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You're probably thinking of Doug Bowman's classic "Goodbye Google" post: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/arch

You're probably thinking of Doug Bowman's classic "Goodbye Google" post: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html I think two things are entirely possible here: One, that in reaction to Bowman's high-profile indictment of Google's design culture, there has been a shift over the past few years toward Apple-like, auteur-driven design at Google, that was misapplied in this case, or (I think more likely), every detail of the new Gmail UI was extensively tested by itself, but there was no final arbiter to say "you know what? This one part sucks; let's change it despite the data."

furyofantares 15y ago
So you think the possibilities are that either google ignored the data or the data is wrong with no affordance to the possibility that you are wrong?
- eridius 15y ago
  A third option is they tested each individual change in isolation, and then grabbed all of the high-performing changes and lumped them together. Just because the individual changes may have been improvements within the context of the old UI doesn't mean they're still good once put together with all the other changes. That said, I have trouble believing that changing the buttons from labels to icons could have possibly tested as an improvement. I'm with the OP; I have to mouse over every button and read the tooltip to find the Report Spam one.
  - seldo 15y ago
    FYI, I found this article really helpful: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/ http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... It shows how to: get rid of "importance" markers, add some contrast back to the colors, remove superfluous whitespace, and most importantly, change the impenetrable icons back to text.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    Maybe Gmail 's spam detection is too good. It's the octagonal "stop sign" icon.
- seldo 15y ago
  When something is as viscerally, obviously bad to me as the new GMail UI, I go with my gut. Google has no track record of great UI that would make me question that feeling. They built the world's simplest home page not because of some profound respect for minimalism; they just didn't have anything else to put on it.
  - amouat 15y ago
    That's not fair, they could easily have overloaded the home page with junk at any point. They just realised that users came to google to perform a single, clearly defined task and decided the home page should reflect that. I wouldn't argue it was "respect for minimalism" but it was respect for functional simplicity.
  - OpinKerfiBjarni 15y ago
    This is wrong. The minimalism of the front page was, in the early days, a point of pride and something that engineers fought for (note: I worked for Google for 3 years on a team with a fair number of old-timers). I'm failing to come up with a link at the moment, but I remember a widely circulated bit of folklore about how an unnamed engineer within Google set up a cronjob that anonymously e-mailed the entire team a single number every day. After a while people figured out that the number was the byte count of the front page, the implication was that it was a metric that needed to be watched carefully.
    - sdoering 15y ago
      And even this seems to me to be not quite right. There was a talk, Marissa Meyer gave on Velocity '09: http://blip.tv/oreilly-velocity-conference/velocity-09-marissa-mayer-in-search-of-a-better-faster-stronger-web-2305322 http://blip.tv/oreilly-velocity-conference/velocity-09-maris... Just watch from 1:00 to 2:00 -> One Minute will answer the question. Here she tells the story, how the first Google Design came to live. It is quite interesting. It seems, that minimalism wasn't a rational choice and that it came to stay only, because the data proofed it to be the right lucky choice. I can understand, that the minimalistic homepage was a point of pride. I would be proud, to minify the homepage of the company I work for.
Drbble 15y ago
Everyone complains when Apple changes anything too. Google nailed that part.

furyofantares 15y ago

So you think the possibilities are that either google ignored the data or the data is wrong with no affordance to the possibility that you are wrong?

eridius 15y ago
A third option is they tested each individual change in isolation, and then grabbed all of the high-performing changes and lumped them together. Just because the individual changes may have been improvements within the context of the old UI doesn't mean they're still good once put together with all the other changes. That said, I have trouble believing that changing the buttons from labels to icons could have possibly tested as an improvement. I'm with the OP; I have to mouse over every button and read the tooltip to find the Report Spam one.
- seldo 15y ago
  FYI, I found this article really helpful: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/ http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... It shows how to: get rid of "importance" markers, add some contrast back to the colors, remove superfluous whitespace, and most importantly, change the impenetrable icons back to text.
- Drbble 15y ago
  Maybe Gmail 's spam detection is too good. It's the octagonal "stop sign" icon.
seldo 15y ago
When something is as viscerally, obviously bad to me as the new GMail UI, I go with my gut. Google has no track record of great UI that would make me question that feeling. They built the world's simplest home page not because of some profound respect for minimalism; they just didn't have anything else to put on it.
- amouat 15y ago
  That's not fair, they could easily have overloaded the home page with junk at any point. They just realised that users came to google to perform a single, clearly defined task and decided the home page should reflect that. I wouldn't argue it was "respect for minimalism" but it was respect for functional simplicity.
- OpinKerfiBjarni 15y ago
  This is wrong. The minimalism of the front page was, in the early days, a point of pride and something that engineers fought for (note: I worked for Google for 3 years on a team with a fair number of old-timers). I'm failing to come up with a link at the moment, but I remember a widely circulated bit of folklore about how an unnamed engineer within Google set up a cronjob that anonymously e-mailed the entire team a single number every day. After a while people figured out that the number was the byte count of the front page, the implication was that it was a metric that needed to be watched carefully.
  - sdoering 15y ago
    And even this seems to me to be not quite right. There was a talk, Marissa Meyer gave on Velocity '09: http://blip.tv/oreilly-velocity-conference/velocity-09-marissa-mayer-in-search-of-a-better-faster-stronger-web-2305322 http://blip.tv/oreilly-velocity-conference/velocity-09-maris... Just watch from 1:00 to 2:00 -> One Minute will answer the question. Here she tells the story, how the first Google Design came to live. It is quite interesting. It seems, that minimalism wasn't a rational choice and that it came to stay only, because the data proofed it to be the right lucky choice. I can understand, that the minimalistic homepage was a point of pride. I would be proud, to minify the homepage of the company I work for.

Drbble 15y ago

Everyone complains when Apple changes anything too. Google nailed that part.