Google+ for iPhone

I tend to do all of my social networking through my iPhone and iPad. The desktop/laptop experience feels far too bulky for Twitter, Facebook, and now Google+. So I was really looking forward to the Google+ iPhone app.

Either I’m using Google+ wrong, or Google designed a bad app. Luckily, I think it can be easily fixed.

Crossing the Streams

I dig the Circles concept. It’s like Twitter and Facebook in one place. I can keep a Following list (a la Twitter) and a Friends list (a la Facebook), and I can view posts from each group separately. Great.

I expected circles—specifically their individual streams—to be a big deal in terms of mobile, but the UI surrounding them on the iPhone is goofy. The full-blown stream is separated out into its own section of the app. However, on the Web, the stream is linked to your circles (at least, it’s visually linked by proximity).

If you tap Stream on the iPhone, you get the full-blown stream with no way to narrow it to a specific circle. On the Web, if you click Stream, your circles are close by, and you can easily click one to narrow your perspective.

If I want to view the stream for a specific circle on the iPhone—say, my Following circle—here’s the path:

Yikes.

The streams are no longer adjacent, which is incongruous with the mental model that was established by the Web version of Google+. Thus, the iPhone app breaks the Don’t Make Me Think principle by forcing you to focus on the transition from the full stream to a focused stream.

Fixing It

I think Tapbots nailed the proper Google+ interface when they developed Tweetbot. When you want to switch from viewing your Twitter stream to a list of users, you tap the title in the nav bar and select a list. The stream reappears with tweets from people in the selected list.

I propose making circles a subset of the stream. Here’s the interaction:

  1. Tap Stream.
  2. Tap the title in the nav bar at the top of the screen.
  3. Select a circle to narrow the stream.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty mock-up of the path:

The streams are now adjacent (just like on the Web), and one entire step is removed from the process. The user’s cognitive load is lessened, and the developers will get to delete some code (and developers love to delete code).

Other views can be simplified. The Circles area of the app can now focus solely on organizing friends into groups, so any views or code relating to displaying streams can now be removed from that area.

Maybe I’m Weird

It’s possible that I’m an edge case. But if other people are using Google+ the way I am, I think these UI tweaks could go a long way toward making the iPhone app more useful.

Given the structure and popularity of Facebook’s app (which Google clearly cribbed from) and the success of Twitter for iPhone, I’m pretty certain that the stream is what people want on their mobile device. Making it easier for them to get to it and manipulate it is therefore paramount.

6 Notes/ Hide

  1. renaissancenerd posted this

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