites seem to favor (HN's design is similarly refreshing). The icons are a major change and take getting used to, but I think they improve the experience overall. The one think I find really stupid are the gear icons--one in the top righthand corner for the Google+ style bar and one gmail-specific. Having two identical icons that do the same thing is bad. Apart from that, I think it's a good design. However, while I like the new design, I really dislike the default theme. Some of the gripes about separating content from the UI are addressed the other themes. I particularly like the "dusk" and "dark" ones. Overall, with a few reservations, I like where they're taking the design and hope to see more web apps follow suit.

carterschonwald 15y ago

My biggest issue personally with the new gmail design is that all the current theme options are "two tone". By this I mean that with the old themes, you could have 1 color for the background in the left pane, another for the menu area of the current folder, and possibly another for the background in the email thread/ composition region. For the new gmail look, theres just "background color" and "foreground color". Now I may just be a simple sentient hominid computer user, but most human beings that are neither horse nor hammerhead shark have this wonderful thing called depth perception (and color perception) which allows for more nuance in our perception than just "front bit" and "back thingy", and moreover our brain does a lot of heuristics when giving us our vision, one of which is using contrast in two neighboring objects to detect that they are separated (by those regions called borders). Phrased a bit more directly, I think the biggest problem with the new gmail / reader ui's is not aesthetics. Its not UI standard practice, its not this new found homogeneity or "sparseness", though these all tie into the underlying problem. Rather its that the human brain is optimized for using contrast in depth or color or shade as a core hinting tool in perception. If they're going to stick to general new style, they need to provide more dimensions in how different ui elements can be themed. The closest metaphorical analogue I can think of would be that the current ui approach would be like having the classic cartoon "Samurai Jack" (which has a very nice style that is notable for being one of the few cartoons that lack black outlines at all) being colored with only two very close shades of gray & a smattering of black and white in a few small places. Sure you can still see everything, but your brain has to work harder to actually keep track of it all.

tomrod 15y ago

What? Gmail redesigned? I use a desktop client, so I never really focus on the webside.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

cjfont 15y ago

Some comments: "A major problem that I have with the new interface is that Gmail has gone from text-based buttons to an icon-only design." The text is there, it's simply been converted into tooltips. Are you really going to need to have the text there after using the button a few dozen times? "The bad is that the compact is hard to read, and comfortable displays less information than the classic Gmail design." Perhaps it's because I'm using a custom theme and so my view is different, but I don't really see much different between "compact" and the old design. "Google has also removed the bottom toolbar from the interface. So if you're at the bottom of your inbox, you have to move the mouse back up to the top of the screen to archive, spam, mark messages read, and so forth." Seriously? Are you going to suffer from RSI from moving your mouse up the screen each time you view your inbox? Not sure why your cursor keeps ending up at the bottom of the screen each time you finish checking your inbox. The only points I can really agree with the author on is that the new interface is slower to use than before, and also on the excessive use of whitespace -- there does seem to be a lot of unused area with the new look (although it does make my theme look prettier).

StuffMaster 15y ago
>The text is there, it's simply been converted into tooltips. Are you really going to need to have the text there after using the button a few dozen times? Multiply this attitude by a hundred apps/websites and YES I WANT TEXT. I don't use the toolbars of half my apps because I don't know what the buttons do, and I shouldn't have to work to find out.
- cjfont 15y ago
  There's a balance between using additional screen real estate for more info and the user having to take an extra step to get that additional info, such as hovering over a button. For some people, such as myself, there is more work involved for the eyes that have to scan over that extra content everyday as compared to hovering over an unknown button once in a blue moon.
  - robotresearcher 15y ago

Kev 15y ago

I've been using the new design for about a week and overall I think it's an improvement, but I've been griping non-stop about the chat/contact area hogging space even when you drag it down as small as possible. This comment started out as another one of those gripes, until I decided to make one more attempt to hide the chat area for good. Turns out that clicking on the speech bubble icon closes the contacts list/chat area. Can't believe it took me a week to try that.

davvid 15y ago

What's with the zero pixel left margin? Lots of websites seem to be doing that these days.

gujk 15y ago
Usually it is a variable margin that wasn't tested on a screen the width of a normal human's.

FuzzyDunlop 15y ago

I like the cleanliness of the new design and the use of whitespace to separate things. There are two general problems I have. One is the fact that the UI controls tend to blend in with the rest of the page, and the fact they're just icons isn't much help either. The other is inconsistency or otherwise controverting user expectation. The first problem means to mark something as spam I have to first remember where to look for the button that doesn't stand out. I then have to hover over it until the tooltip shows to make sure I've got the right one. The second one manifests itself in the behaviour of the toolbar, some of the UI element positions, and what I would call some rather basic principles: On the actual mail screen, the toolbar has a fixed position, so it always sticks to the top of the page when you scroll. On the inbox, it doesn't. Why not? The star icon is on the left on the inbox page. Why is it on the right when you view the email? (This has persisted from the old design, to be fair.) Why have they taken an Android design cue and put the form submission elements at the top of the page? When you fill in any form, you expect the submit/cancel buttons to be below the form you're filling in, not above. I have been caught out several times trying to scroll the compose page (that no longer scrolls at all), only to realise the button I'm looking for is actually at the opposite end. While Google may be getting a better eye for aesthetic design and simplicity, I think they're still quite a way from mastering intuition.

dylangs1030 15y ago

The title is grossly inaccurate. I agree in principle with the author that Gmail has some legitimate criticisms which can be levied against it, but the title construes a much more serious tone than the article delivers. The first paragraph or so of the article, the opening, doesn't give a real criticism. It gives a short dissemination of why Gmail's theme isn't really fashionable. And while it makes a good segue into claiming Gmail is sacrificing feature for looks, I don't agree if that's the implicit complaint. I think Gmail can support "heavy use" even if it doesn't delineate from the side interface and doesn't give an entirely straightforward icon for every folder and label.

teye 15y ago

Tufte, who we all seem to worship, would praise separation of elements with whitespace instead of dividing lines. This article, like most things from uxmovement.com, would be a lot easier to stomach with data backing up the author's preferences.

gbog 15y ago
I don't even know who is Tufte, and don't worship anyone, thanks.

mwsherman 15y ago

I wonder the degree to which user data is driving their choices. On the one hand, they have a lot of it. On the other, it can’t really drive design. Data can be used to support hypotheses, but it will not tell you what to try. Very curious how Google deals with this.

kapilkale 15y ago

I think the visuals are fine. But there are lots of new UI issues. For example, I frequently copy / paste an email address into from an email header into the search bar. Now I can't do that without clicking that tiny little triangle, which is so small I usually miss. It's extremely annoying. If there's a better way to do this I'd love to know. edit- the tiny triangle: http://i.imgur.com/U4qBR.png http://i.imgur.com/U4qBR.png

nooneelse 15y ago
If you hover over the person's name, and then click "more" in the popup, there is a "Recent conversations" option that runs a similar search.

antimora 15y ago

My little rant on Gmail's UX. The Gmail's user interface has bloated over the years. I want my email to be simple. I don't want chat, ads, additional info related the recipients or senders on the top right corner, which is created to draw users attention to ads. I don't my top toolbar be fixed; I want it to go away when I scroll down. The only things I like about the gmail over other email clients is: search, conversation, and spam filters, but it's becoming like an Outlook.

notatoad 15y ago

the idea that this tirade is specific to "heavy users" is laughable. if anything, it applies more to light use than to heavy use. "mystery meat" navigation is generally a no-no, but the exception to that rule is in heavily used interfaces like email clients, where whatever is used will be memorized by all users incredibly quickly, and the removal of labels can actually streamline the interface. the author doesn't make a single valid point regarding why the new interface is worse specifically for heavy users. its just a collection of negative reactions to change, like every other criticism since they introduced the new layout.

watmough 15y ago
Here's what the mail box toolbars look like in the old versus new, and the author does cover these. I think these pictures speak for themselves. One is a model of clarity and the other is a context-sensitive, icon-infested mess. http://imgur.com/a/X4gdp http://imgur.com/a/X4gdp

saturdaysaint 15y ago

Gmail was never especially pretty, but the redesign and my experience in highly focused mobile apps have pushed me back to Apple's native apps. To me, the most important elements of the screen seem to pop out in Apple's apps, and settings and controls sit thoughtfully in the background. My eyes gravitate to the most salient elements of the screen - the mail list and the currently opened e-mail. The compose window literally pushes to the foreground; I find the effect focusing. You can hide screen elements you don't use! In Gmail I feel like every control demands my attention equally. Having a big red "compose" button might be nice for a novice, but it's irritating to me. I search my e-mails every now and then, but not nearly enough to justify the large search bar. Ditto with Gchat - MMS and Facebook have replaced IM as far as I'm concerned. The "Plus Bar" at the top of the screen is useless if you, you know, actually already have Google's Apps open most of the time (in which case clicking anything gives you an extraneous tab). Huge swathes of my screen are dedicated to things I barely use.

itcmcgrath 15y ago
Yes! I find the new interface has made me less efficient and distracted by the screen elements I use the least.
- saturdaysaint 15y ago
  I don't know why it's taken so long to get on my nerves, but yeah, going from Gmail to native Mac apps really feels like going from a 7" netbook to a full size laptop.
cjfont 15y ago
"I search my e-mails every now and then, but not nearly enough to justify the large search bar. Ditto with Gchat - MMS and Facebook have replaced IM as far as I'm concerned." Aside from disagreeing with that last sentence entirely, I see Gchat as being less obstrusive with the new look than with the old one. What used to be a semi-collapsible widget can now be reduced to a single icon on the lower-left.

dlaw 15y ago

I was an intern at Google when this change was first rolled out internally. Google employees had quite similar reactions. The change was not implemented because people liked it, or didn't like it -- it was implemented because there was cold, hard data showing that new users utilized the new design more effectively than the old design.

typpo 15y ago
What were the metrics used to determine that the design is "more effective"?

roxtar 15y ago

The one thing which I hate most about Gmail's new design is the damned feedback button is always there the next time, no matter how many times I hit "X".

gujk 15y ago
If there is something you don't like about Gmail, just click the feedback button and let Google know. http://ubuntuincident.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/hide-about-the-new-look-send-feedback-in-gmail/ http://ubuntuincident.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/hide-about-th...
- roxtar 15y ago
  Yes sir, I did do that. Thanks for the link.

yaix 15y ago

On my netbook, Gmail is now almost unusable. All the position:fixed elements at the top and botton and left side take up so much space, that the square left for the actual email message has become rediculessly small. If they offered simply a "super-compact with no fixed bs" option, I would be happy. The rest of the new design I really don't care about.

gcb 15y ago

even though i think windows is wrong by not unpleasing users with design changes for the better... and not agreeing that white space may be ok to separate the tag list and the message, there's no excuse to: 1. the buttons without labels. your user WILL have to hover the mouse every time he forgets one button. 2. the fact that it moved from a huge clickable area to 17x17px button to see the message headers (and that the header information was vastly reduced) maybe some huge user testing proved those right... but my constant cursing says that at least a 5% exist.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

After getting used to the icons and learning to switch on "compact" mode on my laptop, I like it about as well as the old version.

gorloth 15y ago

The new gmail interface really feels like it's made for a touchscreen, problem is a touchscreen UI feels awkward on a system with a mouse. Question for all you web people out there, what would the difficulty of making a stylish/greasemonkey/something script to keep the old layout/look? I'm a programmer but I work on embedded systems in C, I don't have to worry about this fancy internet stuff.

mkramlich 15y ago

I also think the new design is a step backwards in usability. And yes I thought we all learned by now that symbolic icons are not as good as text labels. That's pretty much the point of human languages like English -- they are symbols which have a meaning, and you arrange them in different ways to convey different meanings. Given a choice between some arbitrary shape and the text "STOP", guess which one will more clearly and unambiguously convey "STOP"?

gujk 15y ago
The pencil icon, obviously. Or maybe the square with a rectangle on top.

ck2 15y ago

I still do not understand why the old interface cannot be made available for another year or two. The visual changes are obviously just cosmetic with little to no backend modification. It definitely feels like designers were given complete override to engineers.

tghw 15y ago

"There's no divider between the mail contents and the navigation on either side. Too much white space in many areas." Um, the white space is the divider. This really feels like they're complaining because something changed and no one likes change.

zbowling 15y ago
Is just whitespace enough to be considered a real divider? You're eyes can't track it every well in a complicated interface. You need a huge amount of whitespace to work like real dividing line.

yarone 15y ago

My #1 complaint: The grabber for expanding the height of the textbox has been deleted! See here: http://i.imgur.com/MEGM1.png http://i.imgur.com/MEGM1.png Previously, I'd expand the textbox to give myself more space (and "breathing room", if you will).

antirez 15y ago

I think this design is very good and better for heavy users compared to the previous one: * The new way to reply to emails makes it a lot faster to reply in the common case. It makes emails more similars to chat conversations where you can reply with just one line or alike, that is a necessary shift today, otherwise no one will reply to emails soon as it is a killer of your time. * The icons will tell you what they do if your pointer is over the icon, since there are a few icons after a week or so you know what every one is doing, and the fact they are very well "exposed" in the UI makes their use comfortable. * New stars make more sense, less different types, more semantically shaped and colored. * When the UI is set to "compact" is the perfect amount of information IMHO, if you receive a lot of emails. But you can change that depending on the amount of conversions you handle and on your tastes. What I really don't like instead? Formatting is not retained on emails, it strips newlines, spaces and so forth in a random way. This is very very bad.

el_presidente 15y ago

People love to whine about changes to websites. OTOH, nobody complains when their TV remote changes layout or when their living room rearranges itself overnight. It's a double standard.

mrleinad 15y ago

So, everyone and their mothers are creating web applications suitable for tablets. Do you really believe there's no room for web applications that could be accessed from a good ol' desktop pc? How come is that?

lwhi 15y ago

I wonder if the interface would have been better received if the tighter density was used as a default setting? Do first impressions of a UI add as much weight to the way we perceive it, as they do when meeting a person for the first time? Personally I think the interface is good .. I like it, and I'm sure I'll grow more comfortable with it as time goes on.