Google's new "batshit crazy" UX→
Google recently redesigned their sites so that users can no longer click on the top-left logo to take them “home.” First of all, this is not one of those “OMG I hate the new Facebook/Twitter redesign” overreactions — this is a legit UX gripe, and I am clearly not the only one.
Dustin Curtis recently linked to a post by former Google designer Kevin Fox on why this change is ridiculous:
The new Gmail and Google+ ‘clicking on the logo does nothing’ behavior seems just absurd. […] As long as there is a property logo on your page, clicking on that logo should take you to the top level of that property, and if you’re already on the top level and it’s a dynamic site, clicking on it again should perform the same action as clicking a refresh button on the same page.
This isn’t a Google convention that will be acclimated to if changed. It’s an Internet convention that predates Google’s existence by a good many years. It’s like if Audi started shipping all 2012 vehicles with gearshifts on the driver’s left, no matter which side of the road folks drive on in your country, because it creates a more consistant experience across Audi cars or supports a future Audi strategy.
I’m an amateur web designer at best (and nowhere near as smart as most of the people who work at Google) but even I’m familiar with the clickable logo convention. Even crazier is the fact that in Google Reader and Gmail — the two Google products I use most — the orange text underneath the Google logo doen’t take you “home” either:
While you actually can use the orange text to go “home” in Gmail (it takes two clicks instead of one, though), in Reader the text isn’t even clickable. Seriously? What a waste.
As someone who often clicks on a site’s logo to go “home,” this really grinds my gears. [dcurtis via Techmeme]
