Yes. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know that YOU are supposed to adapt to the user interface? The user interface isn’t supposed to adapt to the… erm… user. The user must adapt to it. If the user finds the user interface difficult, it’s the user’s fault.

Actually, in Gmail, it’s called the Google Interface—the GI. See, the GI does what it does, and the users must learn to adapt to the obvious superiority of GI.

And then we do.

99% of the complaints I’ve seen from people about Gmail aren’t a result of Gmail being a bad application, but are because these people want Gmail to function exactly like some older application and refuse to even attempt to adapt. You’re trying desperately to pull on a door that clearly says push.

Labels work fine as a replacement to folders. Google places the emphasis on conversations, not on individual emails: labels applying to the entire conversation is an intentional design choice. If you need to look for specific information, make use of the Star It feature (which can apply to individual messages) and Gmail’s extremely useful Search feature. If I’m not mistaken, one of their taglines was Gmail: Search Don’t Sort.

Figuring out what the Archive button does requires all of 15 seconds.

I agree with you about new vs old messages: new mail should be bolded from within a conversation view.

Searching email works fine on Yahoo and you can even have multiple searches at the same time easily and without thought (I suppose you can do that on gmail IF you remember to open the search in a new window but why should have to remember that. Yahoo’s way just works, no extra thought at each step required.

Same with composing, replies etc. In gmail you either have to remember to open the reply in a new window OR you have to press the special button to tell gmail to do it for you. Why? Yahoo it just works, no extra steps.

There’s lots of other things Yahoo mail does OBJECTIVELY better than GMail. As far as I can tell most gmail lovers are fanboys, shouting out praise without any critical thought. At least that’s how it seems. Gmail looks like a crappy crypitc UI out of a 1980s DOS program. Why would anyone want to go back to that era?

I stopped using that piece of crap after sending/receiving a dozen mails or so.

I stopped using hotmail 5 years ago.

I’m more than happy with my yahoo account, esp the new beta which is similar to outlook. Its comfortable, intuitive and makes me happy.

If a UI does not make sense the first time you use it then its completely useless. Its not like flying a plane where you absolutely have to learn something.

Outside of that, I completely understand what you’re saying Jim. I’ve shipped products with UI that required the user re-learn things. But that’s should never be a goal of a UI. What I shoot for is a UI that doesn’t fail, that doesn’t confuse, and is flexible enough so that people can move forward without having to temporarily take steps backward.

It’s that backwards step that too many designers and engineers don’t fight hard enough to get rid of, and it makes all the difference in the world. It’s not easy, especially with something so ingrained in our lives like email. But it’s the goal to shoot for.

When I test the UIs I work on and see users making little mistakes, I definitely don’t say “so what, they’ll get used to it”. If I were to do that, I’d be failing in my job as a UI designer. And sometimes we’ll test a UI and afterwards the test user will say “I wish it could do XYXY” -- when it already had XYXY implemented.

When that happens, did the user fail, or did the design team? I believe that the design team failed (although we take into consideration the target audience). If someone thinks the user failed, then I’d recommend them getting out of UI design

As for the curmudgeon comment, I was being sarcastic as a reply to John. I think bad UI gets more slack than it should … and getting comments from users who say “so what, get used to it!” proves that. We shouldn’t have to settle for that. I don’t, especially when it comes from a heralded company like Google.

What did you think the new UI and the new user experience methods and the new ways of recruiting people to use Gmail were, if not signposts that you were entering a zone where things were going to be different?

I disagree that UI that confuses has failed. Sometimes it means that the user has failed, that he has misset expectations. I’m not upset that my car won’t fly like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but it’s UI hasn’t failed because I can’t figure out how to make it do that, even if I’m expecting it to.

It inevitably takes a whole to grasp new use methods and concepts. At first, we try to do things just like we did before. Then we try to make metaphors and mental maps to wedge the new methods into what’s familiar to us, such as the workarounds you mention. Over time, we develop a suitable understanding of the new tools and eventually divest ourselves of the old school mechanisms which were actually holding us back, preventing us from seeing (and using) the new power available to us.

Or that’s the theory, anyway. I know that it does happen like that at times -- I’ve seen it with myself -- but also that sometimes we analyze the value and power vs. the pain and time required and we just say “screw it, I’m sticking with the old stuff.” And sometimes that’s fine (I still prefer POP e-mail and dealing with mailing lists and such via e-mail), sometimes we eventually shift over at a later point when we’re mentally more ready, and sometimes the rug gets pulled out from under us and we have no choice. (My new iMac won’t run Classic, period. Bye bye FrameMaker, sniff.)

I really doubt that I’ll even have a MySpace or FaceBook page, and I just don’t get del.ici.us or flikr or digg. So I don’t use them (yet) rather than that forcing myself to be frustrated by my lack of understanding of them.

Seriously, once you get into having filters, even to yourself, corresponding to labels, gmail is an organisational dream. The only thing that bugs me about gmail is the slow login and logout times sometimes, as well as within but much less frequently.