You know something went wrong with your site's redesign when two people who used to work on it publish detailed, scathing assessments.Google Reader, revamped this week, falls into that category. Google gave the RSS site the new red-and-black look that's sprouting at Gmail and elsewhere and, deeper down, changed the mechanics of how people can share posts they're interested in.
Former Google Reader product manager Brian Shih took Google to task for a monochromatic user interface (UI) that squanders too much screen space on a header bar and for making it harder to share posts: "Taking the UI paradigm for Google+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows."
And former Google Reader lead designer Kevin Fox offered to come back to Google for three months to undo what he sees as the redesign's damage. He said he believed "Google Reader was held to a mandate of refreshing Google products under a common style guide" but without the staff to fine-tune the interface for Reader.
Former Google Reader product manager Brian Shih took Google to task for a monochromatic user interface (UI) that squanders too much screen space on a header bar and for making it harder to share posts: "Taking the UI paradigm for Google+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows."
And former Google Reader lead designer Kevin Fox offered to come back to Google for three months to undo what he sees as the redesign's damage. He said he believed "Google Reader was held to a mandate of refreshing Google products under a common style guide" but without the staff to fine-tune the interface for Reader.
The redesigned Google Reader (right) uses less color and more white space.
