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Google’s look, evolved

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Re: Google’s look, evolved

#311

Post by pasbesoin »

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…

Another thing I'm now reminded of is, on Android, the... functionalization/clickification of text.

Some text is active, other is not. I don't see any visual cues that distinguish the two. I end up just poking at text, or thinking, "If I were designing this, I'd want more detail or a link to further controls." In the latter case, sometimes I find I was thinking the way the designer/programmer was, and that text does indeed lead somewhere.

For someone who doesn't "think that way", this is more of a challenge.

This also seems to have become more prevalent in desktop / full screen design. Stuff that doesn't look "clicky" is.

I think that was one of my mother's problems with changes to the Google Calendar web page UI.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#312

Post by inthewoods »

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…

When you say gmail.com has gotten worse, do you mean the overall quality of the application or the user interface design? You say the first but the examples you mention sound like bugs.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#313

Post by EarthLaunch »

spankalee wrote: post #14
unicornporn wrote: post #5

Many tech companies seem to be rolling out new designs at an increasing rate rate. A bit of a side note, but I've recently been pondering for how long material design will stay with us. I'd guess when the developer for that last Jelly Beanish app in my phone has finally made the switch, Google releases their new design guidelines and the process begins again...

Material Design is more of a living standard. It's constantly being updated, clarified and expanded. They even have changelogs. I'd guess that it's extremely likely to be replaced anytime soon, but will evolve over time.

This reads like fashion discussion. "Skinny jeans just look better aesthetically, they'll never go out of style." Give it a few years.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#314

Post by bsaul »

Great design, but it's funny how you can infer what a company actually is by contrast to what it's trying too hard to be. Google has a very childish logo (the doodle even emphasis that) to have the company look like a fun and happy company, whereas people fear it's going to become the next big brother.

When you see it that way, it's almost an admission of guilt. No company would put so much emphasis on child imageries if it weren't fearing so much. Google is accused of controlling your life, so it's using the symbol of the exact opposite of "in control", aka small children.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#316

Post by kodr »

inthewoods wrote: post #312
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…

When you say gmail.com has gotten worse, do you mean the overall quality of the application or the user interface design? You say the first but the examples you mention sound like bugs.

try the new inbox, I find it pretty slow, with all the sliding tabs, and with less features (no raw text, hard to edit inline, etc...)

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#317

Post by hanspeter »

raldi wrote: post #226
ricardobeat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently nobody even considered trying a different font. That's because they were designing a favicon, not doing a rebrand. Using a different font than your logo would make absolutely no sense.

Plenty of sites use a different typeface in their favicon than the one they use in their logotype, e.g., Blogger, McDonald's, Nasdaq, and Bing.

All of those has used an existing part of their logo as their favicon.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#318

Post by raldi »

bostonpete wrote: post #255
Ciantic wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New favicon? https://www.google.com/favicon.ico - is still the old one.

Looks like Google's search pages pull the favicon from here: https://www.google.com/images/branding/product/ico/googleg_l...

How'd you figure that out?

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#319

Post by raldi »

hanspeter wrote: post #317
raldi wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of sites use a different typeface in their favicon than the one they use in their logotype, e.g., Blogger, McDonald's, Nasdaq, and Bing.

All of those has used an existing part of their logo as their favicon.

That's true for McDonald's, but certainly not the other three.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#320

Post by bad_user »

jacquesm wrote: post #294
nostrademons wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they did that was so that they could build up data on the effect of each factor independently. That way, when the bigwigs get into a meeting and discuss alternative designs, they can predict "Ok, this will have $X effect on revenue but will decrease search latency by Y ms, which itself will have +$X effect on revenue." I was the first engineer on the first visual redesign that tried to change everything ab…

I understand the urge to try to maximize on stuff like this, but in the end it loses sight of what's most important: the quality of the results. And sometimes I feel that a lot of valuable engineering time and effort is wasted on making things prettier and better monetizing in the short term when in the longer term the better search results are what would really move the needle. And most A/B testing focuses on the ve…

The worst limitation of A/B testing is that it's not producing anything better than a local maxima. Nature does indeed work like that, but it took millions of years along with random mutations and we don't have that much time. And if in our thinking process we would have relied on optimization algorithms favoring the local maxima, then Jazz wouldn't have been produced, amongst others.
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