DISQUS

sita ismangil · 1 month ago

well, it made the pages of TIME magazine...

ajnorman · 1 month ago

That's more or less the (lack of) conclusion I've come to. I read something this morning saying it was going to be a better way of organising group projects than using email, but surely nobody who is serious about group collaboration still does it by sending round email attachments? I could see a use for it on our design module, if:

a) I could convince colleagues on the module that it would be useful (many of them are still in the world where paper documents are the only "real" way of disseminating information),
b) I could convince students that it would be useful (they do a lot of collaboration using Facebook at the moment and would have to be convinced there was a reason to switch), and
c) I could enrol all our students.

If I could get round all three of those, I could see groups of students using it to work on projects over a semester (including the Easter vacation), possibly also getting technicians and staff and visiting profs to join in too. Being able to easily add web links and other documents to the discussion would be useful, and if staff could replay the "conversation" at the end they'd have a much better idea of how students involve themselves in design projects (and who had made the biggest contribution, something it's difficult to judge at the moment).

It also seems to be incredibly resource-hungry - I can't get it to perform at all well unless I'm using Chrome rather than Firefox, which I think may be because Chrome has a JavaScript engine particularly optimised for Google applications. Even with Chrome I'm occasionally getting "this script seems to have gone bananas, would you like to stop it?" warning messages.

AJCann · 1 month ago

I haven't tried it with Chrome yet, although I plan to. My impressions of Chrome are generally favourable, so I'd expect an improvement.

George Roberts · 1 month ago

The UI is what, for me, brings all Google's apps down: mail, docs, sites, the native blogger comment facility. The original Google (pre advertising) beta search UI was charming in its simplicity. Everyone remarked at the time. It required no designer to design it. Now it appears as though Google has persisted with this approach to design. But as the tools get more sophisticated they look messier and messier. Maybe Google needs to take a leaf from WordPress and let a community of designers take on the task of skinning Wave. They don't want to go the way of MySpace, but as you have noted, the UI impacts on accessability and usability.

AJCann · 1 month ago

In general I agree, it's the price anyone pays for cramming more information into a set space. We've been having terrible problems with the new, "improved" Google Reader this term. Set against that, I think Google may have done a better job than some other companies would, although it's worrying that they are going in the wrong direction. The new interface to Google Docs is an improvement, although perhaps not as big a one as would have been possible. Ultimately, Wave is an alpha at the present time, so we'll have to wait and see where it goes.