Google Wave is this amazing new way of communicating and collaborating online that Google tagged as the e-mail killer. Still on its preview stage the potential of Google Wave is huge and there are already many good examples on how you can get it to work to your advantage. Nevertheless Google could have made a much better work on some of the base features that is offering to the (lucky) users of this preview. Please keep in mind that these are feautures that do not exist at the moment this post was written and might be implemented in the near future. Preview means that the service is in a pre-Beta stage; pre-Beta stage means that anything that can go wrong will go wrong sponsored by Mr. Murphy himself.
Here is a list of 5 things that users are finding really annoying. How do I know? There is a wave just for that.
- No undo: If you are planning to write a long text inside of a wave don’t! Write it first on your word processor of choice and then paste it inside the wave. There is no undo on the Wave universe and that can be very frustrating.
- Contacts Management: As I wrote before, Google Wave was tagged as the e-mail killer by Google itself. The same Google that recently announced, in a User’s Group Meeting in London, that it would be making no integration of Gmail or any other mail client within Google Wave, something that makes perfect sense. So why oh why is it, that to manage your Google Wave contacts you are taken to… your Gmail contacts? Add to this that anyone can add you to their contacts without your permission and that your googlewave.com account is the same as your gmail.com account and it smells… like spam attack.
- Dr. Wave: If you were invited directly by Google, to join the Google Wave preview, the only contact you have when you login for the first time is Dr. Wave. The fact that this contact never, i mean NEVER, interacts with you, no matter how many blips you send him is just frustrating. Communication tool anyone?
- Invites: At the Wave Helpdesk I have setup with other users to help newcomers to Google Wave, I don’t know how many times we had to answer to this question: “When do I get to invite others?“. The short answer is: “No one knows”. Google Wave’s team should communicate better what is going on regarding their invitation’s policy that, from what I have been observing, is more random than a lava lamp (and lava lamps are über random). They could perhaps put Dr. Wave communicating these kind of things? Just a thought.
- No error messages: You know that something is wrong, something that was working is not, the wave where you just wrote is gone forever, your navigation pane was occupying that space that is now blank. You know all of this and still you think YOU are the one doing something wrong. Why? Because there is no indication whatsoever that there was some kind of error. Things are either working or they aren’t. I know, this is a preview but still, we are not talking of a preview of a product made by a startup. Google has accumulated over the years unimaginable amounts of data regarding usability and UI. Why they didn’t apply them to Google Wave is something I don’t understand. What do you say, Dr. Wave? [Ah, right, you don't say anything to anyone]
What about you? What do you find most annoying on Google Wave? Leave your comment please.
Picture Credits: Hamed Saber under a CC License
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