As you all know, google put a small Google talk box on the gmail page. Nice touch I thought. So now when I check mail, I can also see people online.
Now the problem is when you're logged on to the desktop client too. Then a window pops up in gmail as well as gtalk, but if your friend is using the desktop client and so are you, then only the first message comes up in the Gmail client.
If you thought that was it, I'm just getting started :).
If you start talking to a friend on the Gmail client, then later move to the desktop client, you can't see you're recent messages. And by chance if you're friend is using the Gmail client, all messages keep appearing there. Oh boy!!
And now for the killer. If you're using just the gmail client, you start talking to a friend, but managing multiple chats inside the gmail client is a pain. Imagine having multiple windows as below clouding the bottom part of your Gmail page.
The guys at Google thought of that, and they created this nifty feature of allowing you to pop out a chat window.
So you might have multiple chat windows open at any point of time. But once in a while, you might refresh the gmail page to see if you have any new mail. Or God forbid you close the browser. And poof!, all the chat windows you popped out are gone!!!
Google though gives you this very handy message below!
P.S. I thought I wouldn't post screenshots for the rest of the issues so as not to take the focus away from this gem :).
Friday, September 28, 2007
Google Talk's Schizophrenia Problem
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13 comments:
Chat within an email app was a killer idea, but the implementation surely fell short. Something very ungooglish I would say!
Come on guys give them a break.
i think most of your problems will be solved if you use one app at a time. every app needs some amount of human intelligence to be used to work well. Otherwise a user and a qa tester has no difference.
when i have the desktop client online on my machine i would logoff from my gmail client and vice versa. y would i ever think of logging on to the same place using two apps?
the gmail client is designed as a a way to chat when there is no way you can use the desktop app. like my parents have windows 98 machine and there is no way i can use a gtalk desktop app. thats when i login to gmail app. i face no problems then. Thats the meaningful use case.
>> But once in a while, you might refresh the gmail page to see if you have any new mail. Or God forbid And poof!, all the chat windows you popped out are gone!!!
I think you know that you dont have to refresh the page to see if you have recieved a new mail in gmail. It shows you automatically (ajaxically) if you have got mail.
You refreshing the page is equal to you logging in and out of the desktop client.
All said i would also like to add that if google wants to prevent such mishaps they shouldnt allow two apps to be used the same time. They should always force logout the first one whenever the user logs in from another location. Msn does that. Havent tried on yahoo.
totally agree with Kiran.
another irritating feature is when I have to disable signing into messenger on gmail client as soon as I log in. I have to scroll all the way down to do that.
AND, the entire page reloads!
whatever happened to all the Ajax google was talking about? there could have been a simple cancel button next to the chat window on gmail that cancels only the signing in.
@ Umesh
I have a problem with the first line of your comment :) >>come on guys give them a break<<. Ever heard "the user is always right"?.
The fact is there is a more elegant way to handle this. And don't expect the user to remember the fact that he's got gmail open in one of the many tabs in his browser.
And on many occasions, I have refreshed the page and found new mail. Reason: Gtalk alerts me on new mail before the Gmail window "ajaxically" refreshes.
If it was designed so that it is for when you can't use gtalk, then it should detect the OS and not load it. Or detect the fact that you are already logged in on Gtalk and redirect all chat messages there.
NO...we won't give them a break :). Amen!
@kiran
> Ever heard "the user is always right"?.
Yes i have and i believe in it. But lets be meanigful users. What i mean by this is when you said
"i started of the chat on gmail client and then moved on to gtalk"
Why would any one do that when an easier option is available to keep the gmail client offline when you have a desktop version running. you know that you can turn your gmail talk client off right?
> If it was designed so that it is for when you can't use gtalk, then it should detect the OS and not load it.
When i said that what i meant is of a valid use case. not something which has to be forced by the software. i said gmail app is something which the user is expected to use when the desktop version is not available in the machine (not installed or not installable coz of a OS limitation).
i agree that it should at the user's descretion. But i dont agree the user using two versions at the same time. Its like you logging on to yahoo messenger/msn messenger on two different machines at the same time. Why would you do that?
>Or detect the fact that you are already logged in on Gtalk and redirect all chat messages there.
yes. i agree to this and i have mentioned it too. as the usage should be at the user's descretion, it should allow the user to login to the gmail client, even when he is logged on to the desktop client. but what should happen is as soon as he gets on to the gmail client the desktop client should go offline. ie at one point of time it should not allow two instances of gtalk to be online. google has missed out on this which has triggered off all your problems.
> And on many occasions, I have refreshed the page and found new mail. Reason: Gtalk alerts me on new mail before the Gmail window "ajaxically" refreshes
lets accept the fact that a web app cant work exactly like a desktop client. What you said is right. Desktop client alerts you when you get mail but the gmail inbox pulls data from the server at regular intervals. So it might take a minute or so for it show you in the inbox. Now as u said i can refresh the inbox to see the email and not choose to wait till gmail shows it to me at its next pull.
But as a meaningful user lets understand the web app limitation and wait till gmail shows the mail to me only when we r logged into the gmail talk client. user should know the limitation ofcourse and i think google is doing it by giving the alert popup. A good human copy written message will work wonders in this case.
and again the case of you knowing that you have got a mail even before gmail showing it scenario doesnt occur in this case. Coz as i said earlier it should not allow you to use two clients at the same time.
> NO...we won't give them a break :). Amen!
Ok ok dont. its your wish. :-) may be i shouldnt have said that. I'm sorry.
There is a root issue which we need to identify before discussing about the issues which got triggered off coz of that. Here the root cause of all the problems is google allowing two or more instances (there is orkut, the flash version and iggogle version) of google talk to be online at the same time.
i had also talked about a similar root cause of problems previously in the Editing a post on blogger post. The root of all those issues was that blogger doesnt remember the user's login the next time he comes in. Coz of that the edit link is invisible most of the time and the user misses it.
@ umesh
yes, i agree, they shouldn't allow a user to log on to both of them at the same time...
would that mean that just coz i'm logged into gtalk, i don't get to see who is online when i get into gmail?
i don't think that will solve the problem..and the simple thing to do is manage it somehow...and i'm sure there should be technically feasible elegant solution to the whole thing..its just that nobody thought about it...
and if you really think about it, all bad user experiences come from those designing the software not thinking about the user enough...don't you agree?
@kiran
> would that mean that just coz i'm logged into gtalk, i don't get to see who is online when i get into gmail?
Very good point. But how tough or a problem is that for the user? the desktop app is right next to him to figure out who is online. Why is that only when he is in gmail he wants to know who is online? Is that a big deal. Please dont think i'm snubbing you. I'm just being critical here for the new feature.
But considering your point, that if the user considers it important to see who is online when he is on gmail...
What if the gmail app senses if you are already logged on to the dekstop app and if so opens the desktop app chat window instead of the web window. The web window only opens if you are not logged on to the desktop app.
Will that work? Technically its possible. Yahoo has something similar. Whenever you see a yahoo user online, clicking on the online icon opens the yahoo messenger desktop app window.
> and i'm sure there should be technically feasible elegant solution to the whole thing..its just that nobody thought about it...
So lets thik about it and bring up solutions.
> all bad user experiences come from those designing the software not thinking about the user enough...don't you agree?
I do agree :-) i have no other go as i'm a product user experience designer myself :-). And i agree that its a bad user experience when allowed to use both apps at the same time. Thats where we have to hit hard. If we try to solve the upper layer of problems, one thing will only lead to another.
i also believe that every single feature in a product should have extremly strong use cases by a considerable percentage of users.
There is one more problem in addition to the ones stated above.
Follow the steps listed below:
1. Open two chat windows in Gtalk and then minimize both of them.
2. Minimize the main Gtalk application to the system tray by clicking on the cancel button.
3. Now to talk to one more user, restore the Gtalk application which is minimized on the system tray.
4. All the minimized chat windows will be automatically restored as soon as you restore the gtalk application.
You guys have any idea for this behavior???
@Umesh
>Why is that only when he is in gmail he wants to know who is online?<
I would want to know if I receive a mail and then would like to know if that person is online so I can chat instead of sending an email. The "reply by chat" feature in Gmail I think is cool.
>Yahoo has something similar. Whenever you see a yahoo user online, clicking on the online icon opens the yahoo messenger desktop app window.<
I think that would work.
>i also believe that every single feature in a product should have extremly strong use cases by a considerable percentage of users.<
I agree to an extent, but kind of goes against the thinking these days. Nowadays, the idea is to put features out there and get user feedback to enhance it. So get the bare-bones out first, and enhance as you get user feedback. Of course this works only for web apps, not desktop ones. Google does that to a great extent, but the problem in my post has been there for quite some time.
@Upma
Yep. I've noticed this and its annoying. And sometimes it opens them up with the text area minimized and all the chat windows attached by some invisible glue. Quite a pain.
>I would want to know if I receive a mail and then would like to know if that person is online so I can chat instead of sending an email. The "reply by chat" feature in Gmail I think is cool.
I agree. However the reply to chat link can open my desktop app window. It need not be the web version. Orkut does that too.
> Nowadays, the idea is to put features out there and get user feedback to enhance it.
I agree to that too. But that doesnt mean it can be a feature which has no many takers. A new feature (it can be a brand new concept) should be compelling enough to be extremely useful for a considerable amount of users. This is what i meant by a strong use case.
No feature is completely useless. But giving a product feature that's used less than one percent of the time parity with the most used one is a needless distraction for users.
@upma: You are right. I would like to tell Gtalk to do only stuff which i asked it to do :-) Nothing more than that. This kind of behaviour is called over smartness. :-)
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