
GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism - centro
http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/gmail-designer-arrogance-and-the-cult-of-minimalism/
======
jdietrich
It's funny, a couple of years ago I was reading articles about how Google's
design teams were supposedly hamstrung by their culture of incessant testing.
I remember anecdotes about a/b testing 41 different shades of blue and
designers being made to provide data for their choice of border width.

Now a whole bunch of people who haven't seen Google's test data are adamant
that their redesigns are a usability disaster.

Unless something has radically changed within Google, I'd be _very_ reluctant
to question any of their design decisions. I'd be doubly reluctant to call
them arrogant whilst panning their design based on nothing but instinct and
supposition.

~~~
ajross
Redesigns of a heavily-used UI are always "usability disasters". People spend
many hours perfecting their workflow in one environment and FLIP THEIR LIDS
when someone changes it. It's not a rational thing (nor, frankly, an
unjustified one). What surprises me is that we haven't figured this out yet
and rehash the same flame war every time.

The desktop environments show this best: c.f. Gnome 3. Also Gnome 2. And Gnome
1 for that matter (vs. KDE2). And KDE4. And KDE3. And Windows Vista. And OS X
Lion.

~~~
mattmanser
You're begging the question.

If we take what you say is true every redesign is good, which is patently
false.

A perfect example is the Office Ribbon UI, an unmitigated disaster. Also
putting Vista in your list there, mmmmmm. Wasn't exactly a great redesign was
it.

The Google redesign is also pretty much a disaster.

~~~
adestefan
Am I the only one that actually likes the ribbon? I can actually find the
options I want to use in Office 10 instead of trying to dig through dozens of
drop down menus.

~~~
read_wharf
"Am I the only one ..."

The answer to this is always "no."

Except this time.

~~~
sokoloff
Amusing, but untrue. I took a (long) while to like the ribbon, but I have to
say that I find it a large improvement in usability, and it makes it vastly
more likely that I will accept "other than the basic/defaults".

It actively encourages exploration. That's good for some use cases, and it's
certainly good for Microsoft.

------
ChrisNorstrom
There's something deeper going on here:

The: Gmail, Unity, Gnome, etc.. redesigns that we've been seeing recently all
seem to have a pattern. A lot of these designs are benefiting and emphisizing
the designers desperate attempt at garnering attention and acclaim rather than
helping the users. You can tell by the constant tweaking of things that were
never broken (the Start button), critical and heavily used elements being
hidden or tucked away behind several clicks for the sake of "minimalism",
incorrectly correlating a sterile white page with "simplicity". And they won't
stop until the whole page is white and empty with one button and a line of
text.

These designers are doing whatever makes them look off the wall bat-shit-
creative (of the Lady Gaga variety). Many of these designers have stopped
caring about a/b tests and the users and are focusing their designs solely on
how it makes them look to the community. They want to be the next Steve Jobs,
now that he has passed. And they are going to mimic his arrogance, take his
risks, and think it will get them to his level. It will not, it's just pissing
us off.

On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty and
minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed. Explaining to the
average person why the new gmail UI is abnoxious is like explaining to the
average person what's wrong with Michael Bay's films.

~~~
andrewfelix
_> These designers are doing whatever makes them look_

I doubt Google would let a group of self interested ego fueled creative's
override rational principal and analysis. Especially considering this is a
flagship Google product with 350M users.

 _> On a shallow level, and to the untrained eye, these redesigns are pretty
and minimalistic but on a deeper level they are deeply flawed._

I'm a designer. I've never properly critically analysed the new Gmail design.
But I haven't felt the need to. For me it just functions really well.

~~~
option_greek
Haven't you faced any problem with the toolbar buttons ? they are all lumps of
coal with minor variations!

~~~
andrewfelix
Took me literally a few minutes to adjust. Like a lot of UI elements the
association of function is formed over time. Everything I do in Gmail is
second nature to me now and the UI doesn't impede much if anything. I do wish
email attachments would appear on the right of the email thread.

~~~
antihero
Yup plus you don't need the precursor of knowing the English language.

~~~
guelo
That's a poor excuse, Google knows how to do internationalization.

------
zmmmmm
When I was handed my first challenge of doing design for a web site (being up
until that point a pure coder) I encountered a striking tendency in myself to
want to neutralise colors. If I didn't know what color to make something, my
default choice would be to desaturate it until it no longer offended my eye.
On a fine level it works and you can solve a lot of individual UI "problems"
this way. The problem is that as you accumulate these decisions you end up
with a design that says nothing, has no motivation, fails to speak anything to
the user. This is one way I know that I'm a mediocre designer. Great designers
make bold decisions that challenge and energise the user and still they do it
well.

I feel like Google has suffered from a similar problem - the solution to every
UI problem these days is minimalism. Remove borders, accents, highlights,
colors. On the surface it looks clean and simple but scratch beneath that and
it seems to have no soul and no reason to exist.

I think the same issue goes directly to functional aspects as well - the
functions and features on the page should feel alive as if they are speaking
to me. I should be attracted to them, immersed in them, like they've been
incorporated as parts of myself - but I'm not - I can barely differentiate
them from the inactive, static parts of the page. Most of Google these days
feels like I am filling out an IRS tax form. At best it is boring, at worst it
is aggravating.

I'm looking forward to when we get through this new style of design from
Google.

~~~
theoj
>> I encountered a striking tendency in myself to want to neutralise colors.
If I didn't know what color to make something, my default choice would be to
desaturate it until it no longer offended my eye. On a fine level it works and
you can solve a lot of individual UI "problems" this way. The problem is that
as you accumulate these decisions you end up with a design that says nothing,
has no motivation, fails to speak anything to the user.

Interesting observation... this is something I struggled with as well coming
from a coding background and trying to do design -- at the individual element
level the colors seemed great, but pulling back to the larger picture
everything looked washed out. Did you ever come up with a solution for this?

~~~
nullflux
The solution is to learn color and how it works. Start with something like
color theory:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory>

~~~
reidmain
Kuler is a great tool for this sort of thing.

<http://kuler.adobe.com/>

------
wavesplash
I can't fault Google for experimenting, but the 'all or nothing' approach they
took to the rollout was an example of false choice. The classic coloring could
have been offered as a theme to lessen the impact of the UX changes.

In case you miss the old color scheme, try this Stylish theme:

[http://userstyles.org/styles/64637/gmail-google-mail-
classic...](http://userstyles.org/styles/64637/gmail-google-mail-classic-blue-
theme)

Follow Jason's post to fix icons and spacing:

[http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-
gmail-...](http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-
redesign/)

~~~
e_proxus
This user style puts the text back on the buttons:
[http://userstyles.org/styles/57677/gmail-change-button-
icons...](http://userstyles.org/styles/57677/gmail-change-button-icons-to-
text)

~~~
suboptical
There's an option in general settings to add text button labels.

------
twelvechairs
One of the main problems why the 'clean design' has not actually benefitted
users is because of gmails feature creep. Where once I could just write and
recieve mail, now, by default, I have 'stars', 'circles', 'importance
markers', '+ share', 'notifications', 'gadgets'... etc. all confusing my view
of my mail. Most users don't want any of these things, and they certainly
don't want to have to spend mental energy realising they dont want them, then
hunting around in settings menus to see if you can actually turn them off...

There are some good design additions in the revised gmail too, but IMHO the
above is really what makes gmail feel much more cluttered and cumbersome than
it was before....

------
pedrogrande
Personally, I love the new GMail interface and have been using it for months.
I like that is less cluttered and that I can more easily configure what is
displayed. I've changed the buttons to be text in the settings as I did find
the icons hard to pick at a glance. I also love the new themes.

It's interesting to me to see so many people grumble at interface changes
whether it's Facebook or Gmail.

~~~
BlackNapoleon
Same...

------
anthonyb
All of the things that he's complaining about are changeable in settings. And
not even buried three levels deep -- they're right on the first settings page!

1\. Pick a different theme. I have one with a blue background, not the default
light/white one.

2\. Go into the general settings, and change your star to a different colour,
ie. enable the red, or blue one, or the green checkbox. Now they stand out.

3\. Go into the general settings. Change the 'Button Labels' radio from
'Icons' to 'Text'.

If you're going to bag someone's interface, you should at least spend some
time figuring out how you can change it...

~~~
mthreat
Thanks, changing the labels to text is a big help. I didn't even notice it
there in General settings. It still doesn't change the tiny "..." link to a
text label (the thing you click on in a message to show previous messages in
the conversation). See my other comment here about Fitts' Law.

~~~
thezilch
While the button is tiny, is it really highly utilized, with the entire
conversation being in the threaded view?

~~~
mthreat
I use it all the time. I've found that clicking on the previous messages in
the conversation view is much slower (requires hitting their servers, which
are usually slow). But clicking on the "..." must not require a server hit,
because it's instant.

~~~
anthonyb
I don't find it that slow - but you can hit 'expand all' in the top right
(next to the printer icon) to download the whole thread at once.

------
jrockway
I really do buy the "change aversion" theory. I never used Gmail before the
current design, and now I use it every day without problems. I click an email
and I can read it. Importance and starring work as expected. And, the
interface is very smart about not moving things out from under me when I make
a change, much like Chrome's tab bar. Except for the slowness, I think this UI
is a fine way to handle email.

~~~
initself
I use it without problems too, and so does the author, but our eyes are not
happy and our brains are less relaxed. We never used importance and we don't
want it cluttering up our stars. We need visual queues, like lines.

~~~
nollidge
You can turn it off. Under Inbox in Settings.

------
DLarsen
I have no problem with the new Gmail. After the initial adjustment period, I
find myself enjoying it more than the old version. I have developed a reflex
for using the buttons that didn't exist with the text versions. It just
happened.

------
paul
Well at least there's a giant red COMPOSE button, because every time I see a
giant red button, I think COMPOSE!

I'm hoping that they'll do another revision soon to make it look more like the
recently updated G+ design, which actually puts some visual separation between
content and navigation (and also doesn't have giant red buttons).

~~~
anthonyb
There isn't on my GMail, because _I figured out how to change the theme_...

~~~
paul
As did I, but the defaults shouldn't be awful.

~~~
anthonyb
Who says they're awful? You just don't like them.

Fair enough that you don't, but putting your opinion forward as fact (like
most of the people here and the OP) doesn't really advance the argument.
Perhaps a lot of people have trouble finding the compose button on first use?

~~~
pbiggar
> Who says they're awful? You just don't like them.

Well yes, but he is the guy who wrote Gmail, and that does add a little bit of
strength to his argument.

~~~
anthonyb
It shouldn't be a free pass though ;)

"A big red button is awful." isn't much good compared to "A big red button is
awful because ..." or "Instead of a big red button you should do ..."

~~~
pbiggar
I think the reason was implicit. Red has a meaning in UIs, and it's not
"Compose".

------
drucken
I, like the author, abhor the new GMail interface. Thankfully, I found a
_workaround_ , explained at bottom.

In fact, I found it difficult to explain to my parents how to navigate the new
interface. They were quite upset at the changes and were considering about how
to revert to their old providers (thankfully, I set up an email forwarding
domain for them years ago so they can change any time they wish). It really is
that appalling!

The contrast in usability to almost any other web mail service is shocking.
Check Hotmail or Fastmail.fm or even Yahoo mail and "feel" the difference
yourself!

Workaround to GMail's new interface:

0\. Make sure you have a browser or plugin that supports site-selective
scripting, e.g. NoScript.

1\. Disable scripting for google.com

Then when you login, GMail offers a "basic html" interface. This is amazingly
straightforward, fast, everything clearly delineated with strong colors, all
new information extremely obvious, and just the basic design that matches
closely to the old design.

If Google manage to mess up even this basic interface, then I guess, I and my
family will have to find alternatives, e.g. switching to mail clients or for
those who travel a lot to Hotmail.

------
andymangold
Levying "designer arrogance" on Google is laughable. Google has never made
decisions based on the principles of design before, so why would one assume
the design process is to blame here? I think this is a result of people who
_don't_ understand design abusing style and visual trends.

The authors criticisms are legitimate and directly related to the design, but
to assume an arrogant designer is at the top pushing these changes is frankly
offensive. It's the same old engineers calling the shots at Google. But now,
they just seem to be trying to keep up with other well designed products, like
a little kid putting on his dad's Italian suit, wondering why he doesn't look
great. Pleas, don't blame the tailor.

------
msluyter
I hate the new themes. My question is: why couldn't they have provided themes
that at least look similar to the old ones? I tried most of the available
themes and there only one that I find vaguely satisfactory is the high
contrast theme. Some of them, like "Wood" are laughable -- is this an old
Myspace page I'm seeing? And better yet, you'd think a company with Google's
talent pool could make the themes configurable at a more granular level.

Thanks, Google, for making me contemplate abandoning gmail for the first time.
(I know, I know... it's free, right? So what right do I have to complain? I
guess I'm mostly angry at myself for growing so dependent on it (and
recommending it to my friends/family.))

------
adrianhoward
Now, personally speaking, I don't like a bunch of the changes (those damn
icons being the most annoying - and yes I know you can change them to text and
I have :-). I can certainly criticise some stuff that gets in the way of my
personal workflow. But hey - I'm not the 'average' GMail user. Expecting
Google for optimise for me is daft.

A couple of random thoughts from usability tests I've done over the years:

* People are treating the changes to gmail in isolation. Google has changed and integrated design over all of their products. Some parts of a system can get "worse", but still help the overall system get "better". I've seen this when we culled some specialised hi-density layouts on a particular part of a larger system that pissed off some expert users who spent all their time there - but opened up the functionality to be used by a _much_ larger population who were more familiar with the "normal" look.

* People don't know what Google is optimising for. Usability and usability testing isn't necessarily about "making things nice for the user". It's about meeting the business goal. For example I've seen users _hate_ the fact we took some layout and colour preferences away from them, despite the fact that overall satisfaction went up, and efficiency increased _even for the users who hated the change_.

* I 100% guarantee that the people commenting here are not "normal" as far as Google is concerned. Does it matter if the geeks like me hate that they can see less e-mail at a time, if the other 99% of the market is jumping for joy that they're not repeatedly clicking on the wrong e-mail? Sometimes you just can't make everybody happy - so have to make a decision over which audience you want to be happy. You will generally have a more successful product if 60% of your audience goes "yay" rather than 100% going "meh".

* I spend a bunch of my time talking to "normal" users. I've noticed the general reaction to the new GMail be very different from the general reaction here. They either liked it, or just not noticed/expressed an opinion. I suspect Google cares about that user group more than it does me :-)

Also, and this is complete guesswork on my part, this feels like a first stage
to me. Currently the various apps are very lightly integrated with a mostly
pure visual design makeover. I wouldn't be surprised to see more functional
integration appear over the next year or two as more people perceive the
various Google apps and systems as an integral "thing".

------
jsherry
"I find the (algorithmically-applied) importance marker completely useless and
would remove it if I could, but I use the stars quite heavily."

You can remove the importance markers: Settings > Inbox tab > Importance
Markers.

~~~
iaskwhy
And there is also a setting for having text labels in buttons instead of
icons.

------
KaeseEs
I'm incredulous that one of the goals of the redesign was to make more
powerful themes. New-style themes are much, much _less_ powerful than the old-
style themes - cf. the new Terminal theme, which can't even change the text
color or font, but is rather a hollow shell of itself with a small gif of a
blinking green cursor in the upper left corner the only remnant of its old
self. A preview of the old page in my Opera speed dial is all that remains of
my old green-on-black monospace friend; I have set it to never update.

Incidentally, the new UI for video calls makes the 'end' button the same color
as the background, and it is very difficult to see.

------
eblume
Sometimes when I read HN I feel like I must be the only person who really
likes most Google products. I think the design is pretty good. I don't analyze
it very closely, and... I don't know, it works and it works very well for me.

------
robomartin
I have been using Yahoo Mail for a number of years. I find the interface to be
far superior to that of GMail. More usable and practical. In many ways it
mimics Outlook. They have some nice drag-and-drop action, right click menu
tools and, my favorite, an Outlook-like reading pane. Last time I touched
GMail it felt clunky. Because of this I have never felt compelled to use it.

------
nollidge
Please, for the love of Loki, can we all stop equating our subjective opinions
with objective truth? Your tastes are different than others. That doesn't make
them "arrogant" - at least, not necessarily.

------
wmeredith
Does anyone else find it humorous that OP's site is ugly and hard to read? it
doesn't diminish he's point (I could take or leave the new Gmail) but maybe
his credibility.

~~~
ekianjo
Don't shoot the messenger - Who cares if his site is not easy to read? It's
all about the message. He does not pretend to be a UI designer or something.

~~~
dasil003
Because maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about. Personally having used
the old Gmail interface and the new Gmail interface extensively, I think the
criticisms do mostly boil down to change aversion.

Just to take one point: the icons _are_ confusing at first, but mail is
something you daily for years, and Gmail has always been optimized for power
users, so even though it might take you a week or two to get used to the
icons, it's a benefit because now a greater percentage of the words on the
screen are actually your email content.

------
wololo
brilliant hack to re-enable reverting to the old gmail UI:

<http://qwerjk.com/revert-gmail>

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/qwerj...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/qwerjk.com$2Frevert-
gmail)

~~~
ranit8
It works! I love you.

------
gorloth
The thing that drives me crazy with the new design is the separate scrolling
areas, when I use the mouse wheel or hit the up/down arrow keys I want the
entire thing to scroll, not whatever chunk I happen to my mouse in. This is
especially annoying as I have a low res screen (old computers) and thus I
can't much of any of the chat list, I used to just be able to scroll down to
see it. I wish knew CSS magics to try and fix it with stylish or something
(I'm a c programmer all the way)

------
d5tryr
I posted this in the comments of the blog yesterday but it hasn't been
approved yet, I imagine there are a lot of comments to get through. Please
excuse the second person singular grammar, I'm copying this straight from the
notes app on my phone:

Your last two points I agree with, but given they are optional and can be
switched off I think those criticisms are not only misplaced but suggest a
sense of entitlement similar to the designer's arrogance you bemoan.

On your first point though you are simply wrong. The thing you incorrectly
call 'visual texture' is actually clutter.

The borders for individual table rows are superfluous as the baseline of the
text draws that line regardless. Additional borders duplicate these baselines
and demand that a user reads twice as many visual elements in order to
interpret an interface.

The same is true for coloured backgrounds. If a distinction of utility has
already been inferred by shape and proximity then to add an additional visual
cue adds little more than another layer of complexity. This is unnecessary
visual information that a user has to decode. Time that could be better spent
performing the tasks they've actually come to the app to do.

I'd suggest having a read of Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information and Envisioning Information to get a better grasp on these
concepts.

------
rogerbinns
I've long solved the Gmail web interface issues by accessing it only via IMAP.
On the rare occasions when I have to use the website or Android Gmail clients
they seem so unproductive to me. I think it is an information density thing -
my desktop client (Thunderbird these days) is able to do a far better job of
showing me more information at once. It also has the ability to manage state a
lot better than web apps so my different panes can have differing contexts.

------
halayli
Forcing users to relearn an interface without providing any added value makes
no sense.

I ended up moving to Mail.app (which isn't perfect) because of the hideous in-
page scrolling forced on me in the new Gmail interface.

Desktop experience is unbeatable; snappier interface, better performance,
wider access to system resources, better integration with the OS, and you
don't have to rely on the browser to be open all the time. I find this
advantageous especially when composing emails.

------
aresant
I overwhelmingly agree as a UX guy w/the comments in this thread about the
poor choices from a design perspective.

But since this new design rolled into beta I've found myself slowly depending
on Gmail more and more vs. my desktop client.

I don't know why but the "lack" of proper interface design here makes it feel
blazing FAST to me, which is really the #1 thing I care about when trying to
keep up with a slew of email.

I never had that sense in the previous version.

Anybody else?

~~~
DavidAbrams
Nope. The asinine hiding of most of your mail folders makes it way slower to
navigate. And there's no indication that they exist. No control with which to
reveal them.

This regression in UI standards that evolved and stayed in place for decades
reveals that there aren't enough decent designers to do the required work
today. And they don't have even a moderate level of experience or common
sense, or they wouldn't make such glaring errors.

~~~
anthonyb
Click on the little arrow next to your folder/label. Under the 'In label
list:' part, select 'Show'. Now your folders appear all the time. Also, you
can click the "More" at the bottom to expand it.

Why is that so hard?

EDIT: No really - why is it so hard? Better than 90% of the complaining on
this page could be solved just by spending a few minutes going through
settings, tweaking GMail to your liking. There's even a settings page where
you can see all of your labels in one place, and set each folder to
show/hide/show if unread. It's _specifically designed_ for the parent's use
case, and yet he pretends that it doesn't exist.

~~~
Gigablah
This entire discussion is a nice demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect --
everyone's suddenly a designer with more skills and common sense than Google
staff.

------
twoodfin
I think I'm the only user who has found the "important" filtering to be
remarkably helpful. I don't have a few dozen filters set up, and don't empty
my inbox, so the flagging serves as a useful lossy compression of my email
stream.

~~~
kluge
The best part of it is having Gmail on Android notify you only about important
messages. It's great to get notifications about emails from friends about
things going on tonight, but not get bothered by email list messages that can
wait.

------
ilamont
Contrast this with Yahoo Mail, which hasn't had a major design change in a
couple of years. It's also crying out for some basic feature/usability
improvements that gmail introduced in the 2000s (for instance, "always display
images from xyz").

(I still use Yahoo Mail for online account signups, as well as friends and
relatives going way back -- I opened the account in the 90s)

~~~
muyuu
Has effing tabs so you can have a "compose" tab open and reach your email for
info to copy-paste in your message.

Something as basic as this is missing in gmail's default interface. Having to
save and go back to drafts is cumbersome, as are other work-arounds.

~~~
thezilch
Pop the compose into a new window and/or tab? The assumption is probably that
tabs and windows are built into your browser, why build another layer of tabs?

~~~
muyuu
This is not the default behaviour. Popping it out will send you to the main
page, having two full email tabs and no good clue about which is which. It's
worse than Yahoo's way, or the basic html interface in gmail.

------
nkurz
I'm in the same boat, and think the usability of the new interface is
terrible. And the pretentiousness of the "form over function" design still
makes me gag. But Chrome plugins like "Minimalist for Everything" make it
almost bearable.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bmihblnpomgpjkfdde...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bmihblnpomgpjkfddepdpdafhhepdbek)

This and similar tools let hide and modify GMail with custom CSS and
Javascript. Instead of trying to convince Google to behave rationally, it's
easier to try to warp the new interface into something usable. I think about
half the things in the article are already covered.

If only I could figure out a way to get the "stars" on the same side in the
message view as on the overview...

------
chintan
This one is driving me INSANE for past 2 days: Google Chat Title Bar Colors

They completely REVERSED it!!

Previously:

 _Blue_ \- No new message

 _Orange_ \- New chat message

Now:

 _Blue_ \- New chat message

 _Black_ \- No new message

Orange worked perfect -- it grabbed your attention. Blue doesn't really cut
it, even worse that it is opposite to what it meant previously. BAD DESIGN.
Period.

~~~
ntkachov
On the topic of bad colors, I like facebook's old colors of "offline" and
"online": A green circle for online. a Gray-green circle for offline. On a
screen with bad gamma, they looked almost exactly the same.

------
mellis
Designers designed the old look; designers designed the new look. What makes
them arrogant now?

------
njharman
Design and UX may be a science or "science". But, it heavily involves taste
(in the Steve Jobs sense, not "likes" or "preferences". And peoples tastes
vary widely from "good" to "doesn't have any". It is ludicrous to believe any
design / UX will leave large percentage satisfied. Also, many create valid,
correct design / UX and yet are devoid of taste.

To further elaborate on taste; Engineers often refer to this as "elegance".
Two bits of code can meet all specifications and requirements. Engineers with
taste will feel the one which has elegance to be superior.

~~~
pirateking
Great analogy between a designer's idea of "taste", and the engineers
equivalent "elegance".

To take it further, just as the shortest code isn't always the best, the most
minimal design is also not best by default.

------
abcd_f
There's nothing wrong with minimalism. Minimalism is about making things
simple, but _knowing when to stop_.

~~~
afhof
Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.

------
macspoofing
I agree with #3. I have a lot of problems deciphering the icons, in the
browser client and the ipad client.

~~~
highwind81
They added a setting to change the icons to text:
[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/03/customize-gmails-
bu...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/03/customize-gmails-buttons-
replace-icons.html)

------
mrweasel
The part I find interesting is that whole "minimalism" part. Simply removing
stuff or add icons in favor of text buttons have nothing to do with minimalism
necessarily.

I don't claim to be a minimalism expert, but more often than not people who
talk about minimalism seems to think it's either cleaning up your house or
removing stuff that "People don't really need", without figuring about what
the basic needs actually are. Removing all door handles from your house
doesn't make it a minimalist home.

------
drostie

        > I’ve certainly encountered this attitude before. Mozilla UX designers
        > like to use the example of tabs-on-top: when we moved the tabs above the
        > navigation bar in Firefox 4, many users balked at the change. But nobody
        > could give a reason why tabs-on-top was worse — they just didn’t like it
        > because it was unfamiliar.
    

It strikes me that the problem was in this case an interchange of mental
model. Tabs on top implies that the location bar _belongs to this tab_. People
were balking because they had mentally yoked it to the browser as a whole,
"this is the part of the browser which tells you where you are," and now it
was a part of the tab which mentioned where the tab is presently pointing.

I think that's important to remember. The UI designer is always trying to give
you a mental model for how their device works, and how the parts are causally
connected. The "designer arrogance" is much more understandable when it
applies to people who are merely upset that their mental model is changing.
That is _not_ the case with the facelift choices of changing text labels into
icons, or removing borders and highlights. Those _cannot_ be a valid occasion
for this sort of arrogance.

------
bceagle
I just don't get this article from the sense that I have used GMail as my
primary email client for the past 5 years and I their redesign didn't affect
me at all. The things this author talks about seem to be more of personal
preferences than actual objective thought. There has only been one thing that
has ever really bugged me about GMail and it has nothing to do with the visual
design. I don't like how they treat Folders and Tags as sort of the same
thing. In my mind, they are two separate things. I want to organize my mail
into folders, but I also want to tag them with keywords that have cross-
cutting concerns (ex. folders Work or Home, but tags like Expenses that could
be on emails in both folders).

Now, I understand that what I am talking about is sort of a personal
preferences as well, but I guess my point is that I would care more about
changes to functionality in GMail than small, minor visual changes like the
ones this author describes. I sort of agree with their mentality that people
eventually figure out the new UI and then it is no longer an issue.

------
freditup
I always have though GMail is subpar at best when it comes to interface. I
feel no desire to justify this opinion, just my personal feelings.

~~~
dasil003
Did you ever learn the keyboard shortcuts?

Why I love Gmail is combining 80% of the power of CLI mail clients like mutt
with 80% of the visual presentation of native clients.

I process hundreds of emails a day, and that's on top of the coding work I'm
expected to do. Being able to work through them with vi-style keyboard
shortcuts for everything including rapid labeling is the killer feature that
nothing else comes close to.

------
theootz
Pretty horrible list IMO...

1) Try a different theme, it may help if it really affects you that much. But
this is the only one I somewhat agree with as being possibly an issue; but
nothing I really thought of when first looking at the new UI

2) The marker is more than far enough away to make it easy to scan through
IMO. This feels far too subjective to just throw out and be like "yea this is
definitely a bad change" without doing some testing first. Either way, you can
disable this from settings. (Disable snippets iirc?)

3) This too can be disabled: go to settings and change it to text labels
instead of graphical labels?

As much as I used to hate the new look too, I think it's improved enough since
its first iteration to get out of the way and let me do my thing. Though, I
still _REALLY_ hate the fact that you can't click on the "Google" logo at the
top left to go back to the main page for whatever application you happen to be
at. I have no idea why they would remove that...

------
howardr
many of these issues can changed to be more old-gmail-like
[http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-
gmail-...](http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-
redesign/)

1) remove important markers 2) add labels to actions/buttons

~~~
dredmorbius
[http://techie-buzz.com/how-to/revert-old-gmail-
interface.htm...](http://techie-buzz.com/how-to/revert-old-gmail-
interface.html)

Even closer revert-to-old via the Stylish plugin and CSS hacks.

------
saturdaysaint
Look at Apple's e-mail interfaces for a fine counterpoint. Even their iCloud
web client, while kludgey in some respects, is a sight for sore eyes after
using Gmail. They use different shades and textures to bring my focus squarely
to the most important elements - the e-mail list and the e-mail/draft in
focus. They even let you hide the inbox/draft/sent menu for an even more
focused view. The Calendar is a similar story - focused and crystal clear
where Google's product is a jumble.

I hope Apple stays competitive/serious about iCloud - they clearly have a few
things to teach Google (and vice versa, of course).

------
jetz
Actually they don't have much choices on dropping some specific email features
to make UI better. Anyways I think it's just like MS Metro. One cannot say OMG
this is cool as we say with Apple properties but people continue to use those
(inferior) UIs.

------
bane
As much as a I dislike the new Gmail design, I'm fine with it, why? I almost
never use the Gmail site. I'm either getting my mail with Thunderbird or my
tablet or phone. I almost never have a reason to do otherwise.

------
barcoder
What I hate most is that when typing an email it is contained in a fixed size
box. I can't fill my screen with my email, I have to scroll inside the box to
move up and down.

------
spinchange
My wife and I think they are optimizing for women. No empirical basis for
this, it just seems like every one is aping UI elements and styles from
Pinterest these days.

------
billmcneale
It's spelled "Gmail", lowercase 'm'. Source: the Gmail blog,
<http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/>

------
jcastro
I feel completely opposite, if anything I think gmail should go back to being
simpler and more minimalist instead of more complicated.

------
emehrkay
So no mention of the font size of this blog's content? The comments are larger
than the content

------
andypants
The new icons remind me of visual studio's new redesign.

Monochrome icons, no text. Ugh, horrible to use.

------
rubynerd
What I don't like is colour as a premium feature, you pay with your social
profile

------
lani
thank gawd - someone needed to say that . we're all helpless with google's
arm-twisting us to accept the new email-look, or going back, forcing youtube
users to start using a gmail id ..

------
ditojim
change is good in general. this change to gmail's interface is good in
general. all 3 points in the article can be adjusted by changing a user
setting.

------
mthreat
I totally agree with you. Another specific change that is hard to defend is
the new "..." three dots to expand hidden parts of the conversation from
previous messages. It used to be text that was clear and large enough to click
on. Apparently the Gmail team hasn't learned about Fitts' Law, and the new
target is pretty hard to hit with a mouse.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law>

~~~
Zarel
Fitt's law is useful for two insights: The obvious one is that things you want
to be easy to click should be large/close, but the less obvious one is that
things you _don't_ want to be easy to click should be small/far.

The "..." dots is probably an example of the latter - I'd guess that Google
wants people to view entire conversations by expanding the conversation view,
not by clicking "...", so they make one way much easier than the other.

------
gringomorcego
On an unrelated note:

I noticed people always complained about GMail having bad service (like me,
when I couldn't open particular pieces of mail for a few days at a time).

How do these problems change when we become paying customers of Google? When I
get a Google drive, do I get help in fixing problems? Or is that a lie I want
to believe in?

~~~
TeHCrAzY
You get proper email support if you are paying for gapps for domains. I don't
know if that's what you mean by paying for gmail.

