Friday, July 1, 2011

I Want My Old Google Calendar Back!

My wife woke up this morning to discover that her Google Calendar had been transformed via Google's effort to evolve the Google design and experience.  I fail to see how this effort is a good idea.  The result is that my wife can see fewer events on her "Month" calendar (which is the primary view she uses).  She used to be able to see six events per day.  Now she can see four and she has to click the "more" link to see all events on a day with 5 or 6 events.  It seems that this is due to wasted space.  There is more padding/spacing around everything, including day-of-the-week names and date numbers.  What's the point of spreading-out everything in the display if it distances you from useful information without improving usability?  I'm at a loss.  Fortunately, it's easy to revert to the old UI---click the gear icon in the upper-right-hand-corner, then select "Use the classic look".

Disclosure: I joined Google via the ITA Software acquisition and have no involvement in the above-discussed UI redesign.

Update 7/4/11: Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks the Google Calendar redesign is a bad idea.

1 comment:

  1. I can no longer add into my calendar or edit information that has been transferred from an email. I think google is doing a "microsoft" by fixing something that wasn't broken only to end up broken - solely disappointed and now searching for a new calendar option.

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