Google’s look, evolved • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#401

Post by wpeterson » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

harlanlewis wrote: post #267

nostrademons wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what you mean by "mystery meat"? I assume it's the use of icons and drawers to trigger functionality rather than labels and links? That's driven by screen size - there's simply not enough screen real estate on a phone to label every button with words. It does have a legit discoverability problem, which most folks in UX acknowledge but don't know how to fix, given other constraints of the media. I've seen…

> That's driven by screen size - there's simply not enough screen real estate on a phone to label every button with words. It does have a legit discoverability problem, which most folks in UX acknowledge but don't know how to fix, given other constraints of the media. Some of the most effective solutions to this I've seen require solutions beyond visual representation. They address the problem through dimensions inde…

Interestingly enough, LukeW is now doing product/design for Google.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#402

Post by puranjay » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:00 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #136

raldi wrote: post #9

2008 HN discussion from when the outgoing "little blue g" favicon was introduced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211518 In it, Dustin Curtis criticizes Google (rather rightly, in my hindsight-enhanced opinion) for a Marissa-Mayeresque design process of "Make 300 logo variants with pseudorandom permutations, and then pick your favorite." Looking at those permutations now ( http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/S…

I've never understood that criticism. Business decisions should be data driven. You test new signup flows to see which one onboards users better. You test advertising changes to see which one converts better. Why should a logo design or a title bar color be any different? Without testing each iteration, how do you know which one has the best effect on whatever success metrics you're using? I can understand if you're…

You can't quantify taste.

And you can't rely on past data to create new trends because that data doesn't even exist.

Data said that children's books don't sell. But then Harry Potter happened. Data also said that people loved phones with keyboards. Then the iPhone happened.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#403

Post by provemewrong » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:23 AM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #238

Would any of the font-aficionados call this a slab-serif? There's a slight serif on the second g but other than that it looks kind of like comic sans.

There are no serifs. The g is a typical sans-serif g like any other. Here's a slab serif g.[1]

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Rockwell...

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#404

Post by geowwy » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:26 AM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #362

This makes me sad, much like how Microsoft's logo change made me sad. Microsoft's italic bold lettering was iconic. It was the logo the company had used for the longest time, the logo that adorned their best (and their worst) products. It was a logo that everyone had seen, everyone knew, that was incredibly recognisable. And then they threw that all away, and created intentional brand confusion by swapping their logo…

People felt the same way when Microsoft got rid of their old 80s logo. There was a 'Save the Blibbet' campaign to bring it back.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#405

Post by hrnnnnnn » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:27 AM UTC

brianfryer wrote: post #204

DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

The loading times on Google maps are a lot higher than they used to be, for sure.

I recently tried OSM and was sharply reminded of how fast Google Maps used to be. OSM has almost no perceivable lag.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#406

Post by teraflop » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:47 AM UTC

plonh wrote: post #394

teraflop wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your ISP is caching HTTPS requests, you have a problem.

CDNs get copies of SSL keys so they can do their job: serving data. They are logically part of the serving infrastructure for example.com

Citation? Maybe some sites do that, but I find it really hard to believe that Google issues keys with a CN of "*.google.com" to anyone else.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#407

Post by hueving » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:54 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #343

msellout wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one on the team was familiar with multivariate analysis. That's the wrong way to say it. Let me rephrase more carefully... I'm surprised no one used more sophisticated analysis techniques to allow an experiment that changes many explanatory factors simultaneously and estimates the effects of not only each factor independently but also their interactions. It's relatively straightforward statistics and…

There were stats Ph.Ds on the team that were certainly familiar with it, and I knew at least one former Amazonian manager that held that we were too afraid of having multiple experiments running at once and too afraid of confounding factors. (Amazon's A/B testing is much more traditional split-testing, where they show one variant to half the population and one to another half and then pick the best one.) The biggest…

>Largest and best-funded social science program I've ever seen.

You should check out Facebook. There emotional manipulation studies are horrifying, but they certainly have access to many more person hours of time and collected data than Google does on end users.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#408

Post by ulfw » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 7:56 AM UTC

meerita wrote: post #345

meatysnapper wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design by AB testing, my favorite :( I worked at a major tech company where every decision needed to be justified by AB testing. Our design was a series of haphazard guesses made on data that depended on a very brittle data pipeline. Needless to say, nobody thought it was a very good product, but the incredible bureaucracy and people behind the approach made it hard to fight against.

It shouldn't be a problem. In science, everything must be tested and proved if you want to know the truth or the effectiveness of an theory. Design is a science, so it can be measured and developed by tests of all kinds, even emotionals.

That's a pretty one-sided statement. One could easily argue the opposite, that good design is an art form, not a science.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#409

Post by jbrooksuk » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 8:52 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #198

hellbanner wrote: post #197

Google's userinterface, in gmail.com, at least, has gotten progressively worse, and worse, and worse, and worse since its inception in my experience and everyone I've asked about this. ... don't know what else to say. I question if their designers use their own products. Latest bugs worth mentioning: Chrome still has an issue that can cause microphone to not work in Hangouts. Gmail.com has added a "Your plug-in googl…

Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

I get so confused with Google Maps every time I use it to find trip lengths. I can never work out how to add a destination.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#410

Post by kossTKR » Wed, Sep 02, 2015, 9:25 AM UTC

glitchdout wrote: post #339

kossTKR wrote: post #303

ignoring all mandatory marketing gobbledygook, this change makes most sense to me in the light of google's recent involvement in the NSA scandal, and their general shift from being a search only service, to being a true conglomerate, especially spanning the futuristic fields of robotics and AI research. They don't want to be like the dystopian AI from the recent movie Ex Machina, they don't want to be seen as the omn…

Yep. It immediately reminded me of this video: https://ind.ie/the-camera-panopticon/ Right in the first minute: > What if surveillance didn't look this scary? What if it actually looked pretty friendly? Could we still identify it as a threat?

Interesting video. The presenter is pretty good. At 24.35 he talks about Michael Novak, Facebooks engineer manager that states:

"Privacy is a set of experiences that help people feel comfortable", HAH, i love this corporate-speak.

It reminds me of the way the new PR field of Content Creation, which defines itself like:

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketi...

"Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent"

Lets enhance make our buyers more intelligent. Intelligent in this context meaning, the customer buys our product. Lets give the user privacy. Privacy meaning a thin veneer of privacy on top of complete data mining.