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Comment by ashwindharne | Hacker News Reader

This post has the same issues as NotebookLM for me -- overdesigned, overengineered for what at its core is a simple and valuable UX.

NotebookLM: obviously useful, but I just wanna select some files and chat w/ them or have them summarized for me. It's got low info density, way too many cards/buttons/sections/icons, and it makes the core UX really difficult for me to navigate.

This post: I wanted to know what cool thoughts he had while designing it. Instead I get some weird scrolljacking, image carousels, unnecessary visual hierarchy, cards galore, etc.

Not trying to be too negative, it's slick and all but it just gets in the way for me instead of disappearing.

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Not too negative, I really appreciate this perspective and agree with some of what you said.

IMO if you wanted to simply talk to a file or two Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude are great for that.

The goal of this experimental product was to think creatively around what a true source grounded tool could be. (Obviously while building to best support the user needs). Our team put in immense work to move quickly while trying to be creative while keeping it simple. I have no doubt the product will continue to evolve and improve based on continued feedback like this!

Re: my website, I personally digest things better visually. I had hoped the additional visual elements would explain my decision making process to others as well.

Thank you for your work. NotebookLM has been invaluable for my learning experience. With the summaries, the mind maps, the multi-source synthesis and dialogue with the material, it adjusts pretty well to my learning style.

Agreed. NotebookLM is one of my most used tools for my research work. I’m able to give the audio overview to friends and family who don’t want to read a paper but am interested in what I’m doing. And the “live” talk allows me to interrogate my own work and identify gaps where I haven’t explained something well.

Your blog post shows that more effort and creativity was spent on "brand identity" than on "everyone is doing column layouts with chat in the middle and we'll just make the rest an indistinguishable mess of links on par with literally every single Google product".

I only use NotebookLM a few times a month when I have many input sources I want to sift through. Very valuable but most appropriate for longer work/study sessions.

Surely there’s a German word for this - framing a weakness as if it contributed to the success.

I’ve seen it in so many talks, especially from people working in big tech. Something is a success in spite of some aspect of it, and those responsible for that aspect go on speaking tours about their journey and what we mere mortals can learn from them.

Try "Lobhudelei"

I'm a native German speaker. "Lobhudelei" doesn't fit for me, as I would rather translate it as "schmoozing" or "glazing".

"Schönreden" is the closest I can think of on the spot.

Well, not German but there is the tale of the fox who lost its tail and framed it as a good thing

Endless scrolling just to describe a three-panel layout, something that's been around since the 80s (?).

To be fair, a lot of graphic designers have very little knowledge/experience with computing, so they genuinely believe they're inventing obvious and common approaches.

I mean, this is from a company that judges its designs for "feeling of rebelliousness" and "courage" [1]

The entire text is rationalizing post-factum for a promotion package.

[1] In case you missed it https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...

--- start quote ---

We found a 32% increase in subculture perception, which indicates that expressive design makes a brand feel more relevant and “in-the-know.” We also saw a 34% boost in modernity, making a brand feel fresh and forward-thinking. On top of that, there was a 30% jump in rebelliousness, suggesting that expressive design positions a brand as bold, innovative, and willing to break from convention.

--- end quote ---

Came here to say this. Although the UI is clean, it's in no way a great user experience using NotebookLM. It's just such a great product so I go back to it, but the user interface is not my favorite part.

I read this comment first and thought: "oh come on, how bad can it be". So then seeing this really being so bad(-ly overdesigned) was quite amusing.

It's written for people to see, not to read I guess.

Really disliked the author's tone: "me, me, me, me, me, me. Also somebody promote me."

All this paragraphs telling us what a great job he's done and this charlatan's product (with great potential)...doesn't even save your chats.

So you start discussing about something in your notes, come back and...the messages are gone.

But sure come tell me what a genius you are with your 3 column layout.

Charlatans, and those people become multi millionaires with those projects and such a crap work.

Literally the only thing people cared about was Audio Overviews. NotebookLM had launched months earlier without that feature and was immediately ignored. The reason people liked audio overviews was because the voice model was amazing. This guy and the labs team had nothing to do with that. It was developed by a research team at Google Research/GDM who got maybe 1% of the credit: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/pushing-the-frontiers-... It’s amazing how these people still insist on denying the massive contribution the audio model made, which is apparent by the lack of credits or acknowledgements to the team anywhere public despite these self aggrandizing blogs and postcast appearances.

And the, "I ran off paper and the final design was the one I created on a napkin", was just too cliche and overly dramatic.

The napkin definitely feels like a retcon

Lmao this is my feeling as well.

Why is a 3 panel layout new?

Isn't vscode essentially that?

I can’t even remember an IDE that doesn’t have the 3 panel layout.

Eclipse, xcode, PyCharm, even Visual Studio from way back when…

ngl, i stole his website design. this is the content i live for

Fully concur with sibling comments. Maybe I set the wrong expectation for myself: that it would be a blog post with a narrative to bring the reader through some plot points and a resolution. Instead it is a bunch of schematic ideas presented without connection or progression, like a conceptual summary sketched from an interesting lecture that can be read between the lines.

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