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Design Commentary on Google's New To-Do Tasks App (pxlnv.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the winging-it dept.
On the sidelines of Gmail's big refresh push, Google also released a new app called Google Tasks. It's a simple app that aims to help users manage their work and home tasks. But it's being talked about for one more reason. From a blog post: Unlike most of their other apps, though, Tasks uses an inconsistent mix of Roboto, their old brand typeface, and Product Sans, their new one. The two faces don't look good together -- it's like when Apple shipped apps that used both Helvetica and Lucida Grande. According to their announcement of Product Sans and their new logo, the typeface was supposed to be used in promotional materials and lockups, but there's no mention of it being used for product UIs. In fact, the only other product I can find that has this same inconsistent mix is the new Gmail.com, also previewed today.

It isn't just about what these typefaces look like, either, but how they're used. For example, when entering a new task, the name of the task is set in Product Sans; when it is added to the list, it becomes Roboto. Tapping on the task takes you to a details view where, now, the name of the task is in Product Sans. There are three options to add more information: if you want to add details, you'll do it in Roboto, but adding a due date will be in Product Sans. The "add subtasks" button -- well, text in the same grey as everything else except other buttons that are blue -- is set in Product Sans, but the tasks are set in Roboto.
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Design Commentary on Google's New To-Do Tasks App More

Design Commentary on Google's New To-Do Tasks App

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  • Oh, Lord! No! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moehoward ( 668736 ) on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:11AM (#56513239)

    It's the end of the world!

    Whiny much?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      the korean war is about to end and slashdot is talking about an app

    • Re:Oh, Lord! No! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pz ( 113803 ) on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:23AM (#56513293) Journal

      It's the end of the world!

      No, obviously it isn't. But not paying attention to UI suggests that there might well be an equivalent lack of attention given to inner workings including, the flavor of the month, security and privacy.

      It's just like the infamous no-brown-m&m-s clause in Van Halen's contracts. That clause was long held to be the pinnacle of rock-and-roll excess, but in actuality, it wasn't about the preferences of the band members for snack foods. Rather it was an indicator the band used to judge how carefully the venue operator had read the contract and thus had prepared the important items like structural integrity of the stage, appropriate power feeds, evacuation routes, etc.

      If someone can't get the obvious, glaring things right, they can't be trusted to get the hidden details right, either.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What a terrific idea! I'm going to ask my wife to swing by the grocery store on the way home and pick up some Vidalia onions. If she gets normal yellow or white onions, or jesus christ red onions, I'm filing for divorce. Because obviously she won't be a good sexual partner or mother to our children if she can't follow a simple instruction to pick up Vidalia onions.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          no, dumbfuck.

          But if you asked for vidalia onions and she got white onions instead, then you might want to check the date on the milk.

      • If someone can't get the obvious, glaring things right, they can't be trusted to get the hidden details right, either.

        Yeah, because a single clause hidden deep in a contract, that is considered to be the "pinnacle of rock-and-roll excess", is more important than worrying about issues that can actually kill people at worst, and cause significant legal liability issues for the venue. A flunky that is tasked with the stupid task of sorting M&Ms missing one absolutely proves that the electricians and other contractors hired by the venue are incompetent. Van Halen is trying to spin their ego into something important, which

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The clause is a canary. Respect the canary. Every coal miner knows that.

        • Sigh, no. The brown M&M clause was to make sure that the contract was read AT ALL.

          If they didn't read it closely enough to figure out the M&M thing, they probably skimmed the important bits.

          • Bullshit logic.

            They typically print multiple copies of the requirements, gives one to the sparky, one to the stage builder jock, one to the sound engineer nerd and finally one to the blonde who stocks up the toilet tissues in the green room. Usually these blondes take their jobs seriously and meticulously give you bowls and bowls of brown free m&m s. The jocks running the wiring are the one all over confident and would skim the contract.

          • If they didn't read it closely enough to figure out the M&M thing, they probably skimmed the important bits.

            Yeah, because in years of providing stage and electrical services, the contractors never learned that it was important that the stage not fall down without needing that detail spelled out in a performance contract with a band. Right. Sure.

            My God, what carnage there was before Van Halen started demanding brown-free bowls of M&Ms and that their stage not fall down while they were on it.

            More likely they skimmed over the bullshit parts of the contract where the performers demanded ridiculous things, or i

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Julz ( 9310 )

        It's becoming the norm for Google's apps/software, and plenty of others, to have glaring issues that have made it into the public arena. Testing seems to have been dropped in favour of first to the post and/or just done not done right.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry, I've called the Font police.

    • And from a person who thinks it's a good idea to have a web page with grey text. My eyes hurt looking at that blog from the low-contrast, and that's before actually reading it.

  • Font fetish (Score:3)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:13AM (#56513251) Homepage

    Is there a gene that makes some people get angry about mismatched fonts, and not other people? It just seems really weird to me.

    I logically understand all the stuff about fonts - why Comic Sans shouldn't be used in business presentations, and why not to mix two typefaces within a document. It makes perfect sense. But if someone actually violates these things, someone has to point it out to me or I don't notice it. But to actually write an article about it seems like... wow, really? It matters THAT much?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      First world problems.

      But to be honest, I wish they would just focus on the basics. Palm (pre-phone era) got this, and made the core apps as simple as possible, always accessible through a single button, and never do or present in unexpected ways. They were useful, not eye candy.
      But apparently, the new generation care more about form than function. Or don't actually do things that make the core apps useful.

    • Yes and no.

      It's a pretty short blog post. There's no flamewar raging accross reddit, as far as I know, there's been actual 'storms and 'gates about lesser things. If you're in a given profession, or just a fan of X, you're gonna complain when people get something wrong. /. wouldn't exist otherwise.

      If you're an developer, you're gonna nitpick someone else's sloppy code. Really, what's a few kb of leaking memory per hour?
      If you're a cook, you're gonna nitpick someone else's sloppy cooking. Meh, what's an extr

    • This is news because Google should have internal design specifications and they can't even follow it.

    • Is there a gene that makes some people get angry about mismatched fonts, and not other people? It just seems really weird to me.

      I think you've effectively quashed the rumors that were going around saying you were, in fact, Marissa Mayer.

    • Details matter, even if only subconsciously. This sort of thing contributes to the overall feel of products. Yes it's minor, but make enough minor mistakes and your work will start to feel pretty cheap and crummy.

    • It matters THAT much?

      It doesn't matter if your secretary isues* a document with comic sans. However what about if your secretary was also the person who was responsible for writing the style guidelines for the entire company.

      THAT is the issue here. Google have paid a small fortune employing designers to come up with a cohesive and consistent style and UI and have pushed this out for not only their products universally but also published it as a guide for other developers. Keeping to the design and style guidelines they set for

  • Google's swift response (Score:5, Funny)

    by Provocateur ( 133110 ) <shedied@gmail . c om> on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:15AM (#56513263) Homepage

    They have decided on the freely available Comic Sans, and that was final, a spokesman said.

  • there's an app for that (Score:3, Funny)

    by Toxiz ( 4980833 ) on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:16AM (#56513267)
    Your browsing history plus email didn't tell us exactly what you were doing at all times, so we made an app for you to report it to us. -love google

    • Your browsing history plus email didn't tell us exactly what you were doing at all times, so we made an app for you to report it to us. -love google

      There is that (humor is best when it contains a grain of plausibility).

      However I think there's another important consideration here. At this point in time, Google has a well-established track record of killing projects once they've lost interest - I'm sure there are actual internal reasons stated, but from the outside it can seem like these decisions are made by some ADHD-afflicted teenager. So, at this point, why would anyone migrate to a new Google project like this one - let's face it, the people who are

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

        Generally, I'd agree. But my to-do lists have consisted of draft emails sitting in Gmail for the past 5 years anyway, spread across 3 different topics. Might as well put it in one single list with some additional functionality (reminders for hard deadlines, maybe?). Yeah, it might go away, but I can cut and paste it back into an unsent email pretty quick if it happens.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • You do care about fonts.
      You do notice shitty layout and crappy fonts and lettering.
      Maybe only subconsciously, but you do care.

      There's a reason why well designed products get more attention and get used more often.
      Yes, also by you.

      Try this: Sit in front of an iMac with retina display and work for a few weeks.
      Then go back to some regular screen resolution.
      Even you will notice the difference. Promise.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • I work on a console all day long too - and I think the font there matters _even more_ than in GUIs. Retina screens make a big difference on eye strain when staring at the console all day - and a nice monospaecd font (I like Monaco) can make a big different over the long haul.

          That said: I don't care _that_ much about fonts in apps / on websites. But for the console I spend _all_ day looking at it... so I want it to be pleasing to look at.

      • There's a reason why well designed products get more attention and get used more often.
        ...
        Try this: Sit in front of an iMac with retina display and work for a few weeks.

        Tried it, but got bored after a few minutes. Black screen. I don't think I could take a few weeks of this.

        Because I couldn't find the fucking power button.

        Of all the company's products to bring up in a good-vs-bad design context, you chose one of the very worst, the most incompetent people that ever worked in the industry. The people who

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chrish ( 4714 )

          Note sure if you're joking or not, but when we got one of the new MacBook Pros in with the idiotic Touch(TM) Bar(R) I literally could not find the power button for several minutes. I had no idea you could push the fingerprint sensor, and it's definitely not marked as a power button.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )

        You do care about fonts.

        Well, yes and no. If a product mixes 2 fonts, I can't care less. But if an unreadable font is forced on me, yes, I do care. Like when Windows Explorer on WinXP and later some service pack on XP forced the use of aliased (a.k.a. blurry) fonts instead of the nicely optimized fonts previously used in all versions, my eyes bled and I cared so much that I gave up Windows for Linux completely.

  • Anyone else think the typeface in the Wired article's headline sucks ass?

    Oh, and it's flak, not flack. The former is from the German for anti-aircraft gun, the latter means a shill.

  • Google is the Honey Badger (Score:4)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Friday April 27, 2018 @10:41AM (#56513389)
    >> (sniveling voice): Tasks uses an inconsistent mix of Roboto, their old brand typeface, and Product Sans, their new one

    Google doesn't give a shit: they are the fucking honey badger. You will take their 1998-era interface, type in all your personal shit, and receive the ads that are keyword-assigned to your fucking "tasks", your stupid "mail", your pointless "calender events" and all your web searches for brony warez. Why? Because you are cheap and you value moderately good searches. Just don't think you are the only one searching your digital life - that index ain't just for you.

    • Google doesn't give a shit

      They have spent a fuckton of money on UI design overhaul as well as writing design guidelines and converting apps to use a consistent style guide. Google does give a shit, that's why this UI balls up is so fascinating.

  • They mixed Roboto and Product Sans? Someone needs to get smacked and learn some design basics before being let go on UX... That's like doing speed critical coding in Ruby and front-end in C. In the same app.
    If you mix fonts (which you really shouldn't!), then there should
    be a very significant difference between them, like sans and serif. Or fine and Ultrabold.
    That would be some trash-grundgy post modern thing which will probably be out of style again next year, but you could do it if you know what y

    • As far as I know, the only time you can mix fonts is title vs main text, and even then you better pick similar fonts.

  • Shouldn't be Google's choice anyway (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember when, as a user, you just went into Font Preferences [amigaos.net] and told the system which font you prefer, and your apps complied because the computer's purpose is to do whatever the user wants?

    Software designers shouldn't even know what font their app uses. That's determined at runtime.

  • Google's tasks and reminders are seemingly two separate DBs.

    Google Assistant, Keep, Inbox, and Calendar use the reminders DB. The new Gmail and Tasks use the other. Why in the holy hell these two are separate is maddening but as long they remain so it severely gimps both. Whatever Assistant defaults to should be what everything does.

  • Typeface nerds (anyone who gives a shit about typefaces really) are the *worst* kinds of people.

    THE WORST

  • Seems like the priorities are usually roughly as follows:

    • - Identify the competition (done: Microsoft Outlook.)
    • - Copy every single feature available in the competition (done... erm... mostly)
    • - Make changes to some other random crap, so people don't immediately recognize that this was all just an exercise in feature parity (done)
    • - Make the product mesh with all the rest of our products, and actually look good. (incomplete)

    Though, as a developer myself, I kind'a feel like that last bullet is almost never

  • I've got a Fire tablet, to access numbers from the keyboard you have to hit the 123 key, to go back to letters hit abc. Pain in the fucking ass, just put a number row above qwerty. I don't use !@$, etc much on my Fire, but I use numbers every damned time I enter a password. Which is what the Fire keyboard is used for 90% of the time.

    My Android calendar defaults to day mode with no way to tell it I prefer the week or month view. No, I have to enter settings and hit month every damned time I open the c
  • Who the heck trusts google products anymore - this must be their 5th Tasks app which obviously they will shut down after couple years. People must be fools to go with any 2-bit google app they wont haven't a hope of getting any revenue for.
  • ..Google Keep and tasks built into Google Calendar Seriously, the way Google duplicates apps is a sign of a company with multiple personalities.

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