I was really surprised when I saw this design for a new Google communications platform called Wave. Click here to see the prototype. It is a mash up of mail; messaging; search; social networking; Twitter; dashboard; and Flickr. You name it - it is here! And now on sale, for free! 
Google won in a broadband Web 2.0 world because its design was simple, elegant and non intrusive. It did no evil.
I always commented that in irony of ironies - in a broadband rich media world - a dial-up 2400 baud design won out! Grey. Blue. Light. Fast. No photos. No load time.
While Google was going back in time and winning for the present, many of us were experimenting and designing integrated platforms; mixing photos and video and messaging; and social networking and email.
At AOL, we launched AIM Mail off of AIM. We launched AIM Pages. We built in a video player into AIM. We built in telephony via VoIP too. We had AOL for Broadband designs - many of which looked like this design - a communications dashboard in effect. I added a search box into AIM in 1997. I thought putting search up on the desktop was a huge idea. Why fire up a browser and then go to the web? For whatever reason, consumers didn’t click onto an integrated messaging AND search function. That one shocked me. It made so much sense, didn’t it? AIM was looked at as a messaging function. Search was all about finding info. Consumers didn’t want to mix metaphors even if it was really convenient.
There were many integrated designs and platforms – colorful and integrated - but at the end of the day, they were complex and messy. Consumers couldn’t figure it out. Consumers liked to compartmentalize, in most cases: work life; fun life; desktop; phone; etc.
What I have learned is this: Email is a utility. Messaging is a utility. They are must have apps. Design must be simple, easy to use and fast. Killing spam is more important than adding photos. Integrating an address book is more important than social networking. Less is more in communications.
For whatever reason muscle memory is hard to overcome. Trillions of emails have been sent and received. Trillions and trillions of instant messages have been transmitted changing the way people communicate is very hard to overcome. The reason people complain about the new Facebook design is because it added complexity and newness. Twitter is winning because it is short, easy and simple.
Count me a skeptic that this design wins out and that people will ditch what they know for this new dashboard metaphor. Time will tell. I hope I am not just getting old and whiney about innovation but I don’t think this Wave will be a tsunami of success.
I don’t think you’re getting old and whiney. As a designer, I think that prototype is hideous. Too much information, too much to look at and process, it hurts the eyes.
I’m not looking for integration on that level. I’m happy to have email here, Twitter there, web and such over on the other side of the room. Less confusion, less chance of posting the wrong thing in the wrong place, or sharing the wrong idea with the wrong group of people.
I also think part of the whole Facebook issue isn’t just that they added complexity, it’s that they remade their main pages into a psuedo-Twitter without understanding what it is that makes Twitter appealing. We don’t go to Facebook to have conversations, we go there to check in. I visit maybe once a day. Twitter is like a continuous conversation, I check it on my phone, I check several times a day at home, it’s active where Facebook is passive. Changing over to a Twitter-style format didn’t change that basic fact.
Great post Ted.
This is outstanding, powerful and powerfully detailed. This is a “read three timer” for me Got my headset breaks covered “Bambino,” thank you