AI App Redesigns That Hide Features From New Users

Android Authority tested Google Gemini's new "Neural Expressive" redesign and found the same problem on both sides: the old app had too much clutter, but the new one moved everything behind a single + button. Image generation, canvas, deep research, guided learning — all crammed into one overstuffed menu that you scroll horizontally to navigate. A new user sees a clean homepage and a blinking cursor. The features exist. They just are not where a person would look. This is the trap AI apps keep falling into. UXPin found the same pattern in the previous Gemini design: powerful capabilities buried behind layers of menus, and users who never discovered them. The fix was to surface key actions contextually. But the redesign overcorrected — it consolidated so aggressively that even power users could not find things. Microsoft's Copilot redesign took a different approach: progressive disclosure, starting with a clean interface and revealing capabilities as needed. The Copilot entry point sits above your work and shows relevant actions based on context. That is closer to what new users actually need — not a feature catalog, and not a blank canvas, but a few visible next steps tied to what