In the day's when Google just offered search, the elegance of the user interface stood in stark contrast to the offerings of Yahoo and others (which were busy relegating search to the same status as stock reports and horoscopes).
Google was a breath of fresh air and the company deserved to get ahead, but is it only me that's getting increasingly frustrated with the usability of their products?
iGoogle (Google personalised version of Google search) is a particular source of frustration. For example we use Google Analytics to track activity on Futurate's website but I can find no way to add a link to our Analytics account from the iGoogle home page. 'Add a tab' allows me to create a category for content that is then preselected by Google, 'Add stuff' allows me to add a 'gadget' (a feed or web app) while 'more' is a list of links to other Google offerings and Analytics is missing for some reason.
Add to this the fact that Google don't offer new users of iGoogle much in the way of support or help, or even a clear indication of what iGoogle does and it's easy to get confused (or is it just me?).
In my view the developers of iGoogle seem to have assumed that the role and use of iGoogle is obvious, but I don't think it is (adding a tab called 'Google' is perhaps the most useful approach to getting up to speed if you are a user of gmail, google docs or similar but there is still nothing from Google Analytics).
Whenever I use iGoogle I find myself asking questions like 'I want to move a tab, can I just drag it' (not possible), or what happens if I add a tab and uncheck 'automatically add stuff based on tab name'. I spend most of my time experimenting with iGoogle rather than getting it to work for me, which is an interesting puzzle (and material for this post) but not much more.....
If you've got a view I'd love to hear it!
Thursday, 24 January 2008
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2 comments:
I'm all up for challenging assumptions - and the assumption that Google is the usability god of the internet is definitely a biggy. But in this case, I can't help but wonder if it is just you!
1. Go to igoogle
2. Click on 'add stuff'
3. Search for analytics
4. Pick the one you want
I checked the dates too, it was around back in January. I'm a self-proclaimed geek but I wouldn't class this as poor usability.
P.S. Sorry, I can't help myself - "Achilles' heel". Ok, carry on.
I think the problem is that the majority of Google's services seem to be linked from the iGoogle home page, but Analytics isn't for some reason. You have to search for it, and I associated 'Add Stuff' with an unending stream of Horoscope plug-ins. The interface is very inconsistent and as a user of that interface I feel completely unsupported.
I mean, if I look at iGoogle now I have a tab called Home and a tab called Google. Why? What's the distinction between the cluster of functionality that is associated with these tabs?
It reminds me of those websites that you used to see in 1999 that demanded that the user spend most of their time trying to work out what bits of the screen had functionality associated with them. I don't have that kind of time!
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