Or: Do Android Gestures Bring Dyspeptic Sleep?
I’ve been an Android guy since the Motorola Droid 2 first greeted me with its robotically sepulchral voice and ominously glowing red eye, as if the Eye of Sauron was peering out from the Matrix. Since then, I’ve bought pure Android devices—to avoid the layers of UI and apps larded on by Samsung and the like—buying a new phone as each old one neared the end of its update life. In other words, every three years I’ve jumped from Motorola to Nexus to Pixel to Pixel. (I refuse to line the coffers of Google any more often than that.) I’ve been very happy with them, generally. I’ve viewed the iPhone vs. Android divide the way I viewed the Mac vs. PC conflict: you like what you’re used to. Although I understand those iPhone folks who still see their ecosystem as having the technological advantage, that gap has never bothered me enough to consider jumping ship.
Until now.
My previous phone, the Pixel 3a, had gesture navigation as well as 2- and 3-button navigation; 2-button was the default (at least on my device) and I was quite content with it. Now I have a Pixel 6a. Going through my new Pixel’s “Welcome” process I found Google really pushing its gesture navigation. Having ignored this option previously and always up for something new (new-ish, in this case), I gave it a go. Yes, there have been complaints about Google’s implementation of gestures since the Pixel 3’s introduction. But I remembered enjoying a gesture navigation workshop at a web design conference I attended once and, frankly, I’ve always wanted to use Tom Cruise’s gesture UI in Minority Report (who hasn’t?) so I thought, a la Joe Queenan’s article of this title (which he subsequently expanded to become the book, Red Lobster, White Trash, & the Blue Lagoon: Joe Queenan’s America), How Bad Can It Be?
It’s bad. Really bad. Bad as in Joe Queenan’s experience with Cats bad.
Stepping behind the boulder
First, Google’s new phone setup process lulls you into a false sense of security where gestures are concerned. It provides heuristic exercises to learn the gestures, exercises that involve a screen containing exactly nothing. A tabula rasa. Just you, your finger, and the screen, which displays feedback congratulating you (when you succeed) or encouraging you to try again (when you don’t). Going home is easy, going back … not so much. Even though there was nothing on the screen to interfere, I passed the back test only two out of three times—at best. (Perhaps your humble narrator, already diminished in your eyes by his choice of Android over iPhone, has now irretrievably fallen in your esteem? C’est la vie.)
Not to worry, I thought. I’ll get the hang of it.
Again, not so much. When trying to execute the back gesture in the “real” world of web pages fully populated with text, images, and links, I found myself accidentally highlighting text, unintentionally pulling down menus to save images I didn’t want to save, and inadvertently following links. Before I knew it, instead of going back I kept stepping forward as I tapped links I was trying to avoid, traveling further and further afield from the point to which I was trying to return. Going back—one page—on a website should not be a Sisyphean task, or like the U.S.S. Voyager trying to return to the Alpha Quadrant. (I prefer my metaphors and references shaken, not stirred. Including that one.) This was not “navigation”; it was a cruel joke. Now I knew why Google dropped their old “Don’t be evil” mantra. Now I understood their early visual identification with the Lord of Mordor. Now, instead of being happy with Google’s gesture navigation, I kept thinking of a particular gesture. Using a particular finger. Fortunately, there’s an emoji for that, just asking to be tweeted to #HeyGoogle. But I restrained myself.
I tried many times to get the hang of the back gesture, I truly did, but finally threw in the towel. Apparently, I am not alone in this. It’s no wonder YouTube is full of videos showing people how to turn off Google’s gesture navigation. (That would be Settings > System > Gestures > System navigation > 3-button navigation.) Yes, the 3-button navigation takes up a small sliver of real estate at the bottom of the screen (the option of 2-button nav having been wished into the cornfield), but that’s a small price to pay for my sanity. What’s left of it, anyway.
Pushing the ball forward, not a boulder uphill
Pushing the ball forward is a good thing. Gestures are a good thing (generally speaking). I’m for anything—if it works well. But for any change to be an advance it must be superior to what it replaces—simpler, more intuitive, more elegant. Whenever I’ve done usability tests on a new website design, I’ve always told test participants, “if you find anything that frustrates you, it’s not you, it’s the design that is at fault” (in other words, it’s not you, it’s me). I still believe that. This doesn’t mean a new system—particularly a new paradigm, like the switch from buttons to gestures—may not require some period of orientation. It probably will. We needed to get used to everything on the web we now take for granted: links, scrolling, navigational elements (including that initially opaque hamburger menu). But as each new thing was introduced, the ones that survived did so because they worked. It bears mentioning that iOS users have had gestures since the iPhone X was introduced in 2017. Obviously, Apple got gestures right and Google still has not—after years of trying. But as I said earlier, this will not be enough to get me to jump ship.
However, if a future Android release takes away my button nav without fixing gestures, it will.
