But what can be done about it? Good design is important, but sometimes things have to be changed, and ultimately a lot people just don't like change. Even if it's the best design in the world, somebody, somewhere will struggle with it being different. I think some "hand holding" as you suggest would be a good idea, but I'm not sure how that could be done in practice.

Why? If a UI works for people, why does it have to be changed? That seems to me to be at least part of the problem: software designers think things have to be changed, when it's really just that they want to change them, for whatever reason, and don't stop to think about the impact.

a lot people just don't like change

A lot of people have things that work perfectly well for them and don't like having to re-learn their workflow whenever some software designer has a bright idea. I'm one of them: I still run a KDE 3 desktop on Linux because it works for me and I don't like having my UI messed with just because somebody designed some new eye candy.

I think the newest version of Skype does let you break things into new windows, but to me it seems that it should be the default.

My main point is: the UI was already great, it didn't need any changes.

Finding examples of cases where this did not work are no argument against all changes.

And as far as people not liking change. This is not only about re-learning. Change on itself is often met with tough resistance. And this resistance is often rationally hard to justify. Your example may or may not be like that (I don't have enough perspective to tell), but perhaps re-learning would have been more than compensated by the amount of time saved due to new features.

Of course this is always possible in general terms. But I was talking about a specific set of cases: redesigns of UIs that already work and that already have a huge base of existing users who will have to relearn what they know. In my experience, it's extremely rare for that kind of change to be "for the better".

you'll need to move away from the sweet spot the majority settled with to get to another (hopefully better adjusted) local optimum.

And in the process, you will have to move through a "pit" of UI suck where lots of people have significantly worse productivity for a significant period of time. And for what?

Finding examples of cases where this did not work are no argument against all changes.

I didn't argue against all changes; as noted above, I was talking specifically about software UI changes that force existing users to re-learn things for no good reason.

perhaps re-learning would have been more than compensated by the amount of time saved due to new features.

How much time saved? And how long before that savings pays back the huge cost of the switch, per the above?

And can these numbers even be measured anyway? Sure, Google can measure to the millisecond how long it takes for you to move the mouse from one place to another, and no doubt they have numbers to show that the new GMail UI shaves critical milliseconds off certain common operations. But can they measure the frustration caused by changes like this? Can they measure the emails that don't even get written because people get fed up with their new UI? Can they measure the cost of keeping people within their walled garden?

This problem is not limited to Google, of course; I think it's endemic in the software UI world. I think software UIs are like fashions: changes are largely driven not by functionality but by an arms race for users' attention.

UI changes, no matter how great, are always going to piss off someone. A lot of the time that someone probably has a very good reason to be pissed off. BUT the changes might also benefit a lot of people who aren't as vocal. We shouldn't hold back innovation because we're scared of pissing people off. Of course we also shouldn't change just for the sake of it.

[This isn't directed specifically at the parent but at the issue in general].

The root cause is the traditional old style vs substance. This fits your observation that its harder to use, both to read and to keyboard. But its not marketed / designed as a tool to do anything, its a fashion accessory, so its irrelevant if its usable. What matters is if its shiny. That led you astray into the whole ageism anti-hipster thing. I also laugh at hipster kids, but the problem in this individual scenario has nothing to do with age.

Imagine if a hardware store released the iHammer and it was just like a conventional hammer, but cost much more so you could show off how rich you must be, and was painted blue, they made the hammer head pointy to be edgy and cool, had lace tied around the handle, and shipped it in a really cool origami clear plastic box. Anyone in search of a productive carpenters tool is going to be horribly disappointed and make fun of the iHammer, but thats not the point, the correct reason to buy a iHammer is to show off to their peers.

iDevices are no longer useful. That's OK. They're supposed to be fashion accessories, not useful devices.

For analogy I have nothing against women who wear wedding dresses to a wedding instead of sweatpants and tee shirt, or people who market wedding dresses to women who want to wear them while getting married, it certainly fills a need for them very well, and profitably. The point I'm making is its pointless for a gang of construction workers to complain about women's wedding dresses, all "LOL they're selling wedding dresses how useless because the train will get stuck in the bulldozer hydraulics" and the other construction dude all "LOL yeah and how does she intend to get the cement stains out of that fabric anyway".

If your particular situation values style over usefulness more than any other device on the market, and some device fits your needs better than other devices on the market, hey, have fun with it.

Or maybe rephrased a basic product design goal is a fairly objective observation (although I may be wrong, but I don't think so). However, a (subjective) discussion about some users desires being trivial or non-trivial is way far away from that discussion.

I am making the claim that iDevices are not just a fashion accessory and in fact are a highly productive, useful mobile device for what people do with mobile devices. The success in the iPhone has been in large part due to its utility - the entire phone industry basically works like an iPhone does now.

Competing for customers remains a balancing act between increasing usability and the aesthetics/fashion of the device - clearly a gold iPhone has little to do with usability, but will sell heavily because it has a fashion edge in some quarters. But none of this would matter if the device wasn't still useful. My construction site superintendent step dad moves to an iPhone because it worked better than his BlackBerry. Rail yard workers I worked with are moving to rugged-case iPads over ruggedized PCs because the latter are difficult to use. Airline mechanics use them to log their daily activities and order parts. These folks don't necessarily move the needle of sales the way fashion does, but they wouldn't use an iPhone if it didn't help their job.

Unfortunately the issue is the lack of a quality alternative. My best friend was an iPhone user, then switched to a Samsung Galaxy S2 because he wanted to be able to use is phone as a mass storage device, among other things. Eventually he switched back to the iPhone because the Galaxy was so unreliable. After less than a year, his phone would just silently shut off a couple times throughout the day. And he's far from the only person I know who's had Android reliability problems. My old HTC Incredible would stop responding to input a couple times a week until I yanked the battery.

All that said, I'm sticking with Android because I have a high tolerance for pain. iDevices may no longer be useful, but at least they work.

I don't understand what light colours have to do with hipsters though, most UIs tend towards lighter colours, it's the old school unix coonsoles that preferred dark.

The new GMail UI is most emphatically not good design.

This was a real concern for me. I made sure my children (19 months, 4 years old) could unlock my iPhone with iOS 7, before upgrading their iPad Mini.

Unfortunately I forgot about Spotlight Search, and the older one was complaining about it being missing after the upgrade (he knows he can find apps by typing in the first letter).

I showed him how to activate it but I can imagine many people never (re)discovering the feature, and possibly limiting the number of apps they install because they can't search for them easily.

I can't imagine wanting to be the teacher or classmate of said 11 year old if he/she is always "bitching" about stuff. And if that behavior continues into adulthood, I can't imagine being the boss or coworker of him/her. Such negative social qualities might be detrimental to his/her professional success and social well-being.

I wouldn't be able to say for certain until I have kids, but it might be beneficial to teach your 11 year old how to tactfully and constructively discuss the negative aspects of something rather than just "bitching" about it.

Having been an initial iPhone Luddite, I remember the posts I'd read discussing the detractors of various models. The criticism of this update, and a number of others since Jobs died, have an incredibly similar tenor.

What I find inspirational is that by force of personality alone, Steve Jobs convinced so many customers that the products' let-downs were much less meaningful than those customers and proponents would have normally felt.

That is a truly remarkable skill.

IOS now looks like it was slapped together in a hurry. I can't believe that this is the culmination of Jonny Ive's vision. He can do better. He has done better.

http://www.ibtimes.com/steve-jobs-dies-leaves-plans-4-years-...

http://www.forevermac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/picture...

Why is there a need to keep innovating on the UI for sending and receiving email? Why isn't this a solved problem? Why can't the innovators move on to some new problem whose solution would create much more value?

Unfortunately I don't see an easy answer to this.

I understand that this is the current goal of the companies you named, but, to put it bluntly, why should I care? My goal is to not have to deal with change just for the sake of change, or because some company wants to keep capturing new users. (Which is why, as I've said in other posts in this thread, I don't use GMail, don't use MS or Apple products, don't keep upgrading my Linux desktop just because somebody invented a new UI, etc.)

Also, "keep getting new users" isn't a sustainable goal anyway. Facebook already has more than a billion users; they don't have too much further to go before everyone that has Internet access at all (apart from a few outliers like me) will have a Facebook account. What do they do then?

We could also just keep using lynx for web browsing. It worked fine.

I'll gladly admit that having a browser that does graphics is a huge improvement over a browser that only displays text, like lynx. But browsers have been supporting graphics since what, 1995? Earlier?

Since graphical browsers appeared, IMO, there has been exactly one UI innovation in browsers that was worth the effort to re-learn things: the Chrome UI, that basically got rid of the UI except for the address/search bar and the browser window itself. I'm fine with having to re-learn where all the menu options are if I need them, in exchange for that simplification. But that happened in what, 2008?

Of course there have been plenty of changes behind the scenes in browsers, such as security fixes, support for HTML 5 and updates to Javascript, etc. None of those affect the UI, and I'm not talking about those kinds of changes. I'm talking specifically about changes to the UI that force people to re-learn things for no good reason.

How you do it? I feel like typing gmail in chrome versus the url is less error prone and is more easy.

I can understand. My mother is her 60s and is now a Ubuntu user, has broadband, uses Skype & Gmail.

It took her a long time to get used to it. It is funny she has never used Microsoft or Apple or other computer before on a long term level. She thought, Windows for example was a very user "unfriendly".

But back to the complexity. I remember when she was learning it was very frustrating both for her and me. I think it is easy, and she didn't. Now the other day there was a post on HN about how to start a Boeing airliner. I at that moment understood what it is like being faced with a new interface with new rules and paradigms. If I had start a commercial aircraft I would start crying too probably.

Then of course every time Google or Ubuntu messes with their interface, it causes her and me (having to re-teach her) considerable stress.

Sometimes I think corporations go through re-design just because they can. Like there is an timer set to go off every 6 months and designers, new bosses, CEOs all see it go ding and say "aha, let's redesign it". Sometimes it doesn't make it better, it just makes it different even if it was already pretty good.

Reminds me of when I was showing my mom how to use a new piece of software and she opened a notebook and wrote it down step by step. That's how she starts her airliners. Now if only documentation was not considered an afterthought these days.

Yeah, the send button used to be in a horrible place in Gmail. Nowhere close to the editor, and oddly detached from the compose area. I always had trouble finding it.

Thankfully they fixed it in the UI update the author's complaining about. Now it's where I'd expect it to be...attached to the email composer.

It's the reason Apple have done so well - they didn't invent anything new which hadn't already been done, they just added better UI that appealed to the masses.

I have to say, I agree with most of what is written in that blog, I've gotten used to some of the changes now but still a lot of the time keep looking around to see where the hell something has gone (the attach files expands out to reveal more options, why the hell is add URL link under attach options?)

Alas, as a keen WebApp dev myself, I have found myself having to Google for how to do tasks I once did easily. Such searches eventually uncover the highly counter intuitive means to do the previously simple thing (via someone's blog post), or reveal that the feature has been dropped from the new and improved version. Such issues are not a subjective matter of color choice or icon design, but the reduction of functionality and confounding of user interaction.

Largely Google wins the efforts to improve their products, but I've seen a half dozen such failings in the last year that I am surprised managed to ship. Hopefully their batting average continues to improve.

I know it's not perfect, but little ever is.

Installing a mail client, debugging weird IMAP/POP/SMTP issues that come up from time-to-time - not fun.

My mom already knows (for some definition of 'knows') how to use a web browser to view web pages. Using it for email is much easier.

Also, it's easy for me to login into her account and see what happened when she said her mail didn't go through or whatever.

And of course, because she didn't have a hotmail account, her contacts were stored locally, so there was no backup.

My mother is smart enough to know not to randomly sign up to things but this means she now has to try and navigate the 'advanced' path through a UI.

(ps: I had the same problem)

https://plus.google.com/106938703242944328523/posts/AU5F7oeV...

I have added red marks to the screenshot, so it's bit easier to find those buttons.

Not that I'm saying that it's OK for them to ignore the problem, but the issue you're seeing is not experienced by almost all users.