Ya know
@Iuke , while I might find your thinking flawed, I definitely respect your opinion. I look at all these tech reviews and opinions much like I do movie reviews and opinions. Once a movie is made and in theaters, everyone has an opinion of who should've played what characters and how the story should've been told. Some people will watch and enjoy the movie, others will not. That's okay to me.
Hey thanks for the reply!
Android is like that, to me. Every year, a new addition to the series every year. This year, they've taken Android in a new direction. Some people will like this installment, as I do, other people will not. Regardless of our opinions, however, Google knows where they want to go with things and have plenty of data to support that.
This isn't a competition, and I don't think it adds much to the conversation to be honest. You like Android, I like Android, we all like Android
I've described my history with Google's devices and contribute to the Android issue tracker. There aren't two classes of users and opinions here based on who likes Android more.
As an example, YOU say
But the article clearly reads
"As for the app drawer essentially being a two-staged release that first shows a row of suggested apps followed by the rest of the apps, EK says it was a very deliberate choice based on user feedback. The numbers showed that 60% of the time when people swiped up from the bottom to display the app drawer, they took one of the suggested apps at the top."
Now considering you're using the data set of 1 person (yourself), and Google is using a data set, let's just say much larger than that, you'll have to forgive me for considering their opinion of what's the proper approach the more "legitimate" one.
That's a fair and reasonable respond to user research (which I'm glad you've brought up). But lets look at it in the context I talked about it in: introducing this feature at the cost of the homescreen. Look at the quotes in the article you mentioned:
It actually signals a reduction in the importance of the canonical home screen, shifting to an interface that focuses on streamlining the process of switching between apps and tasks...
EK's goal for the design was very clear: "When we look at the whole operating system, being able to switch between multiple tasks or apps is the fundamental function." Following the "simplicity" mission, it was important to change the home screen experience to better focus on getting people between apps and tasks rather than sending people back to a home screen over and over again.
I'm not disputing their findings, but I am saying 60% efficacy is less good than 100%, which is what happens when the user uses the homescreen. I don't think this feature is harmful (it's 60% good!), but I do think if it signals the removal or deprecation of the homescreen, that would be disappointing. The nature of the homescreen is that it is what the user wants it to be.
But while we're quoting from the article, as a software engineer familiar with user research, let's look at their approach:
he company conducted a longitudinal study with all sorts of "normal" consumers, giving them Pixels running Android 9 to test the new gesture system. After a brief teaching session, they were left to use the phones and the provide their feedback when they returned them.
The article obviously isn't an authority and we don't have access to detail about their approach -- but this isn't how you conduct user research to test a hypothesis. You instantly pollute your findings the second you start the research session with training! Part of what's interesting about these systems is watching how discoverable they are, or intuitive without explanation. Using this kind of session as justification for "how easy people got it" is funny because it doesn't actually tell us anything.
My issue with the article wasn't what was said for the most part, but it was the disconnect between what was said and what was delivered.
The goal of the transitions you see in Pie is to give the user a logical trail to follow so you don't get lost — you'll notice that the animations emanate from the place you tapped, and show the new windows coming and going from a deliberate location to let your eye follow the process. "This is a very subtle thing, but really helps users orient themselves — 'okay I tapped on this and then this object grew and became this full-screen app' ... it always helps users get a sense of what's happening and where the system is taking them."
Which again is at odds with the various points I made about the gesture system, the pill, landscape mode (where accessing the app drawer cannot be done in one fluid motion) etc.
I don't think you have a flawed opinion (despite your jab). I think you're content with what you've purchased,
and that's okay! You're allowed to be happy with your purchase, or dance with your phone, or whatever other metaphor people choose to use to describe how they feel. I'm happy with my purchase too! And I'm happy with Android. Everything has flaws, and Android isn't immune from that. It's made by people, who make decisions with the data that's available to them at the time.
But I want it to be better, and think the product improves with more thoughts and ideas, not less. You say it yourself: a dataset of more than just one is more useful to Google, and these forums are great for contributing to that. I've attempted to provide solid examples of where I find the experience undercooked or inconsistent, not to pick holes in things that people like, but because I think the experience
is undercooked. You don't have to find these annoying, but that doesn't take away from the fact they exist. People complain when Google's apps don't follow material design principles -- personally I just want to see their OS adopt it more aggressively, because it's well thought out and consistent.
Let's hope the next iteration adopts gesture properly. As it stands, it's only gestures-for-recents.
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