It's complicated, on Google Profiles

Google released a new update to Google Profiles today. It looks good! Here's mine:

profiles.google.com/u/0/ginatrapani/about

 

The screenshot above is me deciding how to answer the Relationship question.

 

Instead of a dropdown, why doesn't Google Profiles use open text fields for relationship status and gender?

 

Answering the relationship question is always a minefield for me, because if I select "married," people often assume I'm heterosexually married. If this were an open text field, I'd fill in "gay-married." That's how I want to characterize and specify my relationship status, not the overly cutesy and vague "it's complicated," or the doesn't-give-us-enough-credit-for-all-the-crap-we-went-through-to-get-married "In a relationship."

 

Same goes for gender, where the dropdown choices are Male, Female, and Other. Other? Let people describe themselves how they want! That is the whole point of this product. I would like to list myself as "Tomboy."

 

Google Profiles (and Facebook) could learn from Diaspora:

www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/

 

Update: Folks are saying that constrained choices makes search, advertising, and data slicing and dicing easier. I have two responses to that:

 

1. Designers of identity products should know that allowing a user to define her identity is more important than making sure your search results/advertising deals work. Users first, advertisers/programmers second.

 

2. At Metafilter gender is a text field and its creators are able to determine male or female over 75% of the time using a crazy thing called technology. If a tiny indie startup can do that, Google could do the same. They just have to care enough about the users who don't fit into the majority dropdowns to do it.