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The Google design, turned up a notch

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Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#51

Post by kyro »

ugh wrote: post #50
pg wrote: post #43

The reason the new design is so much worse is that it uses the most valuable space on the screen, the left side (since we read left to right), for stuff users don't care much about. What users care about most on a page of search results is the search results. Those should get priority. Instead the prime space is given to stuff that's boilerplate, or only tangentially relevant, or both. I'm surprised Google would make…

Google actually tested this, you didn’t. So while the reasons you listed might be valid and a good reason to scrutinize the redesign with the literature in mind, I have a very hard time believing that Google didn’t do just that. I would argue that there are consequently very good reasons to believe that the problems you described are not a issue with the redesign or that there are certain advantages to the redesign w…

It has also been shown that people will be more likely to give you money with a gun to their head than when kindly asked.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#52

Post by plinkplonk »

ugh wrote: post #50
pg wrote: post #43

The reason the new design is so much worse is that it uses the most valuable space on the screen, the left side (since we read left to right), for stuff users don't care much about. What users care about most on a page of search results is the search results. Those should get priority. Instead the prime space is given to stuff that's boilerplate, or only tangentially relevant, or both. I'm surprised Google would make…

Google actually tested this, you didn’t. So while the reasons you listed might be valid and a good reason to scrutinize the redesign with the literature in mind, I have a very hard time believing that Google didn’t do just that. I would argue that there are consequently very good reasons to believe that the problems you described are not a issue with the redesign or that there are certain advantages to the redesign w…

"Google actually tested this, you didn’t. So while the reasons you listed might be valid and a good reason to scrutinize the redesign with the literature in mind, I have a very hard time believing that Google didn’t do just that."

And yet it moves! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!).

Google "testing it" isn't an iron clad guarantee that the feature doesn't suck.

Anyone who has worked in a large company can well imagine how "tests" can support predetermined positions of higher management (say). I suspect the reason is simpler - these days Google is fat and slow and infested with mediocre MBA types who love nothing better than to "launch an initiative" like this. Never attribute to malice etc.

Irrespective of how well Google tested this, if enough users say "And yet it sucks", then that's that.

You could argue about how many users are "enough", but "Google tested it so they have to be right and everyone else is wrong" is a very fragile argument.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#53

Post by ivanzhao »

pg wrote: post #43

The reason the new design is so much worse is that it uses the most valuable space on the screen, the left side (since we read left to right), for stuff users don't care much about. What users care about most on a page of search results is the search results. Those should get priority. Instead the prime space is given to stuff that's boilerplate, or only tangentially relevant, or both. I'm surprised Google would make…

Tufte's data ink is too extreme in my opinion. Human perception might be too messy and complex to handled by simply mathematical calculations. User behaviors might be a more approperiate approach to evaluate the new design.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#54

Post by ugh »

plinkplonk wrote: post #52
ugh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google actually tested this, you didn’t. So while the reasons you listed might be valid and a good reason to scrutinize the redesign with the literature in mind, I have a very hard time believing that Google didn’t do just that. I would argue that there are consequently very good reasons to believe that the problems you described are not a issue with the redesign or that there are certain advantages to the redesign w…

"Google actually tested this, you didn’t. So while the reasons you listed might be valid and a good reason to scrutinize the redesign with the literature in mind, I have a very hard time believing that Google didn’t do just that." And yet it moves! ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove! ). Google "testing it" isn't an iron clad guarantee that the feature doesn't suck. Anyone who has worked in a large company…

I never said anything about anything being “iron clad”. PG could be right but I think there are good reasons to believe that this redesign might work. Probably.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#55

Post by plinkplonk »

nostrademons wrote: post #22
spot wrote: post #10

heh cool the first image result in there was made with my software :)

The results were made with my software. ;-) (I've been on the team that did this since we staffed up engineers, and did the first functional demos of the new design.)

"I've been on the team that did this since we staffed up engineers, and did the first functional demos of the new design."

So do you think you could get us a user setting to turn off the new design and get back the classic minimalist one? Right now you have to install browser extensions etc.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#56

Post by [deleted] »

plinkplonk wrote: post #55
nostrademons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results were made with my software. ;-) (I've been on the team that did this since we staffed up engineers, and did the first functional demos of the new design.)

"I've been on the team that did this since we staffed up engineers, and did the first functional demos of the new design." So do you think you could get us a user setting to turn off the new design and get back the classic minimalist one? Right now you have to install browser extensions etc.

[deleted]

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#58

Post by ck2 »

Stylish plugin to the rescue!

First I hide all the left column sidebar nonsense with adblock.

Then I do this:

      #center_col {margin:0 !important;}
      .gl,.sla    {text-decoration:underline !important;}
      .tsf-p      {width:65% !important;}
Problem solved. Back to wide.

Re: The Google design, turned up a notch

#59

Post by asmosoinio »

landyman wrote: post #21
fjabre wrote: post #2

Is there a way to hide the left hand column? I actually find it really distracting. Also in FF 3.6.3 the text is not centered vertically in the search box. It's an FF CSS issue. I've seen it a few times before.

Yes, we had several people at my office say the same thing so another programmer and I wrote a couple of plugins to hide it (FX and Chrome only): http://www.seotools.com/hide-google-options/ . I personally like the sidebar, I think the date-based filtering is great.

The tool does not do the trick for me... Chrome 5.0.375.29 beta on Windows Vista.

Screen shot here, the Extension seems to be enabled.

http://asmo.kortis.to/misc/shot_07052010_125200.png

I guess it's time to start using duckduckgo.com for real.

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