
Google Tips - Ashuu
https://www.google.com/get/googletips/
======
gk1
Wow. As a long-time user of almost (read: not G+) everything Google has made,
I was just admiring the UI, thinking "How nice of them to make this for people
who don't even know how to check their email..." and then I spot this:

[https://www.google.com/get/googletips/card/ask-google-to-
fet...](https://www.google.com/get/googletips/card/ask-google-to-fetch-your-
stuff/detail/)

Which I had no idea about.

This is a brilliant content and feature discovery tool. Any other company
would've just created a long list of products with short descriptions for
each.

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jasonkolb
Interesting. This appears to be an attempt to do some market research by
Google--to find out which messages are resonating with their audience.

I wonder if it'll work.

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known
[https://www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/all.html](https://www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/all.html)

~~~
ToastyMallows
I actually didn't know about the range searching, that's really nice.

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caryhartline
This could go either way really. Either you think that Google is such a
monstrosity with all these parts that don't really fit together which makes
for bad UX or you think that Google's services are something we should be
thankful for and that this display of free stuff is the kind of really nice UX
only Google can deliver.

~~~
tedks
I think the implication that Google's UX is a monstrosity isn't really
warranted based on the content of this page.

Most of these fall into a few categories:

1\. Hey, this service exists (Google Contacts, Google Keep, Google News) 2\.
Look at this intermediate-level thing you can do with this service (Install
apps from the web interface of the Play store, make playlists on YouTube,
natural language semantic Google search) 3\. Bad UX (hey, you can share map
search results!)

Google has a lot of services (leading to #1); a lot of users are very cautious
about using computers in general and won't try to explore to find intermediate
or advanced usages (even though they're very useful and HN would probably
bitterly complain about their being taken out); the UX is sometimes bad but
having user education doesn't automatically imply that.

Have we really gotten so addicted to onboarding that any feature that can't be
explained in a 30-second "welcome to Google" tour should just be shafted? I
really like being able to install Android apps from my laptop, but even if I
was told that in the Android "welcome to Android" screen that I first saw
years ago and haven't seen since, I'd have forgotten it.

Using any tool as an expert requires some amount of education. Is it really
desirable to build tools that cannot be used as an expert? What would the
world be like if the only tools that existed were only usable at the beginner
level?

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jrsnyder
The fact that someone thought this was necessary emphasizes the amount of
problems Google has with user experience design.

~~~
raldi
By "this", do you mean an intuitive natural-language one-stop-shop to get
information from across all of Google's properties? Seems like pretty terrific
UX design to me.

Or by "this" did you mean Tips -- i.e. is your argument that you shouldn't ask
your users for discoverability advice? If so, I can see how doing so requires
a bit of indifference to embarrassment, and a lack of care as to what snobs
might think, but hey, discoverability is hard.

How would you design a way to teach users they can do queries like this?

~~~
wavefunction
I don't know if you have multiple google accounts (I have personal gmail,
personal analytics and some work related accounts).

Try this: Go to Google.com as a logged in user and try to "switch" to your new
account. What was originally one click to logout and one click to bring up a
un/pw now takes a ton of additional user interaction.

I'm no Jony Ive but whoever thought this was a good workflow needs to
reconsider.

~~~
chad_oliver
I have two accounts: my personal account and a work account. Until a few
minutes ago, I had never signed in to my work account from my home computer.

I tried to "switch" to my new account, as you described. It took about 10
seconds, which was the time it took to load a new page and type out my
credentials. Furthermore, as soon as I did that, I could instantly switch
between accounts with two clicks and without having to log out of either
account. What's the problem?

~~~
wavefunction
My point is that the solution before was more elegant, since it was just a
pop-up flow with single clicks to log out and log in. The whole rigmarole now
is just the way all the Google apps feel to me now. Extra hoops to jump
through, I guess I'd describe it as?

~~~
chad_oliver
Fair enough; I can see your point. I think the other side of the coin is that,
once you've logged into all your accounts, it's much easier to switch back and
forth between accounts.

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Gepser
I don't find the logic on this site

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Pxtl
Google has so many features that users don't know about that they created a
site that (1) gives users a random listing of their products and features to
sort through, and (2) lets Google see which features/services get the most
interest from the uninitiated users.

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cdcarter
Chrome on Windows 7 and the text on the cards is difficult to read normally,
and impossible on mouseover.

~~~
elwell
Fine for me. Get the latest version of Chrome (it includes some anti-aliasing
differences). Maybe just restart your browser if update is already downloaded.

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fthssht
“See what videos your friends are posting (and adjust friendships
accordingly)”

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leephillips
Since Google can't get one of their flagship services, "Google Now", to
actually work[0], even after a year or so of user complaints, and this is on
one of these cards, I'm not really motivated to try any of this other stuff
out.

[0][http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/SJZxi...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/SJZxi4xGrkQ%5B101-125-false%5D)
[0]

