I thinks this guy is missing the point. Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules.
In the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use.
The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.
How does eliminating the limits between keys improve the keyboard? How does eliminating the small symbols overlayed on the keys (for example I can type "!" by holding the A key) improve the keyboard?
I think the guy has valid points, and your post is just an appeal to authority.
Sadly it's not only google, it's also Microsoft (Windows 8), Gnome (3), Ubuntu (Unity), etc. This UI minimalism consisting in removing features with no good reason is killing me.
There will be Windows 10 (Windows 8 is really a big mistake). Use Cinnamon, Mate or XFCE (or KDE even). Use another Keyboard on Android or change the theme on the official Android keyboard to old Holo theme (yes, possible).
I think Unity's brilliant. My new test for desktop environments is to press the super/win key and then type the first three letters of an app I want and press enter. If a DE can't respond by opening the intended app then I don't use that DE. I don't know about OSX, but Windows, Unity and Gnome 3 all work that way. KDE Plasma and Gnome 2 don't.
Google sucks at UI. Period. They had one good UI: the original Google home page. Everything since then has not been about making their products more usable, it's been about finding ways to cram more advertising into their products.
This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.
> This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.
I do not think that necessarily follows. Even if you are not the customer, they likely (think they) are designing it for you. Because they need you to keep giving them your data, they need you to find the UI easy to use and easy to hand over data.
Data is easy for them to get since, you know, they control the OS behind your phone and will get the data anyway.
The new Google Maps UI is fucking custom tailored to showing you advertisements. It's much less useful now for things like driving directions or finding businesses that don't pay for sponsorship (i.e. if I search for "Rite Aid" from my house, it shows me a Rite Aid 3 miles away instead of the one literally 50 feet from my front door.)
Those things may be all true, but are unrelated to the point I was responding to, which was your invoking the "if you are not paying for it, you are the customer" meme.
Per Google's 10-K [1], they had revenues of $50 billion on ad sales in 2013, and $5 billion in revenue on everything else. If there is a conflict between advertiser interests and end-user interests, the advertiser will win because Google gets >90% of their revenue from advertising.
If you don't pay for advertising, then you're not Google's real customer. They will do whatever they have to do to keep eyeballs on their products, but only if those products help them sell more ads. See Google Reader - it was neither expensive to maintain nor struggling, but it wasn't as advertiser-friendly as Google's other aggregation products and actively cannibalized users from them, so it went away.
I think we are just interpreting "for" differently, in "the UI design is for the customers". I was assuming a very literal interpration, and saying that UI design is to attract more users, while it seems you meant it in the sense that the end goal of the UI design is for Google to serve more ads. I thnk both are true, and it depends on how "for" is interpreted.
The underlying problem is dev time gets wasted on cosmetic updates while basic usability issues are ignored.
Whatever OS you pick, there are elements that are simply wrong.
I have a particular loathing of iTunes for its many persistent idiocies, but I could just as easily pick examples from Windows or Linux world.
Designing eye-candy is much easier than designing good application work-flow - and it's the latter that defines the UX.
It's baffling that this is either not understood or ignored by so many product managers.
Or maybe not - if you research app design books you'll find a huge amount written about coding conventions and ideas like MVC, and quite a lot about HI standards and graphic design, but (relatively) almost nothing about workflow design.
> Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent. They are now executing those grand-design rules.
That's all well and good, but they seem to do this every two years or so.
Thats indeed a good point. The question remains. How often should you redesign your app? Sometimes an innovation (such as touch screens) forces you to rethink the uix.
> Google did uix research and come up with a more usable design philosophy, which makes all apps more consistent.
It will be like everywhere else. Someone wanted to change stuff to make their mark and found a way to get survey results that confirmed their decision.
Well, they can go back to the drawing board and do some more research. This was an example posted here a few weeks ago, by a heavy Calendar user. Look at the old and new app and see if you can answer a common question for a calendar user, like when do I have some free time in the next month: http://imgur.com/a/Qo91p
Also, not that it matters, but the old app is 2 MB and works flawlessly, the new one is more than 20 and chugs a bit when scrolling on a quad core processor.
It's also become incredibly difficult to scroll properly in the new calendar. I constantly find myself scrolling horizontally when I want to scroll vertically, or vice-versa; it is maddening.
If they put colored sections indicating appointments around the circles in the latter example, as if they were 24h clock faces, it would be even more useful than the first example.
I'm rarely if ever troubled by UI changes but it took me a good moment before I figured out how to rerfresh your inbox in new Gmail. It's pretty obvious that you need to drag down when there are messages but without any (inbox zero) acting as an indicator, I went through all the options, and only picked the right move by accident.
If you're just starting out and don't have a feel for the mobile paradigm, those gestures may as well be magic. Maybe you're simply not supposed to refresh anything by hand any more. Maybe it's supposed to be magic.
The new gmail is ok although it has absolutely no advantages over the old one so it's merely irritating they changed it just because they could. Except for the compose button over the top of my text which is really awful and I hate it so much
> If you're just starting out and don't have a feel for the mobile paradigm, those gestures may as well be magic. Maybe you're simply not supposed to refresh anything by hand any more. Maybe it's supposed to be magic.
I agree that this can be a source of frustration. On the flip side, once you're used to it as a global UI pattern you might find certain buttons or indicators to be gratuitous. Now that I'm used to a global back button on Android, I feel totally lost on iOS when I want to go back/up. I'm no longer used to looking for a specific app button for that action because I'm used to it being a system-wide feature.
I'm wondering if this will become less confusing once the lion's share of Android phones and apps are using Material Design, as MD recommends that content is refreshed either a) automatically by sync or b) via the drag-to-refresh action.[1]
I stopped updating all my Google apps ~2 years ago because there were so many asinine, unintuitive UI changes with each new version. A lot of their changes didn't even conform to the standards recommended by Google (e.g. menu button locations). It's almost as if the UI team gets bored and decides to make changes just because they need to occupy themselves. And then instead of testing them with actual users, they just talk amongst themselves about how awesome their new set of obscure gestures and button locations are.
I'm afraid to buy a new Nexus because of how bad the application interfaces will probably be.
At the very least, now it seems Google is making all their applications fairly standardized in their UI/UX. I think that's Material Design at work, but I'm far from a UI/UX person.
Are you serious? Every Operating System manufacturer these days "standardizes" their UI across their whole offering every few years (Microsoft, Google, Ubuntu and Apple are all on board). Just a moment ago, Holographic Design was the thing on Android. Let me guarantee you that Material Design will be, too, a thing of the past in a couple of years. What the designers don't seem to realise is that this is frustrating to the users.
I just updated my Nexus 5 to KitKat. The update forced me to use GMail instead of the Email app, and almost 24h later GMail is still "Getting your messages". None of my email accounts work. Never mind changing the UI, they should start by not completely breaking the key functionality of their applications in their effort to force everyone to use their services.
K9 Mail is the traditional answer to this problem. Google never put very much effort into the Android Mail App because they wanted to push you into using GMail. That said, Email still works fine in KitKat - why did you have to switch to the GMail App?
I was anxiously expecting the update, but man that keyword is a deal breaker.
Can it be configured as dark themed?
The keyboard is a central point for UX, I've already moved away from Samsung for the same reason, and will hold the update if I'm forced to use that keyword
I agree, the new keyboard sucks a lot, there is no visual distinction between the letters and it is very easy to make a lot of typos, it is very painful. Went back to Swiftkey immediately.
What's odd for me is that I feel like I should be making more typos with the new keyboard, yet I'm actually making fewer. I'm not sure if that has to do with the keyboard mapping being more accurate or me focusing slightly more while typing due to the "buttons" blending together.
Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!
Depends on the changes. Facebook's UI revamps have usually been good ones (excluding their "hide the privacy settings" dark patterns), but a certain subset of users complain each time. I've got one friend who's been a member of each redesign's "bring back the old Facebook!" movement.
More than one year after it happened the new GMaps interface still looks like crap, and on top of that it feels slow, on a Mac Mini with 4GB of memory. I still (don't know exactly how, could be a cookie thing, not sure) manage to have access to the old interface in one of my browsers, and the old interface works like a charm, both in terms of UI and speed.
And about GMail, nothing more to say, only that once you've managed to break the "Open in new tab" button and the "Back" button then you have no business doing UI-stuff in a browser.
Yes, I know both products are free as in I'm not paying anything for them, it's just that is really, really frustrating to compare them with how they used to behave.
As far as I remember click "?" mark on the bottom of map window - there is option to change it back to map classics. You can save this as well once changed (small pop up will come out) so it will become your default.
Yep, I still find myself switching to the old version so I can get terrain view. In the new version, once you type in an address the "terrain" link below the address box disappears. I can't imagine why that is supposed to be helpful. My typical use case is that I click a map link for a hike, enter my address to see how long the drive is, and then want to switch to terrain view to see terrain for the hike. Apparently, that is no longer possible.
Agreed, I think GMaps is probably the best example of "we have too many people working on this and we need to give them something to do". Perhaps people could have accused me of just needing to "get used to it" a year ago, but after a year of usage I find the new GMaps less useful in almost every way.
I think it depends on what your complaint is. This article has a mix of solid complaints (they keyboard has been rearranged) and bad (transitions are gross!).
Serious question, why is this a "bad" complaint? Personally I hate transitions, I think they bring nothing of value and they're wasting my time, had the impression that there must be other people who thought exactly like me.
(IMO, of course) because it's a very broad complaint. You dislike absolutely every transition? It's been proven that they are helpful for users, so what is the request that comes with your complaint? Because if it's "remove transitions", that's not realistic. The majority like them.
You might be surprised at the hints they give you subconsciously about where UI elements are going and what they're doing. Google's Material Design actually does a good job showcasing this - I had no idea the lock screen had a 'double swipe' motion to bring down quick toggles, but the transition of my first swipe made it clear that the extra motion was available to me.
> It's been proven that they are helpful for users
Proven how? With first-time users? Phones are things where I want to pull it out of my pocket, do the thing I want to do, and have it take the absolute minimal amount of time. I don't think this is a techie thing. Even non-techies are willing to take a little more time to learn an interface if it means they can spend a few seconds less to send a message. That said, if I have a device that can send a message quickly, I don't want to pull it out of my pocket and find out I have to re-learn how to do it. I don't care if the interface is better - I want a 5-year interface, not a 5-month interface.
When you make statements like "helpful for users" you can't stop at a simple focus group. You have to think about how added complexity hurts the reliability and speed of the device.
It seems standard that phones older than 1 year are getting slower and slower. I've had the same Android phone for about 22 months, and it's been getting unusably slow (mostly, Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Hangouts) take between 10-15 seconds to open on a white screen.) I'm willing to believe the hardware has degraded over the time I've had the phone. But primarily, I think software has been pushed out that was designed for flagship phones released in the past 8 months without looking at the performance impact.
Just to add, I think the transitions can also be disabled, but it's somewhat hidden in the developper options. The options are called "Window animation scale", "Transition animation scale" and "Animator duration scale". Putting them all to zero makes all transitions instantaneous.
If only every application was just a backend with a well-defined API and a default UI, then we could have independently sourced UIs that every person could choose (and customize) on demand!
In this case - isn't it? Samsung is happy to almost completely change the whole look and feel. HTC has its own additions. Components like keyboards are completely separate apps. Nokia released their launcher.
What's missing apart from people actually writing and releasing those independent UIs?
AFAIK, different OEMs just change the system's look and feel (desktop, launcher, keyboards, maybe some built-in apps that are usually crap/adware/spyware), not the UI of the actual applications (e.g. GMail).
I'm so glad someone finally said it! I'm tired of this crap.
This applies to physical products too. These companies change their labels so much.. It just makes it more difficult to find and leaves me, as a consumer, confused when shopping unsure that I'm buying the correct product. Yes, things needs to be updated and kept "pretty" but can we keep a base? Or can we agree, at least, to pick something and stick to it?!
I really like the new design and it did not changed too often in my opinion. UI design is like fashion for me and when it changes for good (I thing I like the Lollipop design) every 3-5 years this is a good thing.
When speaking about productivity and design:
So we should all stay on Windows XP because everybody knows it and how to use it?
This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI.
One phrase I hear a lot is “The future is longer than the past”. It's relevant here as well – spending all of your time worrying about existing users have to spend a couple minutes getting used to a new keyboard design isn't a good reason not to make improvements which will benefit the millions of people who will never use the old one.
If you think it through more, it's only about being excessively driven by fear of change. UI changes inspire a lot of reactionary opposition but once you're looking on a perspective greater than minutes or hours, the big problems usually turn out to be less significant than originally claimed.
>Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!
> acdha 4 minutes ago
> This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI.
How appropriate that these two comments were at the top of the page. That's it, there is the whole discussion in a nutshell.
>Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI.
Off course he will. It's his point. He alreadey stated that it is not the ui that is bad. It's the practice of constantly changing things for no good reason that is bad.
You're both begging the question of whether this was in fact done for no reason other than to change things. It's rather unlikely that someone at Google spent time and money developing something for no reason – that post would have been interesting if it'd actually discussed why things changed and why the reasoning behind those changes was wrong rather than simply assuming it.
I think it is just a fact of life, it's the same reason that I can't ever figure out how to really use a microwave. They have to make it different this year to "differentiate" the brand. I've learned to live with a lot of churn and reach to buy the products that were built with more care and last.
The problem with arguments like these is that there being "no good reason" is highly subjective. Excessive change is generally better than no changes at all. Things have to evolve and even if we miss the mark every now and then it should always improve over time on average when new ideas are tried and tested.
> The problem with arguments like these is that there being "no good reason" is highly subjective.
Not only is it subjective it's almost certainly incorrect. If you read anything about Google it's clear that they don't make UI decisions without looking at a ton of data, making the changes and testing those changes.
What does the author of that post think? A Google designer updated a load of designs on a whim?
Not a whim, an existential crisis. Justifying their existence, cherry picking suitable answers from a ton of data to back that up. Confirmation bias to appear relevant.
Justifying their job too. How do you get marks on your review if the only concrete things you can point to through the year are the bookkeeping of the design world? Also, employee turnover and position changes means that those new people bring their own, "new" ideas that have to be implemented(how else do you "make your mark"?), at the expense of the user comfort/satisfaciton.
What sort of data? I can look at data all day, it doesn't mean that I'm interpreting it right. Furthermore, the biggest issues may not show up in the data.
I have a 22-month-old Android phone. Google Maps just keeps getting slower and slower. Now it takes 10-15 seconds to start up. I'd really like to know what percentage of the data Google is using comes from phones released in the past 10 months. (Or phones that haven't even been released yet.)
And the Maps navigate functionality has gone from being so nice it single-handedly justified the cost of a smart phone to just barely working. I tried to use it on a 90 minute trip a few weeks back, and it did brilliant things like try to start me over from my original starting point rather than my last known location when it lost the GPS signal 45 minutes into the trip...
the op didn't just say that. he went on to point out the flaws with the new design. It would be great to hear the reasoning that went on behind those changes, but overall I agree with him. Most times I see a redesign (os or a website), there is net negative change in usability. Part of that is due to having to re-learn the UI. And I wouldn't mind this if there was actually a benefit, but often times I can't find it no matter how long I think about it. If users that are conscious about UX are not seeing the benefits, how is it a positive change?
Evolution needs to be guided by need. Right now, changes happen too fast for a feedback loop to be established that validates good changes.
Furthermore, in order for that feedback loop to exist, users need to have a choice. I'm afraid that the new Google Maps is just plain worse, and Google needs to dust off the old code and start iterating on it again. It was a great experiment, but everyone building consumer software seems to be incapable of admitting when their complete rewrite was a step backwards.
When a software team does a complete redesign of a feature or app, they almost become institutionally incapable of admitting that the rewrite was the wrong choice.
* 'Excessive change is generally better than no changes at all.'
Can't agree with that. If the change isn't needed then change can't be better. The burden of responsibility for justifying the change is on the person wanting the change. To identify why the change is needed and how it's an improvement.
It's a weakness of the production team if there's a "must evolve no matter what" mentality on repeat-cycle. You could aim for "stability", for "baseline" for "solid foundations" instead of "excessive change". Then your efforts are about extending, expanding and tweaking rather than changing.
There's nothing subjective about evaluating reasons for changing an interface. There's either good reasons for the change, or there isn't. Too many people try to manipulate discussion in this business with "it's subjective". It dilutes the discussion because "subjective" doesn't commit either way, it just kind of shrugs and says "oh well, too hard to conclude anything".
When a consequence of change is that you piss off a bunch of users, then you can't say that change is inherently better each iteration. A wrong turn might be made and literally breaks the product or dents the reputation for many iterations. It happens. Nothing is immune from the great unwashed interface testers, and we don't like useless layout changes for things already committed to muscle memory.
> If the change isn't needed then change can't be better
I'm curious... when you say 'change' is there a contextual limit to what counts as a change? That is to say, am I taking you too literally if I consider an A/B test a change? Or is there a pervasiveness of rollout that you think is necessary to consider something as a change?
In either case, I wouldn't want to underestimate the value of studying reactions to a change--especially the negative reactions. There's a lot to be learned from mistakes.
Valid point, but clearly even the smallest changes upset people. Re-arranging furniture is a change. Changing the colour or number of cushions on the sofa is a change.
A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.
None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features. I wish for innovation in changes, such as inviting and allowing users to preview for themselves a particular change.
Fortunately we do have lots of options in our settings for a lot of things, but it doesn't go far enough. Their new "material girl in a material world" design philosophy is a distraction... and personally I think is weaker than commentators are declaring.
Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
I get that these changes are pain points for lots of people, and no one wants to be frustrated using the devices with which they have everyday, critical interactions.
> Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
Sure we want that... and we also want newer, better things. That's a tug of war between comfort and progress. If all we did were laser-focus on reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality we never would have gotten the GUI or the mouse, right?
> A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.
I completely agree. My point was to home in on what you would characterize as change. Your response was very helpful to that end.
> None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features.
Yeah, it would be comforting if the gmail app let users toggle between "classic" and "material"... and it would also be contrary to that which is (seemingly) the driving force behind Material Design: defragmentation of UX in the Android space.
Choice is a double-edged sword. Several studies suggest that choice overload reduces happiness, increases stress, and leads to poorer decision-making.[1] On the other hand, one study found that choice overload caused all of those reactions but also positively affected their perceived quality of the brand.[2]
We HNers are a niche of tinkerers who enjoy poring through settings. As I understand it, our love of actively customizing and tweaking is not shared by the larger demographics.
Change bears risk, yes; but personally I would rather groan at questionable changes than ploddingly use an app that sacrifices the hope of exceptional change for the fear of bad change.
Google is making a huge amount of progress in UI and UX; the company has historically been rather mediocre in terms of it's UI and UX, while Apple was always the star. Over the past year or so the roles have reversed, and Google continues making strides towards unifying their applications in a single user experience and ui paradigm that allows for simpler app use, particularly for new users.
It's easy to get upset when things change, but keep in mind that change can be positive and/or negative.
Logging into youtube will, by default unless you know about it and turn it off, associate every video you view with your G+ profile for your gmail account, so every person you correspond with can look up your video history.
It appears to have changed in the last few months, and it didn't show full history, so I'll take it back slightly, but you can still see other Youtube users favourites/subscribed: https://www.youtube.com/user/whoever
Some people have a link from their G+ to their youtube, but it seems not to be there for everyone any more.
The other really frustrating thing is when you log out of Gmail, you are not actually logged out. You will be presented by a pseudo-looking login screen, which is really just an authentication screen to get back to Gmail.
What really happens is they keep you kind of logged in to collect as much data on your searches, videos, etc. The way to actually log out is:
- Click logout in Gmail
- Click "Sign in with a different account" (!)
- Click "Remove"
- Click the X next to your name.
- Click Done
It feels like they are trying to trick you into staying logged in by making the logout process extremely obscure and difficult, and I really hate it when I'm being blatantly tricked like that. With existence of evercookies (http://samy.pl/evercookie/) I am somewhat skeptical that even that obscure logout process actually logged me out.
This is pretty much the strongest reason why I don't use the GMail UI anymore (there are others, but this alone would have made me stop).
> allows for simpler app use, particularly for new users
Are you kidding me? So called "flat design", with nondescript icons indistinguishable from the surrounding text, is the worst thing ever for new users. How am I supposed to know that I can click (er, I mean, touch) something?
I'm not saying every choice they made is perfect. One of my qualms is the lack of backgrounds for button selection in areas with 'ok' and 'cancel' - which is one of the most important areas to give the user clear direction.
I've had Lollipop for over a week and I generally don't find lack of affordance in the UI. It's very clear what is clickable and what isn't. (there are a couple of very minor exceptions I can think of)
In some apps, yes, but in many others they are just as atrocious as they've always been—just adhering to material design a bit more. For example, Chrome on iOS has a pretty wonderful UX but Maps is a shitshow; it takes me several frustrated clicks to do what I want. You can never tell what a UI element does simply by looking at the screen.
Something about the entire approach Google is taking with Lollipop (and Material Design) just seems off to me. I can see their philosophy but I don't agree with large parts of it (I don't need or want animations to guide me along the path thank you).
Overall I'm left with a feeling of a lack of 'grace'. It's just not graceful, which I guess is where the art of UI comes into play. Maybe they will get there eventually, but right now it's still clunky as hell. Even worse, they are dropping functionality along the way.
I find the new Google Maps UI to be frustrating. The number of taps to just find directions to something after you search for it seems to be increased, for no good reason.
I think it's mainly because there are multiple paths through the app to do the same thing, and some of them are optimized flows and others are not. So tapping the search bar is not the most efficient way to get directions anymore... you should tap the blue directions icon instead.
Man! Move on. Start using Here maps. I don't know why people are stuck with GMpas when far more superior alternative is available. They have a new android app as well!
It's ever so slowly getting better. I remember when it first launched I couldn't even do waypoints.
Planning a cross-country trip for Thanksgiving right now. In classic I can type "Town A to Town B to Town C to Town D" and it returns a route between A, B, C and D. In the new interface it brings up a list of restaurants in Town A. How can the king of search get this wrong?
I wrote up a rant about Google Maps the other day[1], from the perspective of an Apple user. As a Google Maps user since the start, I've been surprised to find myself reaching for Apple Maps more and more, both on my phone and on the desktop. Despite its flaws, Apple Maps just feels like a much better product in terms of UI and performance these days — and there's still time for them to catch up in data.
Anyone have a hint for using G-Maps (or making a homescreen shortcut) to navigate home address that won't send me to the wrong place, or make me wait, in case of slow internet?
This seems fairly basic functionality so I may be missing something. I've even been sent toward a place 30 miles east of home, repeatedly, trying to select the autocompletion of 'home'.
Try using old GMail after using InBox. Or hand someone an Android 4.4. phone after they've bought a new Nexus. You will see immediately that the new UI is a big improvement.
Articles like this show a lock of imagination. If you can't imagine the shock of looking back at an older design, you can't perceive the benefits.
Even though this point is irrelevant to the article, when you are on the Desktop, you can use a commandline.
When you use a commandline the UI and Workflow geniuses do not get to have any input, and then you get less surprises of this nature.
When you use a Desktop application, it is easier to keep the software at a version with a UI you like. The trend towards storing your data on other's computers leads to empowering the authors of web programs, so that they don't have to respect your taste in UI as much(among other things).
This is becoming pretty annoying. When buttons disappear or keyboard experience changes, it gets me angry. Not because I hate changes, but because I have no choice and no warnings. I will now think twice before updating my Android system.
"There are a bunch of new ‘transitions’ between elements. I don’t know what the battery cost actually is for this, but as a user I just don’t care about cute transitions between elements. I want fast interaction with my mobile device."
This is poorly phrased at best. Transitions exist to make it obvious what is happening: e.g. you minimize a window and it zooms into the taskbar/dock, as a visual reminder that it's not gone, just stored there. This kind of thing is even more important with an unfamiliar interface.
Are the particular transitions he's complaining about bad? I have no idea, since he just wrote about transitions in general, without specifying any. Not all transitions are good, but writing like they're all pointless suggests that you just don't understand UI (and I'm not a UI person, just someone who reads a tiny bit about it).
Edit: Just looked at the formatdoc. Is there a way to quote text without getting those scrollbars?
At best their training wheels for a UI. As such if you can't turn them off your building a poor UI. Worse, if your UI needs them then clearly your using a bad design.
How about the vast majority of games out there. Don't get me wrong there a useful tool and can mask a slow UI, but just becase a cruch is useful to mask problems does not mean you should see more heathy people walking around with them.
It's a common element of game Menu systems ex: rolling up an in game paper when closing a menu. But, games rarely add a delay before basic gameplay like walking. Granted, there are built in delays used for balance ex: reloading a gun or to give time for a video to play etc. But, they don't really fit the UI defining for transitions. Which is pure UI window dressing aiding usability.
ED: Ok, their also commonly used on game loading screens but again adding more loading screens does not improve a games gameplay.
As a long time Android user I had the same complaint about the transitions that the author did. I've already had plenty of time to figure out how things work, so I don't need those visual cues, and it just makes the whole experience feel more laggy. At the same time I can see your point for new users. Random idea: what if those transitions just sped up over time so that the longer I use the app (and the more experienced I am with it) the more the UI would prioritize speed of use over friendly reminders about how UI elements work (ie. transitions).
The transitions the author is probably complaining about are menu transitions: Every time you tap on a menu item you get a outward radial animation thing. It looks tacky but, more importantly, adds a half-second delay to every menu interaction.
Are you speaking with any authority? I know this is a thing that can be done, but it doesn't seem to me that it is actually what's happening: It's interesting that the delay seems to be always constant, exactly as long as the animation, and was introduced only in this release. Such a coincidence.
Yep, as someone who doesn't have Lollipop yet, there's almost nothing I can actually take out of this article. It's too vague and general.
For what it's worth, my girlfriend -- decidedly not a tech person -- got the Lollipop update for her Nexus 5 a few days ago. I asked her how she liked it, and she said she could barely even tell what had changed. I don't think the HN demographic is even remotely representative of how most people will feel about the Lollipop changes.
TIP: If you enable "Developer options" in the settings app (by "About" tapping 7 times), there are options to eliminate, speed up, or slow down the transition animations. I set mine at 0.5x the normal duration.
Meh. New UIs are a game that we all get to play. It is as much about marketing and sales "and staying fresh" then anything. It is just more distraction so we can ogle our devices from a new perspective. You don't want to get stale now.
Argh, lollipop's driving me up the wall! Vent time, woo!
The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful.
And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone app instead of unlocking the phone is becoming obscene. I often have my phone landscape while using it as a mini-tablet and in that orientation it's easy to do. Perhaps I'm paranoid but I think the screen now locks faster than it used to and I haven't been able to find the setting to slow it down yet, which exacerbates the problem, when you're lounging and intermittently transferring your attention between tv and internet browsing.
And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day.
The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're constantly fighting the brightness of your phone at night.
The new notification have to be double tapped, which again is awkward, especially as they register the first tap and then "helpfully" tell you to make a 2nd one. But the first tap is behind a button press of the lock screen so it's actually a triple press.
I'm also slightly perplexed as to the home button icon change, to a circle of all things. It actually offends me a bit, it's so tiny and yet completely devoid of meaning. It's different for Apple's circle button as that was a real button, Google's tiny circle just kinda floats there. And the "back" triangle changes orientation for no discernible reason other than the designer obviously wanted to animate something.
The new phone app is strange, the buttons are too small, the volume of the button presses doesn't turn down as you turn down the speaker volume.
And this is in a day and a half of use. It honestly feels like anyone testing it would have hit most of these issues. I suspect Google's designers then turned round to the testers and said "As designed. Material, you know. It's just a new way", rather than admit they'd screwed up.
The worst part is, it's not added anything. I've not come across a single thing yet that I've gone, oh, cool! Not one.
You probably mean schedule, and no it doesn't as it shows only 6 or so items per page and isn't good for glancing at. I can't glance at it and see I've a meeting in the morning, I've got to read it to see when the appointments are. There's a reason the old paper calendars work so well, cause you can just glance at them.
The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now you're constantly having to scroll.
As for the rest, how can you debunk what actually happens? If you don't have your lollipop device on you, that probably means it's not a phone...
Yup, agenda view is great for a full day.
Settings in Chrome turns off the tab integration.
On the lock screen you can slide up from anywhere on the screen (which then takes me to the slide code screen).
The rest of the stuff - I guess some personal preference comes into it? But I'm thoroughly enjoying 5.0. Made a few tweaks to the default settings and it's great. Feels soooo much faster.
Well, the new calendar app is ridiculously bad. You can't get back the old "normal" calender view, lots of screen space is wasted in every window and the 1-month overview now is totally useless without any indicators.
Compared to that, the new Gmail and Maps apps are almost good...
Auto Brightness has been renamed and is available at Settings > Display > Adaptive Brightness. It just has to be turned on.
And I know it's personal preference but I love the way chrome tabs are integrated into the app switcher. It allows me to focus on what I'm doing and not so much what app I'm in. Now each tab is like an app in and of itself. I think that's the way multi-tasking should be done.
I don't agree. Users understand a browser, and that it contains tabs. I'm sure people will get used to the new way, probably, but it's not something that was in need of innovation. It was well understood.
The new behavior is surprising to people who have used any phone browser before, and it will continue to be surprising to people who use their desktop browsers as a point of reference.
Most casual users (family, non-tech saavy people) that I've seen don't even use the task switch button. They go to the home screen and then open whatever app they want, even if it ought to be in the task list already most of the time.
Can you? Oh, thank god! Actually, now doing that, that reminds me of another two WTFs?
The new menu system is bizarre. You get loads of random animations of grey appearing for no apparent reason. Put your finger on something to scroll, "grey flash!!!!". Err? What did I do? Oh, nothing...
And, this could be just not getting used to it yet, but I am completely flabbergasted at just how crap the new scroll limit indicator looks. It changes shape depending where your finger is pulling from, why? I keep thinking something's gone wrong because this uneven blob suddenly appears on the top of your screen.
It's kinda weird, does take some getting used to. I think the new buttons at the bottom (home, back, menu) are so ugly. I didn't think the needed changing, but I'm not in charge of UX, so..
The first thing chrome said is that tabs show in the task switcher. And that you can disable this in the settings. Then it placed a settings link right under the text to turn it off first-thing.
Personally, I think people just don't like change. A lot of the things — camera shutter sound, out of bounds scrolling — they're not actual complaints. They sound more like "this is different and I'm not used to it". OTOH, some are definitely valid.
I wonder if there's any easy way to roll out design changes for the masses which doesn't cause uproar. I swear this happens every single time.
Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events'.
This = install aCalendar[1] and Simple Calendar Widget [2]
Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? I don't want a profile pic so I don't know which account is which of the 5 I need to use, so I just pick pot luck or swipe through them all? Then there is that annoying hover button. 'WRITE SOMETHING' it screams out at you, 'Surely that's why you're here isn't it? You couldn't possibly just want to scroll through your inbox without accidentally tapping me!!!'
This = install K9 mail.[3]
YouTube - Enter menu drawer, close it, press 'back' > still takes me back to the home screen. Take a leaf out of Feedly's book and open the frickin' menu drawer!
Chrome - Thankfully you can stop the annoying tab merge pretty easily.
Notifications - now to get to settings I have to do three actions, two pull downs and hit a teeny tiny little button, or you know, waste a space on the home screen.
Phone dialer - I actually like it. It's way faster to get to you contacts and has a much better layout than before. Still got that annoying floating button - 'DIAL SOME NUMBERS ASSHOLE!!!'
Default keyboard - why is removing the key separators a good idea? Is there some data to back that up? To me it looks like a cluttered mess. Thankfully switching back to the old style is just a setting away, but it would be great if there was a more sane default.
You can actually reskin the keyboard back to the old look.
Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" (not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".
The way you wrote this makes it seem like swiping up instead of left or right is really horrible and confusing. Why? Previous versions of Android had a totally different lock screen design, so I honestly do not know why you feel so confident that the correct swiping direction should be left or right. Because Apple did it that way?
The problem is that if you swipe left it will open the dialer, right photo. Only up unlocks it.
While it's useful having shortcuts to do these things, they've gone far too far and made it too hard to do what you most often want to do, which is simply unlock the phone. The old photo button worked well, for example.
They had also previously used "up" on the lock screen for voice commands/google now, so I for one have learnt never to use "up" unless I want to set a timer using voice (pretty much the only useful thing it can do).
I still don't see how that's bad. My current lock screen, a custom one, only unlocks if I swipe right. Not up, not down, not left. Swiping left would open the camera. There's no easy way for me to get to the dialer straight from my current lock screen. From the way you describe it, Lollipop's lock screen sounds great to me. Full notification list, the ability to interact with the notifications, the ability with a single swipe to either get to the camera, the dialer, or just unlock the phone... sounds great to me. I'm not trying to be facetious, just to be clear. It sounds like by far the most useful lock screen Android has ever had by default.
Also, for what it's worth, I find swiping up to be easier to do one-handed on large phones.
That's a very general statement which hasn't been customized at all to the current scenario. So really there's no way for me to respond, but I'll try.
As I said, swiping up actually feels easier to me on a large screen than swiping left or right. And putting notifications on the lock screen is a critical feature in my opinion, something Android has desperately needed out of the box for a while now. I use a custom lock screen just for that feature because it's so useful.
The notifications are a great addition in stock usefulness. You could always add that functionality through 3rd party lock screens but it's nice to see it baked right in.
It's the swiping that I'm specifically disliking. Every time I swipe to the right it opens up the phone app. Probably there are many users who have formed a really strong habit of swiping a certain way to unlock their Android phone. I would bet on that direction being left-to-right.
Do you know if it's possible to change the way the lock screen handles swiping in some settings page somewhere?
The issue is the previous lock screen didn't require any swipes to enter your unlock pattern. They added a step, making the most common gesture slower than it was before.
Ahh, I see. I guess I wouldn't notice that since I'm so used to already having notifications shown first on the lock screen. I can see how that'd be annoying if you don't care about the notifications list.
>why is removing the key separators a good idea? //
I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).
> If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).
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Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.
Because it's got a big list of n-grams and knows what words are more commonly used than others. It uses a predictive model to generate a list of words from your swipe, and then sorts that according to usage. It also continuously learns what words you use the most and prioritizes those. It picks the most likely word, but also displays a list of other possibilities you can tap. It's pretty slick.
> It's a bizarre method of text entry, but interesting nonetheless.
And by bizarre you mean fantastic... It's even better in a language like French, where swiping means not having to type in the accents, whereas normally you'd have to do a long press of the letter and then select the accent you want...
You don't need to type spaces either and keyboards can be more compact as it's about the word shape rather than hitting a particular letter sequence exactly. Stock Android 4.1 version at least seems pretty forgiving provided I hit the correct first letter, a lot of weight in the algo appears to lie with first letter.
Swipe typing on a touch screen [1] is analogous to T9 [2] text entry on a traditional keypad. In fact, they were invented by the same group [3].
On numeric keypads, each button corresponds to ~3 letters. Basic text entry involves pushing each button multiple times to select the index of the letter you want[4], then waiting to confirm the selection before moving to the next character.
T9 sped up this process by allowing you to press each button once. It would determine which word you meant by comparing all possible combinations of letters that could be created from the buttons you pressed against a dictionary of known words.
Swype provides a similar extension to QWERTY touchscreen keyboards. With Swype, you drag your finger across a QWERTY grid, creating a path. This path starts on the first letter of the intended word and crosses all letters in the word, in order. It also crosses lots of letters that aren't in the word, or are out of position. The 'secret sauce' lies in how to compare the ordered set of keys defined by the path to a predefined dictionary and produce a meaningful prediction of the intended word.
I haven't implemented such an algorithm myself. However, you can imagine how it might be done. For example, acute angles in the path probably occur when you reach a letter you want, then angle off to collect the next letter. This provides a signpost that can be combined with the initial letter to reduce the possible words down to the set that starts with the initial letter and includes the key with the acute angle.
A large fraction of Android users around me use one of the swype type keyboards... but that could be because I've been evangelizing it for close to 5 years now to anybody who'll listen... it really is a genuinely better and faster way to input on the mobile.
I swipe heavily (using the original 'swype' app). It's still much faster than the others, and I've tried almost all of them, including the Google keyboard. Also, everyone else who sees me typing using that tries to learn the same. It's really more convenient than traditional touch typing.
What fraction of the words you type are not in the dictionary? Why not revert to tap-typing for just those words and use the faster method for the dictionary words?
Depending on the region, it can be common enough to be annoying. Your second point would be the reason why id just not start swipping, if I need to stop in order to type, id rather just keep typing. Typing is more natural from being used to the keyboard anyway
Thanks for the calendar recommendation. Ugh. Already switch to City Mapper from Google Maps when Google stripped that app. Sad to see the rest of the apps going the same way now.
I like the new keyboard. I feel like my typing mistakes have been reduced. Earlier i felt like i need to be precise on clicking the buttons now without boundary i don't need to.
I like everything about the new UI except for that Gmail profile switching. But you can easily switch from menu so no problem. Now OS X Yosemite those changes are annoying me and also slowing down my macbook pro. I had to disable few settings to get a acceptable performance.
Edit: There is one particular annoying thing in L. Sometimes when click on a tab like in Chrome, the notification window gets the touch and is semi shown.
I think the account switching in gmail is the single most annoying issue I've come across in lollipop. Most of the other changes are a matter of taste, the account switching in gmail is just plain bad. I have 5 accounts and can't even see all the "icon" versions at the same time... make the dropdown more distinctive and nuke the icons imho. I feel much the same about the icons in the message list too.
I wouldn't mind if the desktop/web interface were a bit more like the tablet sized gmail though... also if gmail proper could also see my other email accounts this way since there's no proper mail client in chromeos.
So-called hamburger menus. New Relic has oh so helpfully moved everything useful into a hamburger menu it took ages to find (it even turns into a picture of a hamburger bun when you hover), while useless trivial distinctions get giant, labeled dropdown menus. The affordances are all backward. But I bet everybody clicking around looking for the features they used to use showed more "engagement" with the site, right?
Clock - I used to be able to dismiss my 7:30 wakeup alarm if I woke up at 7:20 by simply swiping away the notification. But now I can't find any way to suppress the next instance of a recurring alarm.
> Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app?
The gmail redesign is really jarring if you're still on KitKat. It "fits" visually with the design language of Lolipop, but it still feels like a major step backward in terms of usability.
The conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to conclude that they do not, in fact, use their own app; it's almost like they made the Gmail app worse to encourage people to migrate to Inbox.
I'm pretty pleased with lollipop. Some of your complaints may be down to personal choice, but not all. For example, the triangle animation changes from pointing left when the action would be 'back', to down when the action is 'down', as in hiding the keyboard.
Some other thoughts:
- Getting to settings is no different from before when I had to swipe down and then tap a button to see the settings button. Now it's two swipes instead.
- Try schedule view in calendar for the overview you're looking for.
- The double tap on notifications to open them I like because it means I won't accidentally open one.
Things I've said 'oh, cool!' to:
- Guest accounts
- Brightness slider in the swipe down
- Priority/None interruption settings for the ringer. I used to use Shush! but this works nicely and with more configuration options, albeit less granular timing.
- Lock rotation in the swipe down settings
- Flashlight in the swipe down settings
I have a spare phone so I decided to throw lollipop on it. Wow, I couldn't believe how much I hated it, and I'm not one of those never-upgrade-it-because-I-don't-like-change folks.
On 4.4.4, I've been hating the new calendar. Christ I hate the colors in agenda mode. They make it almost impossible for me to "see" the text without extreme concentration.
The first time I became familiar with the constant-change-is-bad meme is with Quicken. They would force you to upgrade every 3 years (or so, I may have the number wrong), and for a while I upgraded every year. Nothing changed from year to year except everything was in a different place and they added more bugs. I finally moved to Moneydance a couple of years ago and have been in financial software heaven ever since. One of their selling points was "we don't change shit around for no reason!"
Lollipop arrived on my Nexus 5 last week, and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is significantly longer, and the new UI ... ugh, this sounds almost cloying ... the new UI makes me happy, it gives me joy.
It's beautiful, it's intuitive, it's functional, it's natural. What more could you want?
I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPhone owners feel. To bring this experience to the unwashed masses of Android users is a very good thing.
I had an iPhone, switched to Nexus 5. Nexus 5 already produced joy in me, it really is a great phone and as an ex-iPhoner I really think Android is prime time now and almost as good as iOS (my only issue is that some of the built in apps are a bit rubbish and Google Hangouts, the default, sucks as an SMS program).
But I'm getting no joy from Lollipop. Apart from all the interface issues I've hit, it seems fairly bug ridden.Some notification sounds suddenly turned themselves on (GMail), other sounds are really loud. Another example right now the lock screen on mine is showing a picture of a video I cast on BubbleuPNP last night. For absolutely no reason. I can't stop it.
That's totally not cool. I don't want a blurry video still as my lock screen picture. How do I clear it? Is that intentional? Or a bug?
Probably some setting you chose. When I first booted up Android 5, it asked me whether or not to display notifications on the lock page (I chose no). It could be that you chose yes and your app (BubbleuPNP) keeps pushing that video to your lock screen...
You can change the view to give you a summary of all the events for each month... You click the top right menu button, and select 'schedule' instead of 'day' or '5 day'.
That's not even close to a month at a glance, that's a lengthy list of hour long intervals. If you had as much scheduled as I do you would see how worthless this view is. I'm in a meeting and my boss asked me when something is free for next week and I'm scrolling and swiping around looking pretty much incompetent while the client is on the phone.
> I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPhone owners feel.
iOS is colourful and whatnot, but it's confusing as hell and has some ridiculous defaults. Ever since KitKat Android has been better by a wide margin. Not to mention, Apple sucks at services, whereas Google excels at them - and that's half the functionality of a phone these days. And Google Now is pretty much the best thing ever...
But yes, the new design of Android 5 makes me happy too - everything looks so much more vibrant, colourful, sleek and streamlined, etc... It's so much more Google-ey.
FWIW I like what they did with maps, finally. I hated the design they came out with about a year ago or so. It was awful and I basically stopped using the app except when absolutely necessary because I always felt like a dumb idiot trying to use it. Nothing was discoverable. I never got used to it. Much better now.
Part of this, is that even if you come up with a design that is better than what you have, it ought to be a lot better, because you're also asking people to get used to a new design. If it's just incrementally better, you're going to piss people off because you're asking them to relearn how to do something again, for no apparent good reason. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to be annoyed by that.
And of course, if it's worse, or if it's only arguably better, or if opinions are very much mixed, then you failed.
This is something Google doesn't seem to know institutionally, or rather I guess they just don't care. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Microsoft, who care about this too much.
I have the opposite experience. I liked the maps that came with my phone a year and a half ago.
It keeps getting upgraded. I lost the zoom buttons (pinch to zoom is very dangerous when driving, so basically a major feature loss for me). And recently the whole thing goes so slowly on my older phone that I have usually found the destination before the phone has managed to load the screen.
Recently I founds that I can uninstall all the updates, and I am back to the basic version that came with the phone. Far nicer. Less screen space, and search history is not as integrated, but at least it is usable in real time. If only I could go froward by two or three updates, then there is probably a version that did everything I want.
Well thats pretty much what the article boils down to. How am I expected to know that. The interface changed, the buttons were gone. And only now do I find out about a gesture to do the same thing.
The lock screen is indeed infuriating! Does anyone know if there's a way to restore the old behavior where you could enter your pattern lock immediately after pressing the power button?
The extra swipe serves no purpose at all, given that I've already pressed the power button, and have a pattern lock.
My personal favorite pointless change is the clock app. Now, mind you, it looks exactly the same if you disregard that they changed the widgets design, but thats system wide.
But they did manage to move the bin for deleting an alarm from the right to the left. That's all. Let's just switch it the fuck around!
You can turn off the 'feature' of having Chrome tabs appear in the Android app switcher in the Settings. I too think that for power users especially, this is a bad idea. Maybe if they just had like the 5 most recent tabs...just maybe.
>> "why is the Compose button a floating button taking up space in my Inbox list"
Because it's a button people use a lot and putting it there makes it much easier to get to. It doesn't 'cover' anything. You can scroll the inbox past it. It's a new design pattern in Android and used very well in Inbox imo by making the button expand and show most used actions.
I have to first trigger the unlock on Lolly Pop and then if I swipe wrong I'm taken to Phone which I barely use. Also the Phone's button to open the keypad looks like the App List button, so I usually hit that by accident.
The white background doesn't look as good as the transparent one, in the app list. The space between pages makes the screen look smaller.
There are permanent notifications for The Battery save mode and when you Restrict Background Data.
It takes me two swipes to pull down to access the settings.
Notifications on the lock screen are nice but not enough text is shown.
325 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] threadIn the end, apps should be more familiar, and easier to use.
The change itself is always frustrating, people who are used to an uix (by learning it), hate change, even if the new uix is simpler.
I think the guy has valid points, and your post is just an appeal to authority.
Sadly it's not only google, it's also Microsoft (Windows 8), Gnome (3), Ubuntu (Unity), etc. This UI minimalism consisting in removing features with no good reason is killing me.
This is yet another case of where if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. So they're not designing it for you.
I do not think that necessarily follows. Even if you are not the customer, they likely (think they) are designing it for you. Because they need you to keep giving them your data, they need you to find the UI easy to use and easy to hand over data.
The new Google Maps UI is fucking custom tailored to showing you advertisements. It's much less useful now for things like driving directions or finding businesses that don't pay for sponsorship (i.e. if I search for "Rite Aid" from my house, it shows me a Rite Aid 3 miles away instead of the one literally 50 feet from my front door.)
Per Google's 10-K [1], they had revenues of $50 billion on ad sales in 2013, and $5 billion in revenue on everything else. If there is a conflict between advertiser interests and end-user interests, the advertiser will win because Google gets >90% of their revenue from advertising.
If you don't pay for advertising, then you're not Google's real customer. They will do whatever they have to do to keep eyeballs on their products, but only if those products help them sell more ads. See Google Reader - it was neither expensive to maintain nor struggling, but it wasn't as advertiser-friendly as Google's other aggregation products and actively cannibalized users from them, so it went away.
[1] https://investor.google.com/pdf/20131231_google_10K.pdf
I think we are just interpreting "for" differently, in "the UI design is for the customers". I was assuming a very literal interpration, and saying that UI design is to attract more users, while it seems you meant it in the sense that the end goal of the UI design is for Google to serve more ads. I thnk both are true, and it depends on how "for" is interpreted.
Whatever OS you pick, there are elements that are simply wrong.
I have a particular loathing of iTunes for its many persistent idiocies, but I could just as easily pick examples from Windows or Linux world.
Designing eye-candy is much easier than designing good application work-flow - and it's the latter that defines the UX.
It's baffling that this is either not understood or ignored by so many product managers.
Or maybe not - if you research app design books you'll find a huge amount written about coding conventions and ideas like MVC, and quite a lot about HI standards and graphic design, but (relatively) almost nothing about workflow design.
That was a textbox. You can't build an OS around that.
Everything since then has not been about making their products more usable, it's been about finding ways to cram more advertising into their products.
Err, no. How does the left version cram more advertising in than the right version here?
http://indonetworksecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/An...
> That was a textbox. You can't build an OS around that.
That sounds like Unix to me. Seems to work just fine …
That's all well and good, but they seem to do this every two years or so.
It will be like everywhere else. Someone wanted to change stuff to make their mark and found a way to get survey results that confirmed their decision.
Also, not that it matters, but the old app is 2 MB and works flawlessly, the new one is more than 20 and chugs a bit when scrolling on a quad core processor.
If you're just starting out and don't have a feel for the mobile paradigm, those gestures may as well be magic. Maybe you're simply not supposed to refresh anything by hand any more. Maybe it's supposed to be magic.
I agree that this can be a source of frustration. On the flip side, once you're used to it as a global UI pattern you might find certain buttons or indicators to be gratuitous. Now that I'm used to a global back button on Android, I feel totally lost on iOS when I want to go back/up. I'm no longer used to looking for a specific app button for that action because I'm used to it being a system-wide feature.
I'm wondering if this will become less confusing once the lion's share of Android phones and apps are using Material Design, as MD recommends that content is refreshed either a) automatically by sync or b) via the drag-to-refresh action.[1]
[1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/patterns/swipe-to-refresh....
I'm afraid to buy a new Nexus because of how bad the application interfaces will probably be.
The keyboard is a central point for UX, I've already moved away from Samsung for the same reason, and will hold the update if I'm forced to use that keyword
- Material Light (the default, the one that's shown in the article);
- Material Dark (the same but dark);
- Holo White (the old one);
- Holo Blue (the old one with blue accents)
http://i.imgur.com/WDLz0Ju.png
The new keyboards look different but polish, would definitely give it a try
Settings > Language & input > Google Keyboard > Appearance & layout
And about GMail, nothing more to say, only that once you've managed to break the "Open in new tab" button and the "Back" button then you have no business doing UI-stuff in a browser.
Yes, I know both products are free as in I'm not paying anything for them, it's just that is really, really frustrating to compare them with how they used to behave.
The new Maps has come a long way since launch but I agree that it's still very far from good.
Serious question, why is this a "bad" complaint? Personally I hate transitions, I think they bring nothing of value and they're wasting my time, had the impression that there must be other people who thought exactly like me.
You might be surprised at the hints they give you subconsciously about where UI elements are going and what they're doing. Google's Material Design actually does a good job showcasing this - I had no idea the lock screen had a 'double swipe' motion to bring down quick toggles, but the transition of my first swipe made it clear that the extra motion was available to me.
Proven how? With first-time users? Phones are things where I want to pull it out of my pocket, do the thing I want to do, and have it take the absolute minimal amount of time. I don't think this is a techie thing. Even non-techies are willing to take a little more time to learn an interface if it means they can spend a few seconds less to send a message. That said, if I have a device that can send a message quickly, I don't want to pull it out of my pocket and find out I have to re-learn how to do it. I don't care if the interface is better - I want a 5-year interface, not a 5-month interface.
When you make statements like "helpful for users" you can't stop at a simple focus group. You have to think about how added complexity hurts the reliability and speed of the device.
It seems standard that phones older than 1 year are getting slower and slower. I've had the same Android phone for about 22 months, and it's been getting unusably slow (mostly, Google Apps (Gmail, Maps, Hangouts) take between 10-15 seconds to open on a white screen.) I'm willing to believe the hardware has degraded over the time I've had the phone. But primarily, I think software has been pushed out that was designed for flagship phones released in the past 8 months without looking at the performance impact.
This is not the kind of innovation we need.
What's missing apart from people actually writing and releasing those independent UIs?
This applies to physical products too. These companies change their labels so much.. It just makes it more difficult to find and leaves me, as a consumer, confused when shopping unsure that I'm buying the correct product. Yes, things needs to be updated and kept "pretty" but can we keep a base? Or can we agree, at least, to pick something and stick to it?!
When speaking about productivity and design:
So we should all stay on Windows XP because everybody knows it and how to use it?
One phrase I hear a lot is “The future is longer than the past”. It's relevant here as well – spending all of your time worrying about existing users have to spend a couple minutes getting used to a new keyboard design isn't a good reason not to make improvements which will benefit the millions of people who will never use the old one.
>Yeah and too many times when you complain about this kind of thing you get accused of "hating change" or some such thing. No, I hate THIS change because THIS change is bad!
> acdha 4 minutes ago
> This happens every time something changes. Wait for the next release and the same guy is probably going to be complaining about changes to the current UI.
How appropriate that these two comments were at the top of the page. That's it, there is the whole discussion in a nutshell.
Not only is it subjective it's almost certainly incorrect. If you read anything about Google it's clear that they don't make UI decisions without looking at a ton of data, making the changes and testing those changes. What does the author of that post think? A Google designer updated a load of designs on a whim?
I have a 22-month-old Android phone. Google Maps just keeps getting slower and slower. Now it takes 10-15 seconds to start up. I'd really like to know what percentage of the data Google is using comes from phones released in the past 10 months. (Or phones that haven't even been released yet.)
Furthermore, in order for that feedback loop to exist, users need to have a choice. I'm afraid that the new Google Maps is just plain worse, and Google needs to dust off the old code and start iterating on it again. It was a great experiment, but everyone building consumer software seems to be incapable of admitting when their complete rewrite was a step backwards.
When a software team does a complete redesign of a feature or app, they almost become institutionally incapable of admitting that the rewrite was the wrong choice.
Can't agree with that. If the change isn't needed then change can't be better. The burden of responsibility for justifying the change is on the person wanting the change. To identify why the change is needed and how it's an improvement.
It's a weakness of the production team if there's a "must evolve no matter what" mentality on repeat-cycle. You could aim for "stability", for "baseline" for "solid foundations" instead of "excessive change". Then your efforts are about extending, expanding and tweaking rather than changing.
There's nothing subjective about evaluating reasons for changing an interface. There's either good reasons for the change, or there isn't. Too many people try to manipulate discussion in this business with "it's subjective". It dilutes the discussion because "subjective" doesn't commit either way, it just kind of shrugs and says "oh well, too hard to conclude anything".
When a consequence of change is that you piss off a bunch of users, then you can't say that change is inherently better each iteration. A wrong turn might be made and literally breaks the product or dents the reputation for many iterations. It happens. Nothing is immune from the great unwashed interface testers, and we don't like useless layout changes for things already committed to muscle memory.
I'm curious... when you say 'change' is there a contextual limit to what counts as a change? That is to say, am I taking you too literally if I consider an A/B test a change? Or is there a pervasiveness of rollout that you think is necessary to consider something as a change?
In either case, I wouldn't want to underestimate the value of studying reactions to a change--especially the negative reactions. There's a lot to be learned from mistakes.
A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.
None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features. I wish for innovation in changes, such as inviting and allowing users to preview for themselves a particular change.
Fortunately we do have lots of options in our settings for a lot of things, but it doesn't go far enough. Their new "material girl in a material world" design philosophy is a distraction... and personally I think is weaker than commentators are declaring.
Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
{glances at this HN thread} Yes, clearly :)
I get that these changes are pain points for lots of people, and no one wants to be frustrated using the devices with which they have everyday, critical interactions.
> Who wants reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality? Um.... try everyone!
Sure we want that... and we also want newer, better things. That's a tug of war between comfort and progress. If all we did were laser-focus on reliable, familiar interfaces and predictable functionality we never would have gotten the GUI or the mouse, right?
> A-B testing won't reveal how many people reluctantly embrace the change, rolled their eyes and cursed your service as they completed the task. A-B testing is not all-knowing. It's suitable for colder functional changes, not things such as key separators on a virtual keyboard.
I completely agree. My point was to home in on what you would characterize as change. Your response was very helpful to that end.
> None of this would be a problem if users are simply given choice and meticulous control over the changes and how or whether they're applied. Choice, control, options and user preferences - those should be the key features.
Yeah, it would be comforting if the gmail app let users toggle between "classic" and "material"... and it would also be contrary to that which is (seemingly) the driving force behind Material Design: defragmentation of UX in the Android space.
Choice is a double-edged sword. Several studies suggest that choice overload reduces happiness, increases stress, and leads to poorer decision-making.[1] On the other hand, one study found that choice overload caused all of those reactions but also positively affected their perceived quality of the brand.[2]
We HNers are a niche of tinkerers who enjoy poring through settings. As I understand it, our love of actively customizing and tweaking is not shared by the larger demographics.
Change bears risk, yes; but personally I would rather groan at questionable changes than ploddingly use an app that sacrifices the hope of exceptional change for the fear of bad change.
To each his own, I suppose.
-----
[1] For anyone interested in "choice overload":
* http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bad-good-ch... which refers to a dead link that I think was moved to http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.127.3.27...
* http://www.fastcompany.com/3031364/the-future-of-work/why-ha...
* http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/03/01/select-all
* http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/your-money/the-trap-of-too...
* http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/research-too-many-choic...
* https://hbr.org/2006/06/more-isnt-always-better written by the author of a book that some of the other articles cite
[2] http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/when-customers-equate-c...
What are some techniques for evolving UIs at minimal cost to the user?
It's easy to get upset when things change, but keep in mind that change can be positive and/or negative.
Some people have a link from their G+ to their youtube, but it seems not to be there for everyone any more.
What really happens is they keep you kind of logged in to collect as much data on your searches, videos, etc. The way to actually log out is:
- Click logout in Gmail
- Click "Sign in with a different account" (!)
- Click "Remove"
- Click the X next to your name.
- Click Done
It feels like they are trying to trick you into staying logged in by making the logout process extremely obscure and difficult, and I really hate it when I'm being blatantly tricked like that. With existence of evercookies (http://samy.pl/evercookie/) I am somewhat skeptical that even that obscure logout process actually logged me out.
This is pretty much the strongest reason why I don't use the GMail UI anymore (there are others, but this alone would have made me stop).
Are you kidding me? So called "flat design", with nondescript icons indistinguishable from the surrounding text, is the worst thing ever for new users. How am I supposed to know that I can click (er, I mean, touch) something?
Overall I'm left with a feeling of a lack of 'grace'. It's just not graceful, which I guess is where the art of UI comes into play. Maybe they will get there eventually, but right now it's still clunky as hell. Even worse, they are dropping functionality along the way.
I think it's mainly because there are multiple paths through the app to do the same thing, and some of them are optimized flows and others are not. So tapping the search bar is not the most efficient way to get directions anymore... you should tap the blue directions icon instead.
Planning a cross-country trip for Thanksgiving right now. In classic I can type "Town A to Town B to Town C to Town D" and it returns a route between A, B, C and D. In the new interface it brings up a list of restaurants in Town A. How can the king of search get this wrong?
[1]: http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2014/11/20/what's_up_with_goog...
This seems fairly basic functionality so I may be missing something. I've even been sent toward a place 30 miles east of home, repeatedly, trying to select the autocompletion of 'home'.
Articles like this show a lock of imagination. If you can't imagine the shock of looking back at an older design, you can't perceive the benefits.
When you use a commandline the UI and Workflow geniuses do not get to have any input, and then you get less surprises of this nature.
When you use a Desktop application, it is easier to keep the software at a version with a UI you like. The trend towards storing your data on other's computers leads to empowering the authors of web programs, so that they don't have to respect your taste in UI as much(among other things).
Are the particular transitions he's complaining about bad? I have no idea, since he just wrote about transitions in general, without specifying any. Not all transitions are good, but writing like they're all pointless suggests that you just don't understand UI (and I'm not a UI person, just someone who reads a tiny bit about it).
Edit: Just looked at the formatdoc. Is there a way to quote text without getting those scrollbars?
It's a common element of game Menu systems ex: rolling up an in game paper when closing a menu. But, games rarely add a delay before basic gameplay like walking. Granted, there are built in delays used for balance ex: reloading a gun or to give time for a video to play etc. But, they don't really fit the UI defining for transitions. Which is pure UI window dressing aiding usability.
ED: Ok, their also commonly used on game loading screens but again adding more loading screens does not improve a games gameplay.
No, it really doesn't. It's just an animation running in the RenderThread while the new Activity is loading on the UI (main) thread.
For what it's worth, my girlfriend -- decidedly not a tech person -- got the Lollipop update for her Nexus 5 a few days ago. I asked her how she liked it, and she said she could barely even tell what had changed. I don't think the HN demographic is even remotely representative of how most people will feel about the Lollipop changes.
The thing I'm hating is that they've managed to completely screw up Chrome by getting rid of tabs and mixing them all in with your other apps, in an attempt to force you to use the bloody useless app switcher button instead of making it do something vaguely useful.
And the lock screen, what the hell were they thinking? The amount of times I've opened the phone app instead of unlocking the phone is becoming obscene. I often have my phone landscape while using it as a mini-tablet and in that orientation it's easy to do. Perhaps I'm paranoid but I think the screen now locks faster than it used to and I haven't been able to find the setting to slow it down yet, which exacerbates the problem, when you're lounging and intermittently transferring your attention between tv and internet browsing.
And the new calendar app only allows you to see 6 hours at a time, so you can't get an overview of your day.
The settings app requires some sort of double swipe down that's just plain awkward. Auto-brightness has been got rid of so often you're constantly fighting the brightness of your phone at night.
The new notification have to be double tapped, which again is awkward, especially as they register the first tap and then "helpfully" tell you to make a 2nd one. But the first tap is behind a button press of the lock screen so it's actually a triple press.
I'm also slightly perplexed as to the home button icon change, to a circle of all things. It actually offends me a bit, it's so tiny and yet completely devoid of meaning. It's different for Apple's circle button as that was a real button, Google's tiny circle just kinda floats there. And the "back" triangle changes orientation for no discernible reason other than the designer obviously wanted to animate something.
The new phone app is strange, the buttons are too small, the volume of the button presses doesn't turn down as you turn down the speaker volume.
And this is in a day and a half of use. It honestly feels like anyone testing it would have hit most of these issues. I suspect Google's designers then turned round to the testers and said "As designed. Material, you know. It's just a new way", rather than admit they'd screwed up.
The worst part is, it's not added anything. I've not come across a single thing yet that I've gone, oh, cool! Not one.
Try the 'agenda' view which does exactly that.
I was also going to debunk most of your other complaints because I know they're false but I don't have my Lollipop device with my at the moment.
The old calendar also had a week view where you could see most of the week and what was on. Now you're constantly having to scroll.
As for the rest, how can you debunk what actually happens? If you don't have your lollipop device on you, that probably means it's not a phone...
Compared to that, the new Gmail and Maps apps are almost good...
And I know it's personal preference but I love the way chrome tabs are integrated into the app switcher. It allows me to focus on what I'm doing and not so much what app I'm in. Now each tab is like an app in and of itself. I think that's the way multi-tasking should be done.
The new behavior is surprising to people who have used any phone browser before, and it will continue to be surprising to people who use their desktop browsers as a point of reference.
To be fair you can turn this off, that's the first thing I did when Chrome notified me of this "awesome" change.
The new menu system is bizarre. You get loads of random animations of grey appearing for no apparent reason. Put your finger on something to scroll, "grey flash!!!!". Err? What did I do? Oh, nothing...
And, this could be just not getting used to it yet, but I am completely flabbergasted at just how crap the new scroll limit indicator looks. It changes shape depending where your finger is pulling from, why? I keep thinking something's gone wrong because this uneven blob suddenly appears on the top of your screen.
Personally, I think people just don't like change. A lot of the things — camera shutter sound, out of bounds scrolling — they're not actual complaints. They sound more like "this is different and I'm not used to it". OTOH, some are definitely valid.
I wonder if there's any easy way to roll out design changes for the masses which doesn't cause uproar. I swear this happens every single time.
Calendar is now rubbish, month view is gone, schedule view is too limited and there's way to much whitespace and 'fat' place cards. Got multiple Google accounts? You can't remove the 'events' calendar. And 'Events' is ostensibly the first calendar in your actual online Google Calendar which you might have named 'Home' but in the app is steadfastly refuses to be called anything but 'events'.
This = install aCalendar[1] and Simple Calendar Widget [2]
Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app? I don't want a profile pic so I don't know which account is which of the 5 I need to use, so I just pick pot luck or swipe through them all? Then there is that annoying hover button. 'WRITE SOMETHING' it screams out at you, 'Surely that's why you're here isn't it? You couldn't possibly just want to scroll through your inbox without accidentally tapping me!!!'
This = install K9 mail.[3]
YouTube - Enter menu drawer, close it, press 'back' > still takes me back to the home screen. Take a leaf out of Feedly's book and open the frickin' menu drawer!
Chrome - Thankfully you can stop the annoying tab merge pretty easily.
Notifications - now to get to settings I have to do three actions, two pull downs and hit a teeny tiny little button, or you know, waste a space on the home screen.
Phone dialer - I actually like it. It's way faster to get to you contacts and has a much better layout than before. Still got that annoying floating button - 'DIAL SOME NUMBERS ASSHOLE!!!'
Default keyboard - why is removing the key separators a good idea? Is there some data to back that up? To me it looks like a cluttered mess. Thankfully switching back to the old style is just a setting away, but it would be great if there was a more sane default.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat...
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anod.calen...
[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9&hl...
Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" (not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".
The way you wrote this makes it seem like swiping up instead of left or right is really horrible and confusing. Why? Previous versions of Android had a totally different lock screen design, so I honestly do not know why you feel so confident that the correct swiping direction should be left or right. Because Apple did it that way?
While it's useful having shortcuts to do these things, they've gone far too far and made it too hard to do what you most often want to do, which is simply unlock the phone. The old photo button worked well, for example.
They had also previously used "up" on the lock screen for voice commands/google now, so I for one have learnt never to use "up" unless I want to set a timer using voice (pretty much the only useful thing it can do).
Also, for what it's worth, I find swiping up to be easier to do one-handed on large phones.
As I said, swiping up actually feels easier to me on a large screen than swiping left or right. And putting notifications on the lock screen is a critical feature in my opinion, something Android has desperately needed out of the box for a while now. I use a custom lock screen just for that feature because it's so useful.
It's the swiping that I'm specifically disliking. Every time I swipe to the right it opens up the phone app. Probably there are many users who have formed a really strong habit of swiping a certain way to unlock their Android phone. I would bet on that direction being left-to-right.
Do you know if it's possible to change the way the lock screen handles swiping in some settings page somewhere?
I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).
Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.
And by bizarre you mean fantastic... It's even better in a language like French, where swiping means not having to type in the accents, whereas normally you'd have to do a long press of the letter and then select the accent you want...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9b8NlMd79w
On numeric keypads, each button corresponds to ~3 letters. Basic text entry involves pushing each button multiple times to select the index of the letter you want[4], then waiting to confirm the selection before moving to the next character.
T9 sped up this process by allowing you to press each button once. It would determine which word you meant by comparing all possible combinations of letters that could be created from the buttons you pressed against a dictionary of known words.
Swype provides a similar extension to QWERTY touchscreen keyboards. With Swype, you drag your finger across a QWERTY grid, creating a path. This path starts on the first letter of the intended word and crosses all letters in the word, in order. It also crosses lots of letters that aren't in the word, or are out of position. The 'secret sauce' lies in how to compare the ordered set of keys defined by the path to a predefined dictionary and produce a meaningful prediction of the intended word.
I haven't implemented such an algorithm myself. However, you can imagine how it might be done. For example, acute angles in the path probably occur when you reach a letter you want, then angle off to collect the next letter. This provides a signpost that can be combined with the initial letter to reduce the possible words down to the set that starts with the initial letter and includes the key with the acute angle.
[1] First introduced by Swype: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/swype-vs-iphone-typ...
[4] e.g. the "3" key corresponds to "DEF", so press "3" twice to enter "E"
I like everything about the new UI except for that Gmail profile switching. But you can easily switch from menu so no problem. Now OS X Yosemite those changes are annoying me and also slowing down my macbook pro. I had to disable few settings to get a acceptable performance.
Edit: There is one particular annoying thing in L. Sometimes when click on a tab like in Chrome, the notification window gets the touch and is semi shown.
I wouldn't mind if the desktop/web interface were a bit more like the tablet sized gmail though... also if gmail proper could also see my other email accounts this way since there's no proper mail client in chromeos.
The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).
I have just realized in the last month or so that three stacked bars is a menu (bootstrap style). I am sure those have been around for a while now.
By the way, limiting to 5 days is at best inflexible. Many people want to look at 7 days because, you know, that's a week.
Clock - I used to be able to dismiss my 7:30 wakeup alarm if I woke up at 7:20 by simply swiping away the notification. But now I can't find any way to suppress the next instance of a recurring alarm.
(at least you can on kitkat, I swipe down over 3 alarms at once and dismiss them all)
The gmail redesign is really jarring if you're still on KitKat. It "fits" visually with the design language of Lolipop, but it still feels like a major step backward in terms of usability.
The conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to conclude that they do not, in fact, use their own app; it's almost like they made the Gmail app worse to encourage people to migrate to Inbox.
Some other thoughts: - Getting to settings is no different from before when I had to swipe down and then tap a button to see the settings button. Now it's two swipes instead. - Try schedule view in calendar for the overview you're looking for. - The double tap on notifications to open them I like because it means I won't accidentally open one.
Things I've said 'oh, cool!' to: - Guest accounts - Brightness slider in the swipe down - Priority/None interruption settings for the ringer. I used to use Shush! but this works nicely and with more configuration options, albeit less granular timing. - Lock rotation in the swipe down settings - Flashlight in the swipe down settings
Just another data point.
I have a 4.4 device and a 4.0.something device and this happens in both (except is not a triangle)
On 4.4.4, I've been hating the new calendar. Christ I hate the colors in agenda mode. They make it almost impossible for me to "see" the text without extreme concentration.
The first time I became familiar with the constant-change-is-bad meme is with Quicken. They would force you to upgrade every 3 years (or so, I may have the number wrong), and for a while I upgraded every year. Nothing changed from year to year except everything was in a different place and they added more bugs. I finally moved to Moneydance a couple of years ago and have been in financial software heaven ever since. One of their selling points was "we don't change shit around for no reason!"
Lollipop arrived on my Nexus 5 last week, and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is significantly longer, and the new UI ... ugh, this sounds almost cloying ... the new UI makes me happy, it gives me joy.
It's beautiful, it's intuitive, it's functional, it's natural. What more could you want?
I've never owned an iPhone, but this joyful experience must be a tiny bit like what iPhone owners feel. To bring this experience to the unwashed masses of Android users is a very good thing.
But I'm getting no joy from Lollipop. Apart from all the interface issues I've hit, it seems fairly bug ridden.Some notification sounds suddenly turned themselves on (GMail), other sounds are really loud. Another example right now the lock screen on mine is showing a picture of a video I cast on BubbleuPNP last night. For absolutely no reason. I can't stop it.
That's totally not cool. I don't want a blurry video still as my lock screen picture. How do I clear it? Is that intentional? Or a bug?
iOS is colourful and whatnot, but it's confusing as hell and has some ridiculous defaults. Ever since KitKat Android has been better by a wide margin. Not to mention, Apple sucks at services, whereas Google excels at them - and that's half the functionality of a phone these days. And Google Now is pretty much the best thing ever...
But yes, the new design of Android 5 makes me happy too - everything looks so much more vibrant, colourful, sleek and streamlined, etc... It's so much more Google-ey.
It's still there under Settings. It's now called "Adaptive brightness"
Part of this, is that even if you come up with a design that is better than what you have, it ought to be a lot better, because you're also asking people to get used to a new design. If it's just incrementally better, you're going to piss people off because you're asking them to relearn how to do something again, for no apparent good reason. I don't think it's unreasonable for a person to be annoyed by that.
And of course, if it's worse, or if it's only arguably better, or if opinions are very much mixed, then you failed.
This is something Google doesn't seem to know institutionally, or rather I guess they just don't care. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Microsoft, who care about this too much.
It keeps getting upgraded. I lost the zoom buttons (pinch to zoom is very dangerous when driving, so basically a major feature loss for me). And recently the whole thing goes so slowly on my older phone that I have usually found the destination before the phone has managed to load the screen.
Recently I founds that I can uninstall all the updates, and I am back to the basic version that came with the phone. Far nicer. Less screen space, and search history is not as integrated, but at least it is usable in real time. If only I could go froward by two or three updates, then there is probably a version that did everything I want.
The extra swipe serves no purpose at all, given that I've already pressed the power button, and have a pattern lock.
Annoying.
But they did manage to move the bin for deleting an alarm from the right to the left. That's all. Let's just switch it the fuck around!
I find the new calendar baffling. Luckily, the old AOSP calendar is still available on F-Droid.[0]
[0] https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=aosp+calenda...
TIP: Pull down with two fingers to go straight to the quick settings shade.
Because it's a button people use a lot and putting it there makes it much easier to get to. It doesn't 'cover' anything. You can scroll the inbox past it. It's a new design pattern in Android and used very well in Inbox imo by making the button expand and show most used actions.
The white background doesn't look as good as the transparent one, in the app list. The space between pages makes the screen look smaller.
There are permanent notifications for The Battery save mode and when you Restrict Background Data.
It takes me two swipes to pull down to access the settings.
Notifications on the lock screen are nice but not enough text is shown.