9 ms·

Google Circles and Path 2.0: How good UI design cannot fix a broken solution

77 points by pascal07 15y ago

whalesalad 15y ago
I could not agree with this more. I really love the Path UI and played with it for a few days, but I just uninstalled it entirely from my iPhone because I was tired of being notified on two separate social networks. I had to decide, "Where should I check-in?" or "Where should I post this photo?" and it all came down to my 10 or 12 'nerd' friends on Path vs. my large circle of friends on Facebook. That decision is what killed it for me.
- mvzink 15y ago
  This is why I am not friending any of my "nerd friends" on Path. Only family, many of whom live across the country, and my (coincidentally very non-technical) two circles of close friends, who also live throughout the country. There are precisely two groups of people I don't particularly want seeing the relatively personal stuff I post on Path: my "nerd friends", and everyone. For me, Path is somewhere between a social network and a personal diary: it's the excerpts from my diary that I want to share with the people I'm close to, and I hope they'll share those moments back. Facebook can't do this well for me, Google+ failed to, and I don't particularly expect Path to, but it has a better chance than anything.
  - ChrisArchitect 15y ago
    how to get family&friends to start using Path though, other than the initial 'shiny new' app thing. Seems making the move from fb is a task everyone struggles with
- herval 15y ago
  You could configure Path to share to Fb, no? Granted, I'm also in the "I don't get it" bandwagon...
mdeutsch505 15y ago
I really do think Path can retain its users past this initial "ooh shiny!" phase if it can continue to add features to differentiate itself as a mobile diary and solve that user need -- it is not trying to compete directly with Facebook
carldall 15y ago
I've argued for a long time that Facebook has the huge advantage of having even reach most of the laggards. All other social networks that don't focus on an entirely different niche (like Instagram) will probably fail or stay small. However, a social network doesn't necessarily need 800Mio users to be relevant. Even a small social network with an avid and interested user base can succeed. And this could be the main differentiator here: A user base consisting out of people that love fantastic design. If they and their design-loving friends are on there, and don't require the facebook-laggard-surplus, then Path can succeed.
- pefavre 15y ago
  Sure Path's design is great, but as you say it focuses on classic facebook users. It is designed to interact with friends and family, which is what people use fb for. So maybe the best exit for Path is to get bought by facebook.
bad_user 15y ago
people don’t buy products – they buy the benefit. People also can't differentiate needs over desires, they also can't help themselves against the herd mentality, otherwise they wouldn't be using social networks and playing Zynga games in the first place. This emphasis on benefits is exaggerated, as clearly if people thought really well about it, a lot of companies would go out of business. Also, great software in usage goes beyond the purpose imbued by the creators. Sometimes the creators don't even know the problem it's trying to solve. I'm pretty sure the creators of software like Excel couldn't envision the myriads of ways in which it will be used and why it would be of any usefulness versus a custom form / listing developed by somebody in Fox Pro / dBase in an hour. Facebook is also great because it is different for everybody - for some it is a vanity contest, others like to keep contacts to old high-school buddies, others like playing stupid games, others like to be notified of events and so on and so fort.
zapf 15y ago
OK. UI is great. But whats the app doing? Telling you it is your own journal and allowing occasional sharing? So a personal blog that works from your smart phone and thus lets you do stuff that Wordpress won't? I like it, I must say. But why would users use it? Self gratification? What is their business model? A la four square? Will they eventually have checkins and deals?
pkaler 15y ago
I completely disagree. This is the classic Silicon Valley echo-chamber view of Path. Path is not made for the Silicon Valley technorati. Path is more like iMessage than it is like Facebook or Twitter. I go for a run. No one knows I'm going for a run. I post to Path. Now if I get mugged, my sister will know where to dispatch the cops to. I post a photo of a family member. I get a "so-and-so visited my Path" notification. I can then go and chat with them about the photo cause I know that they have seen it. I go to sleep. My friends check my Path before they SMS me to make sure they don't interrupt my sleep. The problems it solves for me: - Did so-and-so see that photo I posted? They can view it on their own time. Once they've seen it I'll have a conversation with them about it. - I live on my own. My family knows where I am if I accidentally disappear. - I am asleep. Don't wake me up.
- zapf 15y ago
  You are right. The beauty is that most real world users won't give a damn that not just friends and family, but the state would know where I went for a run as well - if they so wanted to know. Scares me. So thumbs up for them users, but it ain't for me.
- neave 15y ago
  Speaking as someone completely outside of the SV echo-chamber, I completely agree with this article. Path and Google+ are both attempting to solve niche, edge case problems. Their fragile position is only exacerbated in the context of Facebook and Twitter, both and which solve those problems for most people already. Google+ Circles are far too much like hard work. This leads to apathy and disengagement. Path doesn't have any users. That is its death knell.
- tfb 15y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but with the exception of knowing who views your photos, how does Path solve those problems any better than Facebook or Twitter? If anything, posting the same information to the more widely used networks would yield better results, as you have a wider audience. It's a shame the big networks have that advantage/lock-in, but that's just the nature of social networks I guess. For what it's worth, I don't live in California (yet) and I don't presently use any social networks.
j_col 15y ago
Path excludes me because I don't have an iOS or Android device (yes we do exist).
- xer0 15y ago
  Email works really well for most if not all that Path does. The interface is pretty bare bones, but the utility has stood the test of time.
judofyr 15y ago
Yes, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. But how can this article talk about a "broken solution" when it doesn't even mention the problem?! If you don't see the problem, the solution isn't "broken"; it's just solving a problem you don't have. I would have expected this article to actually discuss what problems they are solving and exactly why their solution is wrong/broken. Instead it just says "meh, it doesn't solve anything!" without any justification. How can you even talk about "solutions" to social networks and not mention privacy at all?
- dlikhten 15y ago
  The problem is that he has more "friends" than he understands. Having 100 people in "friends" is bullshit. Nobody can have 100 friends. They can have 10 friends and 90 acquaintances. Those 90 probably go in "I'm interested in following their messages but in reality its all public anyways". Circles are like C. You can shoot yourself in the foot (by horribly missusing em), or you can make it sing. Google has been following the trends and making circles better. Following is an excellent feature.
Jach 15y ago
tl;dr for the below: If it's too much work with their UI, it's a UI problem. > The problem is that it’s just too much work. I’ve long since given up trying to maintain my Circles, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Circles also lost its core utility for me. After I put about 100 people into different buckets I couldn’t remember who I put where, and what I was supposed to share with which Circle. So I just gave up and started sharing everything publicly. > It doesn’t matter how great and fun an experience is, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. I actually think Google Circles' problem is poor UI design, not a broken solution. Lists are a great way to manage things, but you need to have powerful operations on top of lists. I said it when they came out that I was disappointed with their lack of a Venn-diagram interface where I can define sets of people in terms of other sets and their operations. (Why then "circles" and not "groups"?) On-the-fly one-time-use circles would have been nice to have, too. And they didn't have an API for a long time so it's not like someone could straightforwardly go implement such things in a third-party app. (I haven't been following the API so I don't know if someone could do this now, but I'm pretty sure their first version of the API didn't even allow POST requests--awful developer UI.) On a second note, I think good UI can cover up a broken solution. Look at the mobile world with "everything-is-an-app" largely thanks to the iPhone.
- munaf 15y ago
  Agreed on overlaps. Circles are essentially tags/labels with a nicer UI. I wonder why tags are the chosen solution for _every_ classification task these days. They're great for information retrieval because they easily let you widen or narrow the scope of what you're looking for. But defining data permissions? Not so much. It feels like designers avoid hierarchal UI paradigms because they're old, but automated inheritance would've been nice on Google+.
RandallBrown 15y ago
I would love for Path to be a tightly integrated Facebook client. The interaction is great and it's really a joy to use. The problem is, I don't want to have to keep up with another network, even if I'm supposed to use this one differently than I would Facebook or Twitter.
now 15y ago
I tend to agree with the idea that Google Circles is broken. The problem is that one also needs the reverse. I, as a content producer, need to be able to specify to those that I’m sharing with what it is that I’m sharing with them. This way, content consumers can choose to follow the items in my stream belonging to a certain category (or circle or whatever you want to call it). As an example, I would like to be able to follow Ryan Dahl and get content from his stream regarding Node.js. I don’t however, need to read about him standing in front of some skulls: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/CEMdcTeEPsN https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/CEMdcTeE.... Currently, there’s almost zero information in his stream that I care about, but the only way for me to get to that information is to let all of it pass through my stream.

77 points by pascal07 15y ago

I could not agree with this more. I really love the Path UI and played with it for a few days, but I just uninstalled it entirely from my iPhone because I was tired of being notified on two separate social networks. I had to decide, "Where should I check-in?" or "Where should I post this photo?" and it all came down to my 10 or 12 'nerd' friends on Path vs. my large circle of friends on Facebook. That decision is what killed it for me.

mvzink 15y ago
This is why I am not friending any of my "nerd friends" on Path. Only family, many of whom live across the country, and my (coincidentally very non-technical) two circles of close friends, who also live throughout the country. There are precisely two groups of people I don't particularly want seeing the relatively personal stuff I post on Path: my "nerd friends", and everyone. For me, Path is somewhere between a social network and a personal diary: it's the excerpts from my diary that I want to share with the people I'm close to, and I hope they'll share those moments back. Facebook can't do this well for me, Google+ failed to, and I don't particularly expect Path to, but it has a better chance than anything.
- ChrisArchitect 15y ago
  how to get family&friends to start using Path though, other than the initial 'shiny new' app thing. Seems making the move from fb is a task everyone struggles with
herval 15y ago
You could configure Path to share to Fb, no? Granted, I'm also in the "I don't get it" bandwagon...

mdeutsch505 15y ago

I really do think Path can retain its users past this initial "ooh shiny!" phase if it can continue to add features to differentiate itself as a mobile diary and solve that user need -- it is not trying to compete directly with Facebook

carldall 15y ago

I've argued for a long time that Facebook has the huge advantage of having even reach most of the laggards. All other social networks that don't focus on an entirely different niche (like Instagram) will probably fail or stay small. However, a social network doesn't necessarily need 800Mio users to be relevant. Even a small social network with an avid and interested user base can succeed. And this could be the main differentiator here: A user base consisting out of people that love fantastic design. If they and their design-loving friends are on there, and don't require the facebook-laggard-surplus, then Path can succeed.

pefavre 15y ago
Sure Path's design is great, but as you say it focuses on classic facebook users. It is designed to interact with friends and family, which is what people use fb for. So maybe the best exit for Path is to get bought by facebook.

bad_user 15y ago

people don’t buy products – they buy the benefit. People also can't differentiate needs over desires, they also can't help themselves against the herd mentality, otherwise they wouldn't be using social networks and playing Zynga games in the first place. This emphasis on benefits is exaggerated, as clearly if people thought really well about it, a lot of companies would go out of business. Also, great software in usage goes beyond the purpose imbued by the creators. Sometimes the creators don't even know the problem it's trying to solve. I'm pretty sure the creators of software like Excel couldn't envision the myriads of ways in which it will be used and why it would be of any usefulness versus a custom form / listing developed by somebody in Fox Pro / dBase in an hour. Facebook is also great because it is different for everybody - for some it is a vanity contest, others like to keep contacts to old high-school buddies, others like playing stupid games, others like to be notified of events and so on and so fort.

zapf 15y ago

OK. UI is great. But whats the app doing? Telling you it is your own journal and allowing occasional sharing? So a personal blog that works from your smart phone and thus lets you do stuff that Wordpress won't? I like it, I must say. But why would users use it? Self gratification? What is their business model? A la four square? Will they eventually have checkins and deals?

pkaler 15y ago

I completely disagree. This is the classic Silicon Valley echo-chamber view of Path. Path is not made for the Silicon Valley technorati. Path is more like iMessage than it is like Facebook or Twitter. I go for a run. No one knows I'm going for a run. I post to Path. Now if I get mugged, my sister will know where to dispatch the cops to. I post a photo of a family member. I get a "so-and-so visited my Path" notification. I can then go and chat with them about the photo cause I know that they have seen it. I go to sleep. My friends check my Path before they SMS me to make sure they don't interrupt my sleep. The problems it solves for me: - Did so-and-so see that photo I posted? They can view it on their own time. Once they've seen it I'll have a conversation with them about it. - I live on my own. My family knows where I am if I accidentally disappear. - I am asleep. Don't wake me up.

zapf 15y ago
You are right. The beauty is that most real world users won't give a damn that not just friends and family, but the state would know where I went for a run as well - if they so wanted to know. Scares me. So thumbs up for them users, but it ain't for me.
neave 15y ago
Speaking as someone completely outside of the SV echo-chamber, I completely agree with this article. Path and Google+ are both attempting to solve niche, edge case problems. Their fragile position is only exacerbated in the context of Facebook and Twitter, both and which solve those problems for most people already. Google+ Circles are far too much like hard work. This leads to apathy and disengagement. Path doesn't have any users. That is its death knell.
tfb 15y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but with the exception of knowing who views your photos, how does Path solve those problems any better than Facebook or Twitter? If anything, posting the same information to the more widely used networks would yield better results, as you have a wider audience. It's a shame the big networks have that advantage/lock-in, but that's just the nature of social networks I guess. For what it's worth, I don't live in California (yet) and I don't presently use any social networks.

j_col 15y ago

Path excludes me because I don't have an iOS or Android device (yes we do exist).

xer0 15y ago
Email works really well for most if not all that Path does. The interface is pretty bare bones, but the utility has stood the test of time.

judofyr 15y ago

Yes, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. But how can this article talk about a "broken solution" when it doesn't even mention the problem?! If you don't see the problem, the solution isn't "broken"; it's just solving a problem you don't have. I would have expected this article to actually discuss what problems they are solving and exactly why their solution is wrong/broken. Instead it just says "meh, it doesn't solve anything!" without any justification. How can you even talk about "solutions" to social networks and not mention privacy at all?

dlikhten 15y ago
The problem is that he has more "friends" than he understands. Having 100 people in "friends" is bullshit. Nobody can have 100 friends. They can have 10 friends and 90 acquaintances. Those 90 probably go in "I'm interested in following their messages but in reality its all public anyways". Circles are like C. You can shoot yourself in the foot (by horribly missusing em), or you can make it sing. Google has been following the trends and making circles better. Following is an excellent feature.

Jach 15y ago

tl;dr for the below: If it's too much work with their UI, it's a UI problem. > The problem is that it’s just too much work. I’ve long since given up trying to maintain my Circles, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Circles also lost its core utility for me. After I put about 100 people into different buckets I couldn’t remember who I put where, and what I was supposed to share with which Circle. So I just gave up and started sharing everything publicly. > It doesn’t matter how great and fun an experience is, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. I actually think Google Circles' problem is poor UI design, not a broken solution. Lists are a great way to manage things, but you need to have powerful operations on top of lists. I said it when they came out that I was disappointed with their lack of a Venn-diagram interface where I can define sets of people in terms of other sets and their operations. (Why then "circles" and not "groups"?) On-the-fly one-time-use circles would have been nice to have, too. And they didn't have an API for a long time so it's not like someone could straightforwardly go implement such things in a third-party app. (I haven't been following the API so I don't know if someone could do this now, but I'm pretty sure their first version of the API didn't even allow POST requests--awful developer UI.) On a second note, I think good UI can cover up a broken solution. Look at the mobile world with "everything-is-an-app" largely thanks to the iPhone.

munaf 15y ago
Agreed on overlaps. Circles are essentially tags/labels with a nicer UI. I wonder why tags are the chosen solution for _every_ classification task these days. They're great for information retrieval because they easily let you widen or narrow the scope of what you're looking for. But defining data permissions? Not so much. It feels like designers avoid hierarchal UI paradigms because they're old, but automated inheritance would've been nice on Google+.

RandallBrown 15y ago

I would love for Path to be a tightly integrated Facebook client. The interaction is great and it's really a joy to use. The problem is, I don't want to have to keep up with another network, even if I'm supposed to use this one differently than I would Facebook or Twitter.

now 15y ago

I tend to agree with the idea that Google Circles is broken. The problem is that one also needs the reverse. I, as a content producer, need to be able to specify to those that I’m sharing with what it is that I’m sharing with them. This way, content consumers can choose to follow the items in my stream belonging to a certain category (or circle or whatever you want to call it). As an example, I would like to be able to follow Ryan Dahl and get content from his stream regarding Node.js. I don’t however, need to read about him standing in front of some skulls: https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/CEMdcTeEPsN https://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143/posts/CEMdcTeE.... Currently, there’s almost zero information in his stream that I care about, but the only way for me to get to that information is to let all of it pass through my stream.