Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Is changing the User Interface of your E-Mail website a good idea?

For all the early users of GMail, they will remember that to delete an E-Mail, there was a "Move to trash" link in the "More Actions" drop down list. Thus the process to delete the E-Mail consisted of three ticks:
  • First tick on checking the box of the E-Mail that you want to delete
  • Second tick on the "More Actions" tab
  • Third tick on the "Move to trash" option

For people who got used to it (and those people includes me), it is quite annoying when I have to delete an E-Mail now considering the fact that the option has been removed from the drop down list. Now, instead a TAB for Delete has been added to the left of the "More Actions" tab. Though if I were a new user of GMail, I would have appreciated this considering that it just takes two clicks to delete the E-Mail.

But, unfortunately, I also suffer from the age-old problem of "Old habits die hard". Instead of getting used to deleting E-Mail through a single click, it now takes me three clicks and a feeling of annoyance to delete the E-Mail. Thus the process to delete the E-Mail with the changed User Interface has now become:
  • First tick on checking the box of the E-Mail that you want to delete
  • Second tick on the "More Actions" tab
  • A fraction of a second feeling of annoyance that I once again FORGOT that the Interface has changed
  • Third tick on the "Delete" tab
Maybe after writing this particular piece, my instincts would tell me not to hate myself for forgetting that Google has changed the experience of the user and customize my actions to the two-click offer that G-Mail has provided.

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