Google, major improvements are needed on Nest Hub. Your developers need to read this.

[Lezah]

With Google being the megalithic titan of a company that it is, I had higher hopes for user interface & app integration on the Nest Hub I just purchased. To say that I'm disappointed would be a huge understatement. Google please forward this input to dev teams because I appear to be the 1000th person to bring these to your attention. Here's a few things I immediately noticed within the first 5 minutes after setting it up:

1) For those of your consumers like myself who are not elderly or with poor eyesight (who I highly doubt are the ones using Nest Hubs at all), I can handle smaller smart controls buttons and would love to have the option to display many controls on one screen at the same time (or at least in a way that is not a single light switch taking up the entire display).

2) Smart control buttons (like light on/off buttons) are BURIED in menus and its ridiculous how long it takes to access certain controls when devices are grouped or in different rooms. The amount of time it takes to access certain buttons completely defeats the purpose of the Hub as a controller (the benefit of the Hub is that it has a display... design the UI to the strength of the display as the centerpiece of the controller, because I don't want to talk to the display when I already have smart speakers everywhere else I can talk to if needed.)

3) I want to be able to navigate the major entertainment apps themselves on the Nest Hub itself (NOT JUST CASTING from my phone because I don't always have one conveniently available to do so) like Disney+ and Hulu. Amazon has been able to do this in a much more attractive way on fire sticks and echo displays FOR YEARS and I don't like Amazon so please do better Google. I want to open and navigate Hulu/Disney on the Hub itself, to select shows & what not from on it and not from my phone. 

4) What on earth is going on with calendar view and events? I want to easily access & view a MONTH calendar... I don't care to be spoken to about the one event I have today, JUST SHOW ME THE WEEK OR MONTH on the display without waking up my entire house when I click on the day. This seems like the easiest thing to do, integrate Google calendar on a Google device meant for helping you with the day. Again, I don't need the hub to broadcast my daily events, I just want to view a calendar with events displays, and like I mentioned above... its okay if the text is small.

5) In the "Works with Google" add devices menu, there are like a thousand off-brand and lesser-known brand apps to integrate. Mysteriously, "Ring" the one of the only ones missing from that list of a thousand apps. Please allow for me to add my Ring doorbell camera for viewing on my Nest Hub display.

6) Googe/Android has always been very well known for and good about prioritizing user customization options and flexibility. Nest Hub devices just seem sooooo backward in this department, like when I use it, it's almost like I'm choosing to handicap myself severely just to struggle to do the simplest task that would take half a second on a phone. It needs to be more than just an expensive digital photo frame with a speaker, because right now it's seeming like all it will be for me is a fancy photo frame.

- I know you will do nothing with this information. But thank you to the one customer service rep who may read it. Have a good day. -John

[Lezah · Accepted solution]

Problem Addition: 

I mentioned above about the Nest Hub being essentially only useful as a digital photo frame display. It struggles even with that. I want to open Google Photos to leisurely browse through my photos and albums, like you might on a phone and I don't have an option to open the Photos app, so I ask it "Hey Google, open Google Photos" (which is a ridiculous thing to have to do in order to browse photos).. and it suggests that I instead verbally ask for specific photos (such as by saying "show my my photos from Paris"). Every time I think my disappointment in how unintuitive this device is has peaked, it somehow continues to surpass it. Please allow for a more user-navigable experience on this device with less talky-talky required and more touchy-touchy.

[Lezah · Accepted solution]

Problem Addition: 

I mentioned above about the Nest Hub being essentially only useful as a digital photo frame display. It struggles even with that. I want to open Google Photos to leisurely browse through my photos and albums, like you might on a phone and I don't have an option to open the Photos app, so I ask it "Hey Google, open Google Photos" (which is a ridiculous thing to have to do in order to browse photos).. and it suggests that I instead verbally ask for specific photos (such as by saying "show my my photos from Paris"). Every time I think my disappointment in how unintuitive this device is has peaked, it somehow continues to surpass it. Please allow for a more user-navigable experience on this device with less talky-talky required and more touchy-touchy.

[ByronP]

HI Folks,

Thank you for posting here in the community. I'm really sorry about your experience using our Nest devices. I really appreciate the details and features that you requested. 

We would like to submit your thoughts; please share feedback so we can better address this concern and work on future updates.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Regards,

Byron

[Lezah]

Thanks, Byron! That's all I've got so far. I haven't used it a lot since setting it up.

[Bbradford84 · Accepted solution]

Quick! Cue the community support workers to cut and paste a boilerplate solution to your post!!

Great post! They should include integration with office 365 / other calendars and to do lists.

[Jsellxyz]

100% agree with everything you said. I am also very annoyed that the cookbook/recipe feature has been removed for no reason whatsoever. This thing is literally as you said, an expensive photo frame and an egg timer. It's worthless. I really only used it for that feature. Maybe if you could install apps, that might change things, but you really can't do anything.

[Lezah]

Judging by the vast amount of other posts and kudos to posts that express displeasure about the removal of that feature, many many other users (or possibly now former users) enjoyed the cookbook feature as well in their kitchens. I lose a great amount of respect for companies that remove features & functionality from their devices... or companies whose devices are capable of more features/functionality but those things are disabled by paywall of some sort.