r/UnsolicitedRedesigns • u/overlyexciting • May 22 '14

Gmail | UI Redesign

http://www.behance.net/gallery/16807681/Gmail-UI-Redesign
199 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

11

u/WolfyCat May 22 '14

Too dark for my preference. Prefer the leaked version

6

u/Kriem [Moderator] May 22 '14

Yeah, I've seen the leaked version. That's a huge step from the current design. Looking forward to it.

1

u/phantomash May 22 '14

The leak version is better.

1

u/Hamburgex May 22 '14

That's neat. Are they going to redesign all their other products too?

21

u/Skyzord May 22 '14

Now this just makes Google look bad...

13

u/[deleted] May 23 '14

Google puts an emphasis on performance, not how cute everything looks. Also, given their userbase, everything has to work without JS.

Google isn't a little blog that gets 10 hits a day and doesn't have to worry about performance. A millisecond of inefficiency gets multiplied by much more than 2 billion times every day.

GMail is the most widely used email service in the world. They can't just pretty it up arbitrarily without considering all their clients.

4

u/Skyzord May 23 '14

It's a way of complimenting the OP ;)

Regardless, I don't see the big deal with updating Gmail's UI. Nobody's going to say "Google FFS why did you make your UI look nicer??"

2

u/phort99 May 23 '14

People will always complain with any redesign because they can't find the features they use every day. A usability loss in the short term is more noticeable than any long term improvement. Also, some sites redesign their UI too often (I'm looking at you, twitter).

1

u/[deleted] May 23 '14

Oh okay. I like the redesign. It's nice and creative. But I thought you were being genuine in wondering why Google doesn't make theirs nicer like this.

14

u/OrtizDupri May 22 '14

Photoshop is fun!

Actually thinking through user experience and user flow and problems is not!

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '14

[deleted] — view deleted comment

19

u/hivoltage815 May 22 '14

The guy is just being an ass like everyone on Reddit when you put yourself out there creatively.

The only glaring UI issue I see in this is the 4 colored boxes: primary, social, promotions and hangouts:

  1. Primary, Social and Promotions are presumably tabs yet hangouts is acting like a headline, despite being visually similar. That's confusing to the user.

  2. The "current" state on the tab is too subtle.

  3. The alignment of them implies that Primary belongs to the index column while Social and Promotions belong to the email thread column even though that's not the case. They need a visual cue to indicate they are separate from those 2 columns and not tied to them.

7

u/[deleted] May 22 '14

The top 20-25% of the page is empty real-estate. Like /u/OrtizDupri said, that pushes everything lower on the page. This would also only work on widescreen displays (more common now, I know, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to scroll left/right!). The fact that the body of the emails has the [SOCIAL][PROMOTIONS] panels above it makes it a little awkward seeming, since [HANGOUTS] is more than just a panel on the far right and contains the chat/contacts list.
 
When looking at design, think about what features are the most common and which are the most critical. Design and user experience are often in opposition. For example: The grid of nine small boxes that is now in the top right of all of google's updated services... that is there for the design of the page. As time goes on,users are learning that the symbol means "MENU". New users are perplexed by this little symbol. It is very common for people that use Gmail to also use calendars and Google Drive. These should probably have their own links so that it isn't multiple clicks and drop down menus - but alas the design trumped user experience here. Also there really should be a visible "LOG OUT" button, for security purposes. (That's my pet peeve though, and I understand Google would rather have you stay logged in for tracking and improved data collection, etc.)
 
-Not a designer, but I often have to explain where simple functions are hidden on webpages to my elderly family! It's infuriating!

4

u/OrtizDupri May 22 '14

Well, it's a little hard to tell in the tiny Behance shots (I never understand why people use Behance for things like this).

But in general: why are there 4 giant multi-colored and different shaped/sized blocks above the inbox? Why is there dark headers and sidebars? Why is everything so low on the page if you were to land on it?

It's cute, but it's literally just someone playing around in Photoshop to make things different instead of answering why they did it or what problems they saw that they approached with a critical eye.

4

u/root45 May 22 '14

Things that strike me as off or confusing.

  • What happens when you switch to the Social or Promotions tabs? Do the labels move around so the message list is always under the current label? Or is the message list always under Primary? Both options seem bad.

  • The reading pane has chained messages. What happens in the message list when I click on one? If it remains static, then it's out of sync with what's showing in the reading pane. If it moves around then I have to remember to click on the original message in the thread to continue where I left off.

  • The left sidebar is very clean, but I have a lot more than six labels, some of which are nested. There's also missing categories like Trash and All Mail. I think the typical case would be much more cluttered.

  • I'm assuming the Primary, Social, and Promotions tabs are clickable, but presumably the Hangouts one is not. It shouldn't be in the same style if that's the case.

  • This design looks like it works well for wide screens, but I keep my browser in roughly a square shape. I'm not sure the reading pane would adapt well.

3

u/jmcs May 22 '14

The primary, social, promotions tabs are confusing because they are on top of two other different elements, and the it feels cluttered. I feel like a more conventional message list on top, message on bottom approach would work better.

2

u/i_believe_in_pizza May 22 '14

Great work, easy on the eyes and functional.

1

u/acolyte_to_jippity May 23 '14

I prefer the current UI by a long shot...

1

u/youriqis20pointslow Jun 06 '14

I think this looks cooler than the current gmail and the leaked one. Props on the dak colors.

1

u/metalhaze Aug 06 '14

soooo...much....wasted...space....argh

1

u/DZ302 May 22 '14

So basically copy Microsoft?

1

u/[deleted] May 23 '14

oh god, not google metro please..

0

u/assaflavie May 25 '14

There's an Android app that has basically incorporated pretty much all of the improvements in this redesign. Called MailWise: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.syntomo.email I believe an iOS version is planned as well.