[dxm]

Google is able to test changes thousands of times every second, and since Larry Page became CEO the changes have all been done to create a consistent feel across Google's services, and have all been tested and refined. What are your credentials? Saying "I’m writing this post hoping that it will reach someone that works in Google and they are going to do something about it." is ambitious, the opinion of one person does not reflect the amount of data they have that likely implies that this change is an advantage.

[Zak]

What are your credentials?

Downvote for this. Questioning or criticizing the author's credentials is a poor substitute for questioning or criticizing his thesis.

[nailer]

I agree, 'what are your credentials?' is the wrong question - 'where is your data?' would be better. But I too question the author.

The author is posting a list of his personal gmail bugbears. We all understand the author doesn't care that you can see the email in the reply window, he'd rather a much bigger space to write.

I think we can safely say that Google test UX changes with actual users. Asking the parent for some data to back up that most users don't like the change is reasonable.

Also making the compose full screen would result in a very wide compose area, which is widely though to slow down reading (eg, of what the gmail users has just written).

I've actually flagged the submission: evaluating UX based on opinionated users without data is simply poor.

[throwaway2048]

They have perfected objectively correct design at Google, he is clearly just a moron to question their conclusions.

Slight trolling aside, I think this is a fairly obvious example of how a purely numbers & statistic based design process can go off the rails.

[andyhmltn]

Sorry, but what is your point? You rambled on about how the author is unqualified and not everyone feels the same way he does and yet you didn't provide a single point to rival any of his. I'm confused?

[jsnell]

Yeah, that infallible data-driven juggernaut is the image you want to project outside.

But in reality the people whose promotions and bonuses are riding on a successful launch of the redesign are also the ones cherry-picking the metrics of success. It doesn't matter if it's universally hated and actively drives people to use IMAP clients. There will be some bullshit statistic that'll go up. Hell, most metrics are going up anyway for a service like GMail, and it's not like this is being A/B tested.

[NoPiece]

How can we know what they are testing for? Maybe they are optimizing for revenue and not how happy or distracted an email author is.

[chris_wot]

"Test changes thousands of times a second"... What does this even mean?!?!

[zobzu]

not sure if trolling or just dumb

[chris_wot]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

[frozenport]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics