Google Calendar Redesign: It's Goddamn Terrible
areallybadidea.com
areallybadidea.com
Luckily there's an escape hatch in this case: Cog Menu -> "Use Classic Look"
Pretty sure non of us would be reading it if he'd titled the article like that.
The difference between a gourmet meal and a plate of vomit is simply the way it's arranged.
Edit: and the vomit takes a few more minutes to make too.
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.
Sidenote: Quora appears to have the same problem; I'm guessing it's something capturing click events and calling e.preventDefault() on everything instead of on just left-click events.
See anyone can be a sensationalist Internet douche!
Remember just because you're self-aware and apologize ahead of time doesn't make what you're about to do ... any better or less offensive. I would even argue that it makes it more.
There is an established convention for middle-clicking a lightbox thumbnail (open the larger image in a new tab), which posterous apparently breaks.
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.
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
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.
Allow for color-labeling on a single calendar, allow us to share an "availability" calendar that is a merge of our existing calendar. There are already privacy settings on the events.
Outlook has done this for 10 years? 15 years?
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.
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'?
I like calendar's new look. I love Gmail's new look.
Not saying that ANY functionality should be conceeded in an update like this, but I am saying that your comment can be read in a way that sounds like Google made Calendar useless for "power users." I don't find that to be the case.
On my 16.4" notebook I can see all 6 of my calendars. And I really disagree with his last point: I find the black text MUCH easier to read. However, the white text, being more difficult to read, meant that it was easier to focus on the time-blocks and not be distracted by details. Still, I prefer the black text, and maybe a toggle switch to hide ALL text would be helpful.
I do think it's silly what they've done to the highlight around the current date. And sure, they should have a way to bunch together more calendars for those users on a 13" screen.
But treating this as abject failure of user interface is way overblown and something that power users -- which I do consider myself to be -- will soon adjust to.
Also, for me, on Firefox 4, the calendar is faster now. Clicking an open time slot to add an appt used to have a noticeable delay, now it's instantaneous.
Can one similarly be a "stapler power user" or a "Rolodex power user"?
I can switch to the old view. But if people don't let Google know that their design sucks, then sooner or later, Google will just shut down the old view.
Ridiculous.
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.
It is more aesthetically pleasing, but it's also pointless (because searching a calendar is a minor task) and distracts from the main calendar view, especially with the new pastel colors: you see the search button more than your calendar data.
It's a severe case of form over function.
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.
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.
// 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".
PS I don't care for Google's new designs so much either
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.
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.
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...
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.
from http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=...):
I know: it drives traffic, and for some reason that madlib isn't quite "oh, linkbait" yet.
But apparently it works. After all, I clicked the link and I'm here commenting.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I tend to look at the middle of pages, and have no problems with the button.
Not really sure why they went with red and not just... black or light blue.
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...