Gmail finds a new Uncanny Valley

We’re familiar with the Uncanney Valley that is the gap between desktop interfaces and accurately recreated, desktop-like interfaces on the web. But there’s an Uncanney Valley between real web interfaces and mock web interfaces, which the Gmail team have found in their recent labels update. By imperfectly recreating a text field they’ve added needless friction to a simple workflow. If it looks like a text field and feels like a text field, I’ll expect it to act like a text field! An “edit” button or icon would suffice here, and be easier to implement. (The problem: the first text field is an impostor and clicking in it to place the cursor actually opens a new field for which the cursor needs to be placed again!)