It sure looks like the visual designers won their poker game with the usability experts. ☺

Kristian Köhntopp

15 Minutes of Google Hate: Whitespace, low information density and no way to shrink the hours

The previous iteration of Google Calendar had no problem to show 7 days a week in a useful way on a N5 screen. Also, I could two-finger-shrink the hours to show 12 hours worth of 7 days on that screen.

Now this.

EMBOLDENED FONT. L o t s   o f   w h i t e s p a c e.

5 days only. Unshrinkable hours.

A large Plus in a circle to create appointments. Which I do very rarely, and if I do, probably not on the phone. So that the entire thing would be better off in a drawer or menu.

Can I please get back the old APK until you are off your designer drugs?

Backgrounder: “15 Minutes of Google hate” are a series of posts in which I document the feedback I send to Google when I send it. Google in its wisdom never reacts, but so far fixed most things after a while, so sending feedback actually works.

The title is a crossover of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate from the novel “1984”. I actually like G+, except when I don’t.

https://plus.google.com/s/15%20Minutes%20of%20Google%20hate

Screenshot_2014-11-14-09-13-36.png

Curtis Olson November 14, 2014 09:18

Gui interface trends remind me a lot of (clothes/hair/eyewear/shoe) fashion.  The current trends are super cool.  There is this sense that we are always progressing towards something better,  stuff from even a few years ago looks crazy stupid and awful and clunky (but it looked cool and trendy back then when it was current.)  Sometimes the trends are cyclical, sometimes (thankfully) they are not.  Whatever else happens, it is always hard to improve on t-shirt and jeans.

Eugene Crosser November 14, 2014 09:51

“Whatever else happens, it is always hard to improve on t-shirt and jeans”

a.k.a. shell command line ☺

Curtis Olson November 14, 2014 10:08

+Eugene: bingo!

Kevin Otte November 14, 2014 10:39

+Ars Technica was also unimpressed with the new calendar: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/android-5-0-lollipop-thoroughly-reviewed/8/

Michael K Johnson November 14, 2014 11:17

Well, once the update arrives on my GPE S4, I’ll have yet another excuse for missing events.

I need more such excuses.

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable