I don’t know if it has anything to do with Mayer/lack of review per se, or if it’s more about the scattered focus of G+, Android, etc., or if companies of a certain size are just inevitably incapable of solid UI implementation, or what, but Google’s UI polish on its flagship browser apps has taken a nosedive in the past 5–6 years. They used to be lightweight, fast, and reliable. Now they are bloated monstrosities packed with weird glitches that devour browser resources.
I think Mayer's direct focus was more on UI than on performance, although a simple UI could certainly lead to better performance:
> One time, an APM brought a product to [Mayer] for review and she told him, “This page is too busy. What you need to do is look at every font on the page, every font size. And every time you see a new color or a new font size, you add up a point. I want this page below five points.”
> The comment about “five points” ended up in the meeting notes, and then it became a rule. No pages with more than five points.
> Another rule was: Design a product for the “98 percent use” case. For Mayer, the best example of a product that followed this rule was the Xerox copy machine. It could do all kinds of fancy things: staple, collate, copy, and fax. But if you walked up to one and pressed the giant green button, the right thing just happened. Mayer believed on every good product there should be a big button like that for the 98 percent use case, where if the user clicks it or taps it, they get a delightful, fluid, simple experience.
> During a product review, Mayer would count the number of keystrokes it took to get every job done. Too many, and it was back to work.
Another rule was: Design a product for the “98 percent use” case. [...] Mayer believed on every good product there should be a big button like that for the 98 percent use case, where if the user clicks it or taps it, they get a delightful, fluid, simple experience.
This is all good, but hereis the thing that many designers with great responsibilty doesn't seem to get: As much as there is one big button/search field etc, DON'T REMOVE advanced options for advanced users. Example: For a long time Google Maps on Android it would be impossible to look up a route from anywhere but where you were now. It was not only streamlined to start with current location but rather neutered so you couldn't. To add insult to injury it used to work fine before someone started their UX work :-/
> For a long time Google Maps on Android it would be impossible to look up a route from anywhere but where you were now. It was not only streamlined to start with current location but rather neutered so you couldn't.
I almost lost my mind trying to do this exact thing.
Google maps refusal to make offline reasonable has pretty much killed my use of it. You can use OSM data pre-download the whole set of countries you're driving through and not worry about poor signal / roaming charges / data use.
Or you can use Google maps and get screwed. Guess it works better if you're in the US.
I can't upvote you enough. This is my #1 pet peeve with modern UI/UX design. I'm perfectly fine with the "big green button" scenario where the most most common use case is the one that gets most of the visibility, but those advanced features NEED to still exist somewhere. Minimalism taken too far can and will hurt the quality of the product.
> As much as there is one big button/search field etc, DON'T REMOVE advanced options for advanced users.
I think Mayer's rule implies that. If you remove the feature entirely, you aren't designing for the 98% case, you're designing for the 100% case because the remaining 2% case is gone.
I interpret "design for the 98% case" to mean "focus on that, but don't eliminate the other 2%".
Ditto...that's what the UI on a Google built page personifies...appeal to the 98 percent, because that 98 percent expects to use a simple tool, either because they value expedience, or because they are unaware of other options available to them...
IMHO, it is so important to factor in the simple fact that ,by definition, 1/2 of the population is below average in intelligence...it's statistically so...
Thus, it rarely (comparatively) enters the mind of those in the left tail of a normal distribution that what they see before them should be easily "tweaked" to meet their precise needs...simplicity suffices...
Those seeking expediency feel the same...simplicity suffices...
> IMHO, it is so important to factor in the simple fact that ,by definition, 1/2 of the population is below average in intelligence...it's statistically so...
Technically, half are at or below median, not mean. As an example, if I have a sequence with 11 values, 1 to 10 and 100. Mean is 15.5, which 9 of the 10 samples fall under. Median, however, is 6.
>Technically, half are at or below median, not mean.<
My use was colloquial, not technical, thus I think the use of "average" appropriately serves to illustrate my point...
If you are into statistics, and want to provide a similar example with sample size n=320 million(approximately), I'd be interested in taking a look at it...
> If you are into statistics, and want to provide a similar example with sample size n=320 million(approximately), I'd be interested in taking a look at it...
1 to 319,000,000 and 1 googol...
But actually, you could make the argument that intelligence is likely normally distributed, so the median and the mean should be close enough to make your statement accurate.
I agree... if it didn't follow a normal distribution I'd probably lose faith in the proven heuristics I've come to rely on to help me parse information...
Thanks for helping keep me on my toes, my friend...we're all here to espouse views and defend them...sling ideas around...spirited debate...that's the beauty of this forum...
These are great product guidelines. Especially the 98% use case. Are these from the book linked in the parent comment? Or do you have a source with more ideas along these lines?
Just remember, as much as you want one big green button, -DON'T remove options if you have existing users, just make them smaller, hide them (but easily accessible) and make sure they reset automatically (at least for noobs).
> During a product review, Mayer would count the number of keystrokes it took to get every job done. Too many, and it was back to work.
Palm once had a tap counter that had the rule: 'If any task on the Palm Pilot takes more than three taps of the stylus, it's too long, and it has to be redesigned.'
I think these are very essential qualities of a head of product that had direct influence on making Google the most valued company that it is; They are very complementary to designing a search algorithm - but you need both to be successful. I admired Marissa Mayer's work when she was still in charge and was sorry when she left. I presume it would have been the better choice to make her lead Google+ - if anything this product had a problem with its "personality". I would have trusted her to get this right.
Do you feel like Google+ is more than a problem in search of a solution? That's how I view it, and I doubt Mayer could have changed that. That says nothing of her and everything of Google+.
I was about to joke that maybe they should do that with Yahoo.com, but then I fact-checked myself first by going to it and yahoo.com is actually far cleaner than the horrible, cluttered mess I remember. Granted, my recollection was that it was 'painful to look at' so it's a low bar, but still.
When did that change? I hadn't been there for so many years that I don't even know any more.
Reminds me of the UI bug I hate most on google search page. The page loads fine but the cursor takes longer to appear in the search box than it should (probably 3 sec at max but long enough to frustrate)
