A Full Breakdown of why Google+ gets a C- in User Experience
New Google+ announced in last week’s Google I/O
Last week, Google hosted their annual developer’s conference Google I/O, announcing some exciting new products and releases that will likely change the world in the few years to come.
And of course, one of the products that were heavily discussed about was Google+.
Google+ is like the Bing for Microsoft
It’s quite obvious Google has been pouring a ton of resources into trying to make Google+ successful. However, like many “social” projects, it is a bit underwhelming.
During the conference, many attendees focused on the question, “How does Google envision USERS to see Google+?” Google responded that Google+ is very useful as a social layer on top of all their existing products, but still left out the big question, “Why should users fall in love with Google+?” Even the new release didn’t address that question properly.
It’s odd that with so many intimidatingly smart people working on it, it still isn’t that great of a product (distribution is great by the way. That’s why there are so many users, but it’s not the merit of the product itself). I therefore decided to put together a slide deck to explain why the smart talent may be a cause of the problem, some design flaws relating to usability and user experience, as well as a modified focus. The slide deck is titled, “Why Google+ Sucks and What to do about it.”
Key Lesson: Making Mainstream Users Feel Smart
The focus on the slide deck is to walk through the frustrations a mainstream user would have while using the Google+ product, which leads to the users “feeling dumb.” It points out in detail all the design flaws within the product that makes users grab their hair with frustration.
The slide deck is 129 slides, but don’t let that intimate you, as most slides only have one sentence in them and it reads quickly and I’ve heard it brings out quite a few laughs. Enjoy.
