So let’s say you want to know all about Google Voice, so you go look at this page. Why look, there are lists of the things it does! Let’s click one to read more about the specific features.
Oh, but you can’t, because instead of leading to a description of the feature, a YouTube video pops up.
Things like this make me wonder, “Hey, how did I get on the version of this page designed for illiterates?” Dear Google: I can read, and I find reading is a great way to get information. It’s fast. I can skip around to the things I need, instead of being stuck watching a video. I can do it at my desk without forcing everyone around me to listen to something.
Yes, written language is a powerful technology. So is video, and there are times that video is exactly the right thing. For example, if this page had a quick paragraph explaining what a feature does, and a link to show a video of how to do it, it would be great.
Instead it’s just dysfunctional. The information on the page is hidden from the user and requires extra user effort and time to get at. This is called Extremely Shitty Web Design, of the I Love My Cool Technology So I’m Using It No Matter What Syndrome variety.
On the positive side, when almost nobody can read anymore – because they’re bad it, or just lack the attention span for it (“Ugh, 140 characters? Twitter is just too much. I use Twattle instead – just one letter!”), the rest of us can use the written word as a kind of secret code!
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That’s one of the reasons I soured on Picasa and haven’t made a decision on a photo host site yet, and also why I gave up trying to learn Google’s supposedly simple drawing program when I recently wanted to sketch some simple house plans. The cutesy names (do I want “popdraw” or “plop”?) combined with having to sit through hand-holding videos had me giving up after about 15 minutes.
I hate that about Yahoo News as well. I’ll click on a story to skim it and instead a video pops up and there isn’t even a summary in text. I close the window and move on.
Well, Yahoo is pretty much synonymous with “ugly dysfunctional user interfaces that make you want to claw your eyes out.” I’m surprised that they haven’t loaded Flickr up little bubble-head people icons and forty-seven animated ads per page that trigger seizures in epileptics; that’s what everything else they own looks like.
You know, I hate the video on that Google page in part because of personal preference for written words, but apart from what I happen to like, it’s a massive usability failure. One of the advantages of text is that it’s extremely flexible. If someone is visually impaired, screen reading software will read the text for them. If someone has trouble hearing, they can just read it. If someone is not a native English speaker, they can read it slowly, whereas a normal narration speed might be too fast for them.
And it provides more information. My experience with these kinds of videos is that generally, you spend five times the effort to get half the information.
I was looking for a specific piece of information about how the call routing works. (I have a Grand Central account, and there are some serious limitations in how it works; before being acquired by Google, they told me the feature I was asking about was on the development schedule; I wondered if in the 2 years of owning it Google had perhaps implemented it.)
So I gritted my teeth and watched the video. In one minute of narration and screen shots with moronic music that sounds like my dog walking over a xylophone in the background, I got two sentences worth of information. I could have read that in a few seconds. And… my question was not answered.
So Google has made their information cumbersome for all and completely inaccessible to many users, and spent a lot of time making videos to cover material that someone could have written in an afternoon. Um, they are supposed to be one of the big innovators of the internet? You wouldn’t know it from this misbegotten page.
Fail, fail, fail on all levels.
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