"Stories" from Google. Pure user experience

Today, checking mail on gmail-e, Google kindly notified me that some stories were created for me. Not really understanding what it was about, what it was about or where it came from, I nonetheless clicked and decided to see what the good corporation had come up with once again. Slowly I began to understand what was happening. Part of the idea even began to like. I decided to conduct an unbiased testing, without specifically reading any background information and without delving into search engines. I decided to share the review with Habr, the benefit of a similar article did not find. Under the cut, there is a bit of traffic (10 megabytes before uploading to habrastorage). Google is not affiliated with the construction site, yes, otherwise where do I get the pictures;) And for the impatient, there’s a link to an example .

UPD:the comments kindly noted that the stories have been around since May (announced on the blog). I don’t know, I didn’t notice. Apparently the automatic creation of stories is an attempt to pull them out. I looked more closely at the articles on the hub, I did not find anything about them. Therefore, I leave the article, do not gather dust in the draft for her.

The essence of the "stories"

Stories are a beautiful presentation of your photos uploaded to Google photos. A presentation with captions, a beautiful transition to each next photo. Formed on the basis of albums. Moreover, Google for demonstration did not roll out to me all the photos from the album, but only some. What criterion I would like to know, but I did not try to analyze it and left it to them.

How it looks and what I think about it

Having already worked with stories, I decided to look for where they added this part. It turned out that if you go to your photos, a new item appeared in the drop-down menu. Intuitively, where to look for a new service. ok



This is what the list of stories looks like. It turned out pretty nicely.



The cover of the history story itself is also pretty pretty. The picture is moving. All the latest web fashion. The cover can be changed. Headline too. And right there. The verdict of the interface is ok.





When you first open a story you just created, a share button is available. Then it disappears and you can apparently configure through the "access settings" available in the menu.



The "share" button is the same as the traditional interface for photos, google documents. I remember that at the very beginning I did not really understand how to share everything correctly. Now it seems quite comfortable and understandable.



The “change” button allows you to select photos for the story from the album. The interface is similar to uploading photos. Convenient and understandable.



As I mentioned earlier, the “share” button disappears and access can be controlled through the access settings available immediately in the menu.



By the way, these access settings do not work. It looks like a bug.



It’s good that you can immediately report this in support. This is the “review” item. The service seems to be still being tested. It’s right that they took out the opportunity to immediately write off their opinion. Which I did.



The function to remake is some strange. It is completely incomprehensible how it differs from deleting. Because it also requests deleting history. Minus. And in general, from the functions there is a “change” and a “redo”. Are these synonyms for me? especially in context. Not obvious.



When viewing the story, as an owner, I can add a signature right on the go. Convenient, I agree. But such an addition is not available for all photos. Photos that enter vertically as a whole do not have fields for editing.



To add a signature to such photos (which when viewing a story do not have a field immediately), you need to go to the information editing page and add a signature there. BUT. There is no way to get back to your story. I have not found. This is wildly enraging. Frank flaw.

Summarize

Everything on the photos. Now a little generalization. In principle, I liked this innovation for demonstrating photos. You can create a cool and beautiful presentation and show it to friends / colleagues. Submitting photos is so much more spectacular. Especially when viewed in full screen. However, this is relevant only for users who are not too lazy to add descriptions (signature in Google terminology). Without them, the effect will be less. The interfaces are generally normal. Yesterday I had to face the administration of the Google group for the first time, and so there’s a complete mess. Here, in general, everything is more or less clear. There are still unworked moments, but you can already be creative. I doubt that the service will be widely used, but IMHO it is even more interesting than all unnecessary attempts to get into the social media market in the form of google +.

Here is a link to the story that was in the screenshots. And a survey for statistics.