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Gmail April Fools gone (horribly) wrong(independent.co.uk)

over 7 years ago from Quintin Carlson, Designer @ Hologram

  • Taylor Van OrdenTaylor Van Orden, over 7 years ago

    I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, if you need a job / have a job you need and your potential employer / your boss gets so pissed off at a minion gif that you get fired / lose the opportunity, that sucks.

    On the other hand, everyone needs to fucking lighten up, bosses included. Take a fucking chill pill.

    Emojis, gifs, etc are becoming more and more commonplace in this world as it's been proven through practice that emojis / gifs can lighten the mood, make sure the emotion of your message gets through to the other person, etc. Git issues, slack channels, all the hip places are full of emojis/gifs.

    My mom even knows how to find a gif on giphy and send it to me. Here's the one she sent me last night after watching the Tesla reveal:

    http://i.imgur.com/hJDahzR.gif

    Even at my previous job where everyone and their mother had a stick up their ass and was constantly pushing for more more more sales more more more numbers, there was still room for laughter, jokes, and yes...even the occasional reaction image or gif. And no, that job was NOT a design agency or full of anyone remotely up to date on the trends.

    If I received a resume with a mic drop gif at the end of it I would almost certainly open it. That's someone I want on my team.

    If the biggest issue in your life is that you sent an email with an adorable gif at the end of it, you have a pretty damn good life. And if any designers got fired today, send me your portfolio. With a gif. I have a lot of upcoming dev projects coming up and I'm getting sick handling the design side of shit.

    5 points
    • Dave LucianoDave Luciano, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

      Regardless of all the cases of bosses getting pissed, losing job opportunities, etc., I think the way Google went wrong with this one was replacing a button that a fair number of users commonly used, probably via muscle memory (and accessible by tabbing twice and hitting enter without really thinking about it):

      Gmail Button

      Kinda crappy to have that sort of functionality swapped out with something that adds a GIF to all of your outgoing replies.

      Hopefully this is something people could laugh off, but it was still poorly executed from the get-go, IMO.

      3 points
      • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, over 7 years ago

        screaming orange button with unavoidable feature intro that covered the reply area. shocking that anyone was confused by this.

        0 points
        • Quintin Carlson, over 7 years ago

          Way to have empathy for the user. You are not the user.

          2 points
          • Jim SilvermanJim Silverman, over 7 years ago

            yes i do use gmail, but that's not the point.

            it's surprising to see that this failed despite their efforts to make the joke button so obvious that it slaps you in the face. muscle memory trumps all, i guess.

            0 points