David Coffey - Web Designer & Developer

Google Wave: initial reaction

Posted by David on 20 November 2009 | 82 Comments

Tags: Google, Google Wave, web

Last weekend I was excited to get an invite to try the early preview of Google's new and highly anticipated product: Google Wave.
My initial reaction: "meh".

If google Wave is to be the game changer that its creators are hoping it will be, they are going to need to overcome a few big hurdles in the usability department.

First off: It's slow.
The click response time is pretty bad, especially when I was using the Playback feature. I don't know if this is a back-end problem or a front-end Javascript related issue, but it is bad. I can't go as far to say that it makes it unusable, but it would get really irritating if I was using this thing all day. It makes the application feel really clunky and unfriendly. I was using it on Firefox 3.5.3, it was slightly faster in Google Chrome, but not up to a satisfactory level. The Wave team seriously needs to figure out what's going on here and find a solution, because this issue alone in my opinion would be a huge barrier to adoption.

Second: the user interface design could be more intuitive.
I felt like I was 10 years old again exploring my Dad's Macintosh Performa 600 for the first time, randomly clicking stuff and seeing what it does. The user interface is unlike any other web application I have used. I didn't even know where to start. This is probably due to the nature of this application, being that it is unlike anything ever created. That being said, I think the team could do a better job giving clues as to what to do next, and little hints here and there about new and different features. No doubt this could be overcome with more time using the application, but I think they could make the learning curve a little less steep.
One little improvement they could make would be to have the inbox show the latest activity from the wave rather than the beginning of it, like Gmail shows you a snippit of your message, Wave does this also, but the text should update when there is new activity on the wave.

I could see myself using Google Wave as a replacement to email, but instant chat is another story. Trying to have a conversation with someone in the style of IM is really awkward. Obviously they want this to be your one-stop-shop for all your communication needs, which is why they went to great lengths to develop the letter-by letter messaging. The problem is they have their messages split up into little boxes, when you are done with a thought or message, you click "Done". To start a new thought you click below any of the previous messages to create a new message box. This is fine for longer thoughts when you aren't looking for an instant response, but when you are chatting with someone, you are either constantly clicking "Done" then clicking to open a new box, or both of you are amassing all their chats into their own respective box, but then you can't tell who said what when.

That being said, it does look promising. I LOOOVE the letter-by-letter transmission. Re-inventing email was something that needed to happen sooner or later, but I think the Wave folks need to do some creative problem solving, or this thing is going to be a huge flop.