61–70 of 107 posts
I'm amazed that a post about such a potentially dry subject - UI/typeface on maps - is the most fascinating thing I've read today. Extraordinary well done by the author.
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Google does an above average, and often good job, at actual usability challenges. But they are pretty universally bad at making things that people would consider beautiful. Chrome gets usability issues right. Things like their tab closing behavior, the almost total lack of dialogues, one click bookmarking, etc. are all really great. But Chrome is not a beautiful app. Its toolbar icons are fairly childish, its tabs ju…
>But Chrome is not a beautiful app. What would you consider a beautiful app? Chrome is the prettiest piece of desktop software I use, but I don't have a whole lot to compare it to.
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Google does an above average, and often good job, at actual usability challenges. But they are pretty universally bad at making things that people would consider beautiful. Chrome gets usability issues right. Things like their tab closing behavior, the almost total lack of dialogues, one click bookmarking, etc. are all really great. But Chrome is not a beautiful app. Its toolbar icons are fairly childish, its tabs ju…
> But Chrome is not a beautiful app I guess it's totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless, but I think Chrome is the most visually appealing of any browser right now. This is partly, I guess, because its primary virtue is minimalism, but the parts that are there are beautiful, I think.
I'm amazed that a post about such a potentially dry subject - UI/typeface on maps - is the most fascinating thing I've read today. Extraordinary well done by the author.
It's really interesting that Google seems to be at times able to pull off wonderful UI design bordering on genius (Chrome, Google Maps) and at other times just barely able to be at par (most of Android with select exceptions). I guess this just reflects different teams within Google, but it's a shame they can't apply their best UI talent across all their products (and particularly, the products that most need it, lik…
Google does an above average, and often good job, at actual usability challenges. But they are pretty universally bad at making things that people would consider beautiful. Chrome gets usability issues right. Things like their tab closing behavior, the almost total lack of dialogues, one click bookmarking, etc. are all really great. But Chrome is not a beautiful app. Its toolbar icons are fairly childish, its tabs ju…
A common complaint is that Google is engineer-driven rather than design driven. Some very impressive counter-evidence in the article -- lots of nice design hacks.
I was thinking more along the lines of exception to the rule. I honestly have some trouble finding another product by Google which has this attention to detail (design-wise), maybe Chrome...
A common complaint is that Google is engineer-driven rather than design driven. Some very impressive counter-evidence in the article -- lots of nice design hacks.
Examples : world projection (Mercator, useless), lack of metadata (dates of the images ?), choice of labels at medium scale (especially with the 'Relief' maps).
Such discrepancy between good graphical precision, esthetics and geographical imprecision, lack of quality information are misleading a large part of the public.
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Related: They're trying (sort of): http://code.google.com/closure/library/ Here's a talk once about their process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=697KX4Ciiws#t=02m40s and a blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-makes-design-goo... P.S. Anyone know an easy Maps API trick for setting zoom level to display each of the U.S. states (which vary dramatically in size)?
I'm not familiar with the Maps API, but the site does it for you: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... (from searching Texas)
A common complaint is that Google is engineer-driven rather than design driven. Some very impressive counter-evidence in the article -- lots of nice design hacks.
The micro-scale graphical design is good. It's a pity, however, that big geographical and data quality blunders are present on Google Maps. Examples : world projection (Mercator, useless), lack of metadata (dates of the images ?), choice of labels at medium scale (especially with the 'Relief' maps). Such discrepancy between good graphical precision, esthetics and geographical imprecision, lack of quality information…
I know I've used it, to find, research and understand the layout of, Actual Locations on Earth, more than once. I never even stopped to think about the projection.
It would be interesting to hear what you feel would be different in the end-user experience if the projection was changed.
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I find Android a lot easier to use than iOS. What I've noticed when using an iOS device is that I often can't figure out how to do something. Then I research it and discover that it simply can't be done. Easy to learn, but unusable. Android, on the other hand, trades discoverability for usability. I have heard that some Android users don't even know that they can pull down the notification bar. But once you learn to…
I've been using vanilla Android for almost a year now. The more I use it the more I dislike it. By far my number one complaint is bugs. Some of them are so apparent and easily reproducible is simply inexcusable that they're still there (all reported btw). I haven't rooted my Nexus One, so I don't have that to blame either. It gets tiring to click the same message-contact shortcut and sometimes to be taken to the righ…
(I personally have never seen any of these issues. The main problem I have with Android is the culture of low-quality ad-supported apps, and sadly, that's something a bug report isn't going to fix.)