Double Click on Field Name - Restore Customize Field Functionality!

[Paul_Warren1]

Hello Airtable, Please, please please reverse this change!

Double-clicking on the field name now only modifies the name of the field. It is a pain to have to right-click to access this menu. I don’t want to be overdramatic and claim this will totally ruin Airtable, but it’s much less efficient than the old method.

I also noticed that when creating a new field, the field type is now the first dialog. Then we are prompted to put in a name. This is fine and I can get used to the new workflow. I understand that this reduces the number of times I use “Tab” to move between dialog boxes.

I love Airtable and hope it continues to make progress! Just not the progress I don’t like :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[kuovonne]

Jason:

Our team just completed testing this feature where people found it significantly easier to discover and add fields in Airtable (particularly among new and non-power users). For example, we found it took people fewer clicks to find the fields they needed and we’ve seen people use a greater diversity of field types compared to the previous version.

Of course it is easier to create new fields this way. Just like it is easier to create a new row by clicking the entire bar under the last record.

But making design choices based on the easiest way to create fields/rows has serious flaws. It makes creating fields easier at the expense of using and maintaining the base. And users spend far more time using the base versus creating if.

If a user really wants a new field, he’ll find a way to make a new field. If a user keeps accidentally making fields, he’ll get frustrated because the system doesn’t make sense to him.

Making it too easy to create fields/rows is not just an issue for power users. It is also an issue for everyone else. At least a power user realizes what is going on and knows. A power user is also more likely to immediately delete accidentally created fields/records. Beginner and intermediate users are often afraid of deleting empty fields/records because they don’t know why they appeared. They just get confused why their bases are littered with all these empty fields and records.

Let me suggest a trade-off. Instead of actually creating a new field/record when a user clicks that big empty space, when a user hovers over that space show some suggestions on how to do what you think the user wants to do. For example, when the user hovers on the empty space at the right of all the fields, say something like “no more fields, to create a field click the plus sign above” with an arrow to the plus sign.

This reminds me of how MS word would start auto formatting as I type. At first it made it easier to get bullet and numbered lists. But then it started making bullet and numbered lists in ways that I didn’t want and got really frustrating. Fortunately, I was able to find a setting to adjust what auto formatting I wanted versus what auto formatting I did not want.

Also, I also like having the empty space to unselect things. Here are my most common reasons

• I want to look at the data without the visual distraction of a highlighted cell.
• I want to ensure that if I start typing, I won’t accidentally change a field value if I loose track of which window is active.

[Bill_French]

kuovonne:

But making design choices based on the easiest way to create fields/rows has serious flaws. It makes creating fields easier at the expense of using and maintaining the base. And users spend far more time using the base versus creating if.

All your other words are great, but this the only reason any designer needs to understand that it would be foolish to do what they did. Why this wasn’t obvious to the team is a mystery.

[ScottWorld]

Bill.French:

All your other words are great, but this the only reason any designer needs to understand that it would be foolish to do what they did. Why this wasn’t obvious to the team is a mystery.

And, building upon that & focusing on the “View menu“ problem, I’d love for someone to tell me why this terrible decision WAS obvious to the team. Look at this message an Airtable engineer sent me in December 2020:

[andywingrave]

kuovonne:

But making design choices based on the easiest way to create fields/rows has serious flaws. It makes creating fields easier at the expense of using and maintaining the base. And users spend far more time using the base versus creating if.

100% - It’s maddening! I’m afraid to move my mouse in Airtable. Can we please revert?

[Bill_French]

andywingrave:

I’m afraid to move my mouse in Airtable.

This is a known but increasingly common and debilitating condition representing a combination of metathesiophobia (fear of change) combined with agrophobia (fear of open space) that forms a new collection of computing maladies -

agrometafieldphoria - an abrupt anxiety often accompanied by sweaty hands and occasional hyperventilation when moving a pointing device over areas of a UI that are seemingly void of underlying controls. This condition is related to acute cases of cleithrofieldphobia.

cleithrofieldphobia - anxiety induced when clicking on UI controls that exhibit completely unexpected outcomes which often leads to user inaction at worst, and at best, entire and unexpected changes to database schemas.

[ScottWorld]

Haha! These sound like real conditions! Hahaha. I’ve never had them before using Airtable, but now I have them every day. Using Airtable is a maddening experience.

[andywingrave]

@Bill.French Absolutely spot on. :rofl: :joy: :grinning_face_with_sweat: :sweat: :disappointed_relieved: :cry: :sob: :sob: :sob:

Would love someone to chime in and comment on it though…Maybe they had analytics tracking on the space, and though “people are clicking here - maybe they are expecting something to happen” which resulted in this absolute monstrosity of a UI addition.

People were clicking there, because it was the one place you could click that didn’t do anything, and allowed us to re-set the mouse :sob: …Now everything, everywhere does something, and the one place we could neutral click does pretty much the one thing nobody wants to do by accident… create a flippin’ field! :hot_face:

[ScottWorld]

andywingrave:

People were clicking there, because it was the one place you could click that didn’t do anything, and allowed us to re-set the mouse :sob: …Now everything, everywhere does something, and the one place we could neutral click does pretty much the one thing nobody wants to do by accident… create a flippin’ field! :hot_face:

And… apparently they don’t care. :man_shrugging: Gigantic surprise here. :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes: :roll_eyes:

We’re now going on weeks of complaints about this disaster, and of course, it’s still in the product. Nothing has improved at all.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Airtable, where users are consistently shunned & ignored.

p.s. @Jason, the frustration is still sky-high for this massive problem.

[ScottWorld]

@Jason, can you please confirm that the Airtable team is aware that their users DO NOT want to be creating new fields all day long when using an Airtable system? In fact, once the fields are created in a system, it is very rare that new fields need to be created. But now, people are accidentally creating new fields all day long. The fact that the Airtable team is not aware of this seems to indicate to me that they are extremely out of touch with their users.

[Jason]

@ScottWorld I can’t say if this particular behavior will be changed or not, but I have shared all of the feedback here with our product team.