
Google Calendar Redesign: It's Goddamn Terrible - nathanh
http://areallybadidea.com/google-calendar-redesign
======
DanI-S
I am aware that hyperbole is the best thing in the entire world, but does the
definition of 'terrible' really stretch this far? How about 'Google Calendar
has some design decisions that I disagree with, mostly on the basis of some
colors being different."

~~~
Pewpewarrows
A million times this. Apparently a few nit-picky small CSS issues (some of
which are just the personal preference of the author) is enough to deem an
entire cross-product redesign as "terrible".

~~~
wavesplash
In the realm of UI a few 'nit-picky' css issues are the difference between
joy-of-use and customer frustration.

Luckily there's an escape hatch in this case: Cog Menu -> "Use Classic Look"

------
jellicle
Google's new redesigns eliminate the separation between different areas of the
window, and replace it with white space, while generally increasing white
space through the design.

Overall you can see fewer things, and lacking anything to stop your eyes, the
various areas of the screen blend into each other. It's much more WORK to use
the calendar and Gmail with the new theme. The new Gmail "Dense" theme is less
compact than the old Gmail.

Basically, any time your design is using ultra-light grey lines/text for
anything, you've gone wrong. CONTRAST. It's important.

~~~
watmough
Yes, both redesigns appear to take massive steps backwards in terms of
contrast and information density, and to add insult to injury, promote one
random design element, Compose in the case of Gmail, to a giant non-standard
ugly colored 'button'.

------
monochromatic
You know what's goddamn terrible? When you design your site so that middle-
clicking on an image doesn't open the full-size one in a new tab, it just
shits all over the current tab.

~~~
mr_justin
Standard lightbox image technique, pretty nice once you get used to it. Click
image to expand, click almost anywhere to collapse.

~~~
pkamb
Middle click should never ever do fucking anything other than open the link in
a new background tab.

~~~
jodrellblank
Just another instance of my computer working for anyone other than me.

They're right, it is a Post-PC era.

It's not a personal computer, it's anybodys computer handing over control to
anyone and everyone and hiding or removing it from me.

I don't have a witty name for the Era yet.

------
almightygod
_Google Calendar team, did you consider how people use calendars...We went
from being able to see 10 items to about 3_

Perhaps studies found most people have 3 or less calendars and your just an
outlier? Would you design your product for the 90% or the 10% use case -
perhaps your being slightly hypocritical if you were to compare your critique
here with your previous entries about how to build software

~~~
txxxxd
He must not have noticed, but in the new UI you can minimize the "Mini
Calendar" on the left side.

For someone with such a packed calendar the mini calendar is useless, and with
it minimized you can view even more calendars than you could in the old UI.

~~~
lloeki
Didn't catch that one, nice: I mostly use the month view, so that's a real
space saver.

------
ElliotH
I actually quite like the new design. Primarily because it seems that all the
google web apps are going to move to a more unified design (whereas before
docs stuck out like a sore thumb).

I agree though that the calendar space could do with being subtly changed so
the focus of the window is on it again. The greys are a little too light, and
when surrounded by colour they fade away.

But in general it seems like this is very close to what I've wanted for a
while.

~~~
lloeki
I too like it very much, except for the one thing they did not redesign: the
event input balloon, which already looked out of place before, but now feels
even more dated.

------
antidaily
I hate it too. Not enough contrast, except for (as pointed out) that big blue
stupid search button. Too much white and light gray.

And on a small screen, the 'Other calendars' scrollbar disappears.

Even the copy is goofy - who decided that 'Create' makes more sense than
'Create event'? How about 'New event'?

------
yhlasx
If you don't like it, just switch to the old view. I don't understand these
people.

I like calendar's new look. I love Gmail's new look.

~~~
pyre
Are you a Calendar power user though? Seem to me like they made it look nice,
while breaking functionality for power users. If you're not a power user, then
you just think it looks nice and lose no functionality.

~~~
sliverstorm
Am I the only one a little confused about how one can be a "calendar power
user"?

Can one similarly be a "stapler power user" or a "Rolodex power user"?

~~~
pyre
Maybe I should have said "Google Calendar power user?" Setting aside the
features, people that use Google Calendar heavily to schedule things vs people
that use it to schedule the occasional dentist appointment probably find
different aspects of the UI annoying.

------
pyrhho
The worst usability loss is showing multiple events on a day in calendar view.
I like to see a calendar view to get an overview but now most of my events
have been replaced with a useless '2+ more' or '3+ more'. The real sore point
is that the '2+ more' takes up exactly 2 lines of space so they had just
enough space to show me my 2 appointments but have decided I'd be much more
interested to see this useless '2+ more' link. Outrageous!

~~~
limedaring
Yup. As seen on my calendar:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3118244/2011-07-01_1853.png>

Ridiculous.

------
almightygod
I get the overall sense that this post is intentionally sensational to get
some HN traction being that anything pro/against google+ is popular right
now...i.e.

 _search button is a big blue button in the middle of your field of vision_

Your being slightly nit-picky because hands down it is more aesthetically
pleasing then the previous mis-aligned textbox and ugly submit button that was
a constant distraction.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There were two other legitimate complaints - you can't tell what day it is
(yes, you already know, but now you have to read the labels to find the
column), and the multi-calendar view has 3 instead of 10 items.

Those items do interrupt workflow, they are meaningful degradations. And one
can speculate that they were made to improve the look at the expense of
functionality which does suck.

~~~
almightygod
see my other comment regarding _Perhaps...most people have 3 or less calendars
and your just an outlier?_

As far as not telling what day it is, fair - thats one issue that if affects
many, will likely be fixed. Definitely doesn't warrant an extreme "It's
Goddamn Terrible" flame - that is unless your trying to get some HN attention.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _As far as not telling what day it is, [...] Definitely doesn't warrant an
> extreme "It's Goddamn Terrible" flame [...]_

// I think it's that this is indicative of poor testing or poor understanding
of the needs of a calendar interface.

Being able to quickly locate the current days listings and being focussed on
the pertinent info and away from the chrome (like "look at me"-style search
buttons) is key in the writers opinion (and mine) to having a good calendar.

What's so terrible is that with all the money they must spend on usability
experts (hopefully?) these glaring issues still make it through to the final
product. I expect they did the 5s testing type UI analysis - "what day was
selected" "what from the interface stood out" and would be amazed that such
analysis wouldn't return answers like "didn't see the day names anywhere" and
"giant blue button for something".

------
flocial
I think Justin needs calendar intervention, there's way too much info there no
matter how you slice and dice it. There's always iCal or Fantastical on the
Mac for nice and crisp colors.

PS I don't care for Google's new designs so much either

~~~
bane
_I think Justin needs calendar intervention, there's way too much info there
no matter how you slice and dice it._

and way too many things entered in duplicate and triplicate...

~~~
masklinn
> and way too many things entered in duplicate and triplicate...

It's not duplicate or triplicate, it's the same event from different
coworkers. If they're coworkers, it kind-of makes sense that they'd have
conference calls or meetings at the same time no?

Blame google for being unable to dedup or have a better UI for joint events.

------
lucian1900
I rather like both the new Gmail and Calendar themes.

The only thing I don't like is the spacing: they both waste way too much
space. Even on 15", my browser window isn't maximised. And on 10", both UIs
require zooming out.

------
wccrawford
Sounds like the complaints are visual. (As it was a visual change, that makes
sense.) Google should provide a skinning mechanism like GMail already has. And
some proper skins, of course.

------
methodin
Am I the only one that thought the screenshots looked almost identical?
Reading the article led you to believe it was like stepping back into the 90's
when in reality it looks like he just needs to turn off some calendar views
since everything is repeated 4 or 5 times and looks like a mess. I'm all for
dissension but angry tirades with no substance and all opinion is not
something I'd come to expect to be on HN front page...

------
m0shen
The redesign doesn't bother me, what bothers me is that they have let issues
with the calendar sit for so long that effect functionality.

Ical and other calendar feed changes will not appear in Google calendar after
days or possibly, weeks.

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=7c...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=7c6b4213a42e6923&hl=en)

~~~
anigbrowl
Yes. I'm fine with the new look but what I actually need is something like RSS
for Calendars. Every time I attempt to connect my Calendar to something else I
end up adding things manually instead because it's so much hassle. There are
some _huge_ economic opportunities going to waste in this area; with a few
changes Calendar could be as successful and prominent as Google Maps/Earth.

------
lyudmil
I know this is essentially what us geeks do - we think about minute details,
obsess about them, and hope that this ends up mattering. Usually I find this
kind of compulsive preoccupation inspiring, but this article was so out of
touch with reality I found it uncomfortable to read.

Suppose we grant the author that his criticism is objectively valid from the
point of view of a UX designer (obviously a huge concession). Still, you're
left reading an article in which a person complains that he _perhaps_ prefers
reading white letters to black, that a piece of _software_ takes away the
ability for him to tell _what day it is_ , and that he cannot find his
calendar on the page because he's so distracted by blue buttons.

On top of it all, looking at the screenshot provided it's pretty clear this
person is not an average calendar user. Designing a usable calendar for
someone with this many appointments each week is a completely different
challenge to designing a usable calendar for me.

Perhaps a deep breath and some perspective acquisition is in order.

------
mhb
You can choose to turn off the new look by clicking the gear icon and choosing
Use the classic look (you can turn it back on by going to the gear icon and
choosing Try the new look).

from
[http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=...](http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=1351806&hl=en)):

------
shubber
How many times are we going to see "Look! They changed their site design, and
the new one is awful!" The archetype is grousing about the new Facebook
design, but it seems like any change gets a bunch of complaints.

I know: it drives traffic, and for some reason that madlib isn't quite "oh,
linkbait" yet.

~~~
gnoupi
Yeah, that's becoming quite usual. Change one thing and you have self entitled
UI experts all other the place to explain that it's awful because their
personal taste doesn't allow for change.

But apparently it works. After all, I clicked the link and I'm here
commenting.

------
vault_
Are people really that distracted by the blue search button? I've seen it
mentioned a couple times now about how the search button draws their attention
away from what's actually on the page.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I tend to look at the middle of pages, and have
no problems with the button.

~~~
huckfinnaafb
What distracts me the most is the red text on the left. Whenever I see red on
a result page, it makes me think I misspelled my query and it's doing a "Did
you mean...?"

Not really sure why they went with red and not just... black or light blue.

~~~
yhlasx
Yes, red button in calendar and "red compose" button in gmail distracts me,
way more than the blue ones. I think they should make them some shades of
silvery or grey. The calendar and gmail logo's are enough for color

------
mark_l_watson
I noticed that it does not work correctly on Firefox 5 on either my or my
wife's MacBooks. I think that it looks OK on Chrome and Safari, but not a big
deal.

------
timedoctor
I'm sure they are doing usability testing on it and so your opinions that it
is "bad" are really useless unless you have access to the same usability data

------
zachh
Frankly, I think the new design is long overdue and has a strong sense of
usability and sleek, elegant design. Instead of making a change to only one of
its online properties, Google used Google+ as an opportunity to revamp its
entire ecosystem to provide a consisten and clean UI. I like it a lot, and am
glad Google is finally using its designers.

------
koenigdavidmj
I still want to see a workweek view (five columns), but with the current day
wider so that you can more easily read what is going on. Especially with so
many simultaneous events, like the author of the OP has.

------
Yhippa
I didn't find it particularly difficult to identify what day it is but I don't
have nearly that many items in my calendar as he does. I suspect for the
average user that it's not going to be a problem.

------
qas1981
What we see here is a power user that doesnt represent the general google
calendar users. I love the new design.

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joakin
I just hope that the google teams dont take only the buzz noise posts over the
net and do anything silly.

I love the new design, its less agressive with the colors and everything is
much more clean.

Im just hoping that the Reader redesign will come soon...

------
sjs382
Yeah? Well, I like it.

