The problem isn't that it's a joke. The problem is that Google didn't do any kind of UX thinking behind the change. (It doesn't matter whether the change is serious or a joke, you can't just ignore the user experience.)<p>The new button performed a destructive action (because it blocked the recipient from responding to the email thread) without any kind of confirmation. Additionally, it was placed where it was likely to be hit by accident. (Apparently where the "Send & Archive" button used to be, although I don't have that on my Gmail theme.)<p>In short, they didn't <i>test</i> the damned thing. Even a half-hour of user-testing would have shown how easily the button was pressed by accident, and how devastating an accidental press was.<p>And again: it doesn't matter if the change is a joke or not, you <i>don't</i> push up a change unless you've done some basic UX work on it.
I think the bigger lesson is...don't mess with interfaces that a billion users have gotten accustomed to. Think of the massive outcry that happens on a redesign...With so many users, even a rarely used button like Send + Archive, is going to be used in thousands of ways that you do not anticipate. And I'm guessing a fairly innocuous feature change did not go through many levels of QA testing before they rolled it out on April 1
Hmm. Laughter doesn't scale when you're not funny. Plenty of viral YouTube videos have shown that it sure as heck can scale.<p>The problem with this button is fairly obvious in hindsight. Google injected humor into many people's business and personal worlds where it wasn't wanted or expected.<p>This article is yet another apologist for what is clearly a lack of foresight by Google.<p>By the way, I notice society explaining away a lot of behavior by others lately. People seem afraid to criticize products and other people these days.<p>Let's call this what it is: a massive mistake. Google corrected it as soon as they realized it and apologized. We can move on.
I've been reading <i>Design for Real Life</i> (<a href="https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life" rel="nofollow">https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life</a>), and its introduction is a fairly similar mirror of this kind of snafu -- using Facebook's "Your Year in Moments" feature as a stand-in.<p>When Facebook first launched it, they positioned it as a "look at all the awesome things that happened this year!" sort of feature, with lots of smiling faces and positive, upbeat language. However, the reality often didn't match up -- Facebook would add sad or otherwise unideal photos/statuses to the collage, such as houses burning down, depictions of illness, etc. etc. Lots of users complained, and as a result they shifted the tone of the feature to be more neutral. ("We thought you might like to take a look back at the past year")<p>Put another way: edge cases (or as the book refers to them, <i>stress cases</i>) exist not just in code paths but in your user's expectations and emotions. Just as a good architecture can handle these appropriately, a good design and UX accounts for the entire spectrum of users.
Laughter is an all clear signal indicating that something looks weird but is actually harmless. If someone doesn't think you're funny, maybe they don't trust you enough to think you're harmless.<p>Strangers are always going to require more convincing than friends.
It is <i>entirely</i> possible to be comedic in tech. But the risks outweigh the benefits, unless you have a strong comedic background and a <i>very</i> strong understanding of your audience and context.<p>"My friends laughed at it!" is a common standard for tech humor nowadays. It's highly misleading especially if you are a part of the echo chamber.
Laughter definitely scales, it's just not infinitely scalable..<p>The Onion scales. It doesn't scale past the Generation X audience, but oh, it scales.
A joke should be simple, globally understandable – and if it isn’t understandable, shouldn’t be too annoying – and it should never be destructive.<p>Changing GMail to render (but not send!) all emails in Comic Sans would be such a change. (With a notification at top to turn it off)<p>Offering "Clippy" now also in Hotmail would be such a change. (with the ability to hide it)<p>Adding a "Send (and attach a gif that makes me seem like an idiot, and nuke the conversation)" button where a normal send button used to be is not.<p>A good joke is hard, and we all have made jokes that backfired before. But for a corporation, such as Google, in a huge project of theirs, they should try to double and triple check each joke for damage it might do.
Was this Gail Harrison's doing?[1] She's Illumination Entertainment's head of marketing and branding. She would have had to sign off on this for Google to use a Minions™ character.<p>Gail is a major figure in the branding industry. She was behind the branding of The Simpsons characters. She managed the Disney Princesses branding. Before her work, there were princesses in Disney films, but they hadn't been harnessed into a supergroup merchandising team, pulling over $3 billion a year in tie-in sales.<p>"Mic drop" had to have her approval.<p>[1] <a href="http://variety.com/2016/film/news/illumination-gail-harrison-marketing-branding-president-1201725127/" rel="nofollow">http://variety.com/2016/film/news/illumination-gail-harrison...</a>
If you're interesting in this garbage fire, I recommend reading Andy Baio's whole Twitter thread: <a href="https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715747304444002304" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715747304444002304</a>
A typical Google April 1st joke is a product announcement (Google Japan hit the front page with theirs earlier) but this one is the opportunity for users to prank other users (and easily doing it by mistake)<p>Since users are quite good at doing everything you don't want them to do, this create great opportunities for mistakes and abuse.
Laughter definitely scales. I mean, how many other tech companies did April Fools Day jokes yesterday? Tons of them, yet it's mostly Google that's getting the criticism for messing up here.<p>Google's problem was this joke was forced on people, even when they weren't in a mood to make any jokes. If it was an optional button to the right, or activated by some other means that wasn't 'click a button that many people used, or sometimes have it wotk automatically', then people wouldn't be complaining about it.
For me, the best April Fools’ joke was when GitHub added SVN support[1]. It was funny, ironic, useful, and best of all, real. I always think of it as the April Fools’ joke that keeps on giving.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support</a>
Does anybody know of a book containing a good analysis of humor? I'm wondering if there is some structure to be found in the things we find funny.
Everyone should just stop this shit. I too enjoyed these things years ago, but not anymore. There are too many now, but it also seems a bit sneakier or more malicious now than it used to, the Gmail thing is a great example. And it just seems de rigeur rather than fun or funny.
>and, sometimes, if you’re a woman, by a miscellany of invasive threats<p>What the heck? I'm not a woman, so apparently no one can threaten me on the internet?<p>Sure women probably receive far more internet threats, but we should use language to reflect <i>that</i>, rather than outright lying and trivializing all the instances where men were threatened.
I'd say the popularity of sitcoms (in the US at least) proves that comedy scales pretty well as long as you don't stray from the formula. (Bump, set, spike!)
Bad move on Google's part. But I would think by now people would be used to seeing media being inserted into a free service. If you want to get rid of the ads, get a paid service.