Google Betting Its Google+ Systems Know What's Best For You 109
Nerval's Lobster writes "But at this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google's semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.' In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: 'Your darkroom is now a Google data center.' Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That's the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"
How about a sane order of posts instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
I use g+ regularly (I know, insert joke about being the only person on the net to do that here). I've liked it, for the most part.
But yesterday? Man. That new interface went live and how I have three tiny columns of posts. Which itself might be okay, except they're in no discernible order whatsoever. New stuff I haven't seen yet is buried off the screen, but there's six things from two days ago still hanging around at the top. Sometimes new things appear in a visible spot, sometimes they don't. I don't know why I need three columns when each one is so small that it's barely telling me anything, and looks like it was designed for a mobile screen. (The iPad app has a similar layout but has much saner ordering and uses 1 or 2 columns depending on the size of the item. It works far better.)
There's an option to turn it back to a single column, but the column stays the same size and now 2/3 of the screen is totally empty while I have to click to expand everything to see more than 30 words and scroll down like crazy. At least in that mode it seems to be ordered correctly.
The main reaction in my g+ circles to the update was confusion. It wasn't even the usual "change is bad" reaction. People were just lost in how they were supposed to read this new layout and find the new stuff in a simple way.
It's funny because g+ started off with a simpler, easier to use page than Facebook had. That's gone and reversed itself now. I really don't get what Google's thinking. As of right now, I'd actually rank the usability of Facebook more highly.
I see diminishing returns (Score:3, Interesting)
We're really digging the bottom of the barrel as an industry if we're putting energy into doing analytics on vacation photos to identify which ones contain landmarks. The way I see it, we've already accomplished the big things in computing (word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, etc.) and now all that's left is the constant development of minutiae.
Re:How about a sane order of posts instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
So does Microsoft. They gave us Windows 8. How's that working out for them? (Considering they're now backtracking and putting boot to desktop and the start menu back in because the market isn't a big fan of what their UI design experts put out.)
I'm not really sure how it's an "uninformed criticism", when I'm using it. It's entirely informed. They moved the new things that I haven't seen and want to see off the screen, and kept old stuff that I've already seen and don't want to see again at the top. That's useful to me... why?
But yes, I'm sure that since a Ph.D came up with it, surely it's awesome and we should all bow down to it's greatness. So what if I have to scroll through old stuff to find new stuff, or have the alternative view of a metric fuckton of empty whitespace with a tiny list of content in the middle. I'm sure I'm just not seeing why that's actually a good thing because I'm not smart enough.
Re:How about a sane order of posts instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you asked yourself: do you actually know anything about user interface design? Google employs Ph.D.s by the dozen. Maybe you need to stop offering uninformed criticisms? Google doesn't do these things randomly or on a whim. These changes were debated, thought over by smart people, and then implemented. It's like Roger Ebert vs. the opinion of J. Random Moviegoer here.
I guess I'm not experienced enough in UI design to be allowed to express an opinion either (at least, according to you), but I'll share my opinion anyway: I don't like the multi-column G+ design either, because I find it tiresome to shift my attention back and forth between columns, and keep track of where I am in each column.
I also find G+ slow (even on my fast CPU) and cluttered. I find the text is too small and if I zoom it two levels (to make it large enough to easily read), the rightmost column partially renders under the Hangouts column.
Page up and page down don't work quite right a large fraction of the time (try it), and I hate it when web sites pin content (if I scroll, I want everything to scroll).
I miss the old Google when UI designs were simple, intuitive, uncluttered, and fast. They seem to be junking up all their UIs (including Gmail).
Re:How about a sane order of posts instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go read The Design of Everyday Things. Designers have, in multiple fields, consistently used their impressive educations and experience to produce systems which were demonstrably less usable and less well-liked than the things they replaced. It's very easy for people to fall prey to that, and "experts" are not immune...
The highly spun Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that "fact" like the three copies of Windows 8 that Microsoft counts me as having "bought"?
I bought three 802.11AC routers from Newegg and automagically had three copies of Win8 added to my cart which were included in the price, but also had an automatic rebate that was applied immediately. That was just before MS came out with the surprisingly large sales figures. I was only one of many.
Just because it's said by a company you rather like doesn't mean it's not misleading. For example, how much credence would you give something similar said by Apple?