GoKawiilThere’s no denying that Google’s updated Health app looks gorgeous, feels alive, and contains animated graphs and cards that just want to jump from the screen and stare at you. My colleague Stephen has already sung the praises of this redesign since it landed in the Fitbit-branded app first, and I agree with every word he said: it is beautiful.
However, having used the new app for about a week now, I have another categorical feeling about it: It’s counterintuitive, and I hate it. It’s a huge step back in usability, and Google’s single-minded focus on AI has ruined what was a much better experience in my opinion.
What do you think of the new Google Health app? 25 votes It's gorgeous and so useful. Love it. 28 % It looks good, but I don't like using it (few tiles, AI everywhere). 24 % I love the way it works, but not the new look. 8 % I'm indifferent. 16 % I don't have the new Health app, still on Fitbit. 24 %
Text is harder to read than graphs
Stephen Headrick / Android Authority
The moment I opened the new Google Health app, my attention was drawn to the stats tiles at the top, then the big block of text beneath them. Almost every time I’ve opened the app after that, it’s been the same story: tiles at the top with a huge block of text from the Google Health Coach below. I’ve had an instance or two of my recent sleep stats and some exercise popping up on top, but 95% of the time, I’m only getting text from the coach.
And I don’t know about you, but I find text a lot less glanceable than a big number or a graph. Visuals are eminently more readable than text, yet Google’s focus has been pushed so far into the interpretation of the data that it forgot that I need to see the data first. I don’t want to read 15 lines of text to know that my resting heart rate shot up because I slept like crap; I need to see the graph about how it shot up, and below that, a quick explanation of the why and how it affects my day.
Instead, the coach seems too high on its own words that it goes on and on, only to serve me some graphs and stats in the middle of sentences. This inherently changes my relationship with the app because now I’m looking at an interpretation of my health, not the hard numbers. I understand why this might work for those who have time or don’t know how to read the numbers, but I’d argue that if you’ve already invested in a Pixel Watch or a Fitbit, you must have a minimal level of health literacy.
If the goal is to trap me in the Health app until I find the data I need before I escape, then Google succeeded.
Even if not, seeing numbers and evolution graphs is a lot more impactful than a series of words. If I read that my readiness is 60 today in the middle of a blurb of text, but it was 70 yesterday in the middle of another blurb of text, I don’t think that means anything to me or registers as well as seeing a graph that depicts my dropping readiness level. The same thing applies to any other number.
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