| The remark pointed to the impression that when Mayer left the floodgates opened and lots of UX changes happened. She had been holding things back -- for good and bad. It was very hard to get new things done while she was the gatekeeper for UX. There were a lot of things that didn't work too well when it came to the process of developing the user experience. A big part of which, as far as I could tell, was Mayer's inability to conduct UI reviews in a meaningful manner. I was present at a few of them. It was like attending a meeting being presided over by the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. Sadly you wouldn't find many people willing to speak up about it, because that could potentially be Very Bad For Your Career within Google. So people would just tolerate her childish, spoilt behavior. The good thing was that very little frivolous nonsense was shipped. The bad thing was very few positive changes were made as well. So when Mayer was "reallocated" (and eventually resigned) there was all this pent up frustration and pressure to get work done on UX. And I think the pendulum swung a bit too far in the other direction because of it. In the beginning most of the changes that came out were incredibly positive. For instance I think the overall look of Gmail and the move to a flatter overall design was a good thing. But eventually things started to go a bit pear-shaped. For instance I have no idea what made the Google+ people think that the mad scrolling animations was a good idea. I can't imagine how it enhances the experience, and if you are on a smart phone, it is a really slow way of flicking through your feed. Slow is not a Google value. Google products should never be slow. In Google+ I wish they would have focused on usability rather than embellishments. For instance: why the hell is it so awkward to start a hangout on Google+? Why is the UI for this so fucked that it takes people a dozen uses to learn how to do it without mousing around for ages? Seriously, if I were the PM for that product I'd nail down fixing that problem as the top OKR for the next two quarters and focus on getting just that done. Hangouts is the single most useful feature Google+ offers, and the key thing that differentiates it from Facebook; yet the user experience for getting a hangout going between a group of people is fiddly. |