The Google Reader Redesign
Google has rolled out a new design to Google Reader. Previously announced, this release primarily includes a new design and Google+ integration.
My friends and family know that I love Google Reader. Over the years I have curated my RSS feeds carefully into a heirarchy that I like. It's a bit messy but it works for me. I have broken my feeds into folders for the startups, entrepreneurs, VCs, etc. that I like to keep daily tabs on.
The general breakdown is like so:
- Startups
- Entrepreneurs
- Big Tech Companies
- Tech News (Hacker News, Techmeme, PE Hub, etc.)
- Venture Capitalists (Fred Wilson, Ben Horowitz, Mark Suster, etc.)
- Design
- Advertising
- Sales
- Sports
- Financial news
- Investing/Traders
Essentially I can glance at any folder and get a good snapshot of all the blogs and news that I care about and follow on a regular basis.
A lot of my reading typically takes place within Google Reader itself. Yes, I'll occasionally click through to look at and engage in the comments or explore other articles. But I like having all of them in one place for quick reading and scanning. Since so much of my reading is done within Google Reader, this redesign was pretty impactful to me. And after playing around with it for a few days, I have to say that I'm dissapointed.
I didn't use the sharing features within Reader all that much (only to push to Twitter really) so I am pretty apathetic to the Google+ integrations. Do I think I'll share more of what I'm reading on Google+ now because of it? Not really. But perhaps it will grow on me.
My beef is mainly in the visual and UI changes. Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for visual consistency. And I have been really impressed with Google's new design across all of their products, including the new Gmail design.
However, my sentiments on the Reader redesign echo the feelings of Brian Shih, formerly a project manager for Google Reader. Here's what he had to say on the redesign:
In the name of visual consistency, Google has updated the visual style to match Gmail, Calendar and Docs. I have nothing against visual consistency (and in fact, this something that Google should be doing), but it's as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something.
When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer "stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading"? Congrats, here's your prize:
Shih also does a comparison of old Reader vs. new Reader so we can see the difference side-by-side down to the first subscription (click to enlarge):
As you can see, there is a lot of more room for text and reading in the old design. On laptops and small screens every pixel is important so this space really matters.
Another more obvious change is the full grey-ing out of Reader. There are now no blue links within titles or posts which leaves a pretty bland, boring reading experience.
Most importanly, my favorite feature -- the reading pane -- is now gone. It allowed you to hide the subscriptions panel to let you have the full screen for reading. I loved it.
I am all for the use white space and a clean design. But Reader is a product built to read and read quickly. The old UI wasn't perfect, but it was designed for the primary use case of reading. I hope Google takes more note of this in their next iteration.
Update: I just came across a post by Kevin Fox, a former UX design lead on Google Reader, who has offered his services to restore and enhance Reader while keeping in line with Google's new visual standards. I hope they take him up on it.
