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Google’s look, evolved

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Re: Google’s look, evolved

#411

Post by danielbln »

lysium wrote: post #395
qq66 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What changes would you make to Google Maps, with a basic set of assumptions? (let's say, you can't dramatically increase the cost, you can't hurt Google revenue sources, and you have a team of ~20 engineers to work on the changes).

It's mostly functionality that was available in earlier versions, but I cannot find it anymore (or is it gone?): - goo.gl-Link to this map - Terrain-mode - collapse white search box w/o loosing all entered data - enter 'from:xxx to:yyy' for navigation - extra stops (routing) The best thing about maps that I really love (and why I am willing to fight with the UI) is the address recognition: I can put almost anything i…

- goo.gl-Link to this map: burger menu, share, short link

- extra stops: once you've set up a basic route, a little plus appears under neath the red target marker in the dialog box, however, this does not seem to work with public transport routing

No idea about the other ones. Personally, I'm slightly miffed about the fact at some point the keywords "home" and "work" stopped working, or that Gmaps sometimes accepts English words in the search query (as in 'X to Y'), but sometimes only German words ('X nach Y'), despite my OS and browser language set to English.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#412

Post by shdon »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #265
DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Use it through voice. Eg, "Navigate to XXX". Easiest way I've found to use it.

That works reasonably well if you're in an English speaking country. In other countries, not so much. Especially when trying to specify an address.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#413

Post by shdon »

amelius wrote: post #37

Hmm... the spacing between the letters in "Goo" seems optically wider than the spacing between "gle". But it might be just me.

Odd. I had the exact opposite response. To me, the "GOO" spacing seemed uncomfortably narrow and the L seemed disconnected from the G and E.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#415

Post by paganel »

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…

> tl;dr: Largest and best-funded social science program I've ever seen.

I don't want to sound like a hater and I'm very well aware of the fact that some design choices might have affected the company's revenues, but all this discussion involving very smart people discussing what, from a very "outsider-ish" perspective, seem like trivial issues (the color of the letter G, for example) reminds me of Herman Hesse's "Glass Bead Game". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game#Plot)

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#416

Post by optimusclimb »

hodwik wrote: post #338
optimusclimb wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twice the median for "the city" overall? Including waitresses, garbage men, bank tellers, etc? If a skilled surgeon (or someone 5+ years into their career at Goldman, etc) makes 4 times the median of your city, what does the median have to do with what they're worth? Sorry, not trying to be rude, but whenever I hear people saying they "can't find anyone", they still counter that they're offering enough...and yet they…

Twice the median total would still be $70,000 so I'm not sure what you're getting at. You don't think $70k seems like a reasonable salary for a skilled graphic designer?

Like you said, skilled graphic designers are in high demand. As a software engineer, I made over 70k base my first job out of school in 2006, with similar perks. And this wasn't even at Google/Microsoft/etc.

So I don't think if I were a good graphic designer now, I'd be stoked on 70k a year in most locales.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#417

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

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…

Also they recently removed the ability to save images directly from Google Image Search in Chrome on Android. In what world does removing functionality make life better for anyone?

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#418

Post by thrusong »

chronic41 wrote: post #354
thrusong wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like this new look, but really hated Facebook's move away from Klavika earlier this year. This to me feels more friendly, fun, and still has personality whereas I feel Facebook's new logo is dull and lifeless.

To me, Facebook's logo is far better than Google. Facebook is much less childish.

I absolutely love Facebook's brand, with the Klavika logo. I just don't like the new typemark.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#420

Post by branchless »

justincormack wrote: post #281
branchless wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I don't care what google's logo is. AskJeeves had a good logo but their search engine was hopeless.

askjeeves had a terrible logo

I guess that's what sunk them instead of having:

crappySearch(searchTerm.remove("Jeeves how do I"));

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