Google’s look, evolved(googleblog.blogspot.com)
googleblog.blogspot.com
Google’s look, evolved
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/google-update.html
446 comments
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 about the page [1]. One of our biggest problems was that since we tried to change everything at once, the metrics went haywire, and we couldn't know if a change was because we introduced a left-nav (okay, actually we kinda could, because we'd experimented with a left-nav on its own beforehand) or because we changed the line spacing or because we cleaned up the logo or because we added icons. There was effectively no way of "debugging" the user; when user behavior varied from expected, we didn't know why.
I've got plenty of other stories from that era, but they aren't really fit for a public forum. Happy to discuss privately. (Kinda ironic when the non-Googler says that to the Googler...)
[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis-...
I was the first engineer on the first visual redesign that tried to change everything about the page [1]. One of our biggest problems was that since we tried to change everything at once, the metrics went haywire, and we couldn't know if a change was because we introduced a left-nav (okay, actually we kinda could, because we'd experimented with a left-nav on its own beforehand) or because we changed the line spacing or because we cleaned up the logo or because we added icons. There was effectively no way of "debugging" the user; when user behavior varied from expected, we didn't know why.
I've got plenty of other stories from that era, but they aren't really fit for a public forum. Happy to discuss privately. (Kinda ironic when the non-Googler says that to the Googler...)
[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis-...
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.
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.
[deleted]
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.
Whereas a design studio with sufficient resources should fare better with a data-driven approach, a sole designer or small team with time and feedback constraints will probably do better with traditional methodology. Traditional methodologies might have certain quack dogmatic rules and processes, but it offers a battle-tested baseline.
Can you offer any perspective on the whole sometimes-named "mystery meat" UI that's been rolled particularly but not only into mobile design over the past half decade?
Further, more and more of this seems to have been "backported" into traditional desktop presentation design.
While I will experiment around until I more or less "get it" (although I may miss finding some useful features for months), it particularly frustrates people like my parents. Mom is somewhat spatially challenged (although plenty bright in other ways), and I've had numerous calls with her where the controls for what she wants to accomplish have changed and simply bewilder her. AND, given her spatial orientation problems, sometimes we will have to have the same conversation several times -- because the rather arbitrary-appearing icons and patterns don't immediately "sink in".
P.S. I mean this as a legitimate question, if it fits the parent's -- or others' -- field of experience. It seems that a lot of this design is expected to simply permeate and be picked up by osmosis. Is that really the case?
Further, more and more of this seems to have been "backported" into traditional desktop presentation design.
While I will experiment around until I more or less "get it" (although I may miss finding some useful features for months), it particularly frustrates people like my parents. Mom is somewhat spatially challenged (although plenty bright in other ways), and I've had numerous calls with her where the controls for what she wants to accomplish have changed and simply bewilder her. AND, given her spatial orientation problems, sometimes we will have to have the same conversation several times -- because the rather arbitrary-appearing icons and patterns don't immediately "sink in".
P.S. I mean this as a legitimate question, if it fits the parent's -- or others' -- field of experience. It seems that a lot of this design is expected to simply permeate and be picked up by osmosis. Is that really the case?
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 a bunch of mobile apps with help overlays or tour videos the first time you run them, which can help a lot. It gets back-ported to desktop apps because once people do learn the functionality, it leads to a cleaner, less cluttered UI.
I'll also point out that early PCs had the same problem. A typical PC from the early 1980s had 320x200 resolution, a little less than a smartwatch does today. For most of the 80s and early 90s, the standard was VGA (640x480), slightly smaller than most smartphones today. Icons were really common back then as well, they weren't all that discoverable, but at least people read manuals occasionally. Most folks don't bother now. Menus were another response to that problem, but they don't really work on mobile because the tap target is too small to efficiently hit it (the navigation drawer & hamburger menu is the modern-day equivalent of the menu).
The web - with its inherent discoverability and all of its space for explanatory text - didn't really become popular until 1280x1024 displays became widespread. I remember designing webapps for 800x600 screens; it was painful, and they had discoverability problems too.
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 a bunch of mobile apps with help overlays or tour videos the first time you run them, which can help a lot. It gets back-ported to desktop apps because once people do learn the functionality, it leads to a cleaner, less cluttered UI.
I'll also point out that early PCs had the same problem. A typical PC from the early 1980s had 320x200 resolution, a little less than a smartwatch does today. For most of the 80s and early 90s, the standard was VGA (640x480), slightly smaller than most smartphones today. Icons were really common back then as well, they weren't all that discoverable, but at least people read manuals occasionally. Most folks don't bother now. Menus were another response to that problem, but they don't really work on mobile because the tap target is too small to efficiently hit it (the navigation drawer & hamburger menu is the modern-day equivalent of the menu).
The web - with its inherent discoverability and all of its space for explanatory text - didn't really become popular until 1280x1024 displays became widespread. I remember designing webapps for 800x600 screens; it was painful, and they had discoverability problems too.
Well, a, um, "literal" example was the initial occurrence of what I've just learned is called the "hamburger" icon/menu. Which was "backported" to Google's desktop designs.
A particular instance I recall was changes to the Calendar web page presentation. Mom initially struggled a fair amount with the controls in the left bar for selecting which calendars were displayed. This was in a Google Apps environment with 20-ish people participating.
I remember when screen presentations could be somewhat cryptic -- per your description as well as other instances. But, as you point out, there was usually a manual. Now? Often it seems to be down to guessing and poking around. Or asking friends. But if you are a bit older and not constantly talking over such things with your friends, that means of edification is somewhat starved.
P.S. Thanks for the response. And as I said, I'm curious about the perspective of someone on "the other side". I'm not trying to be unduly critical, here; just, this is an issue I've consistently bumped up against, from my own perspective.
A particular instance I recall was changes to the Calendar web page presentation. Mom initially struggled a fair amount with the controls in the left bar for selecting which calendars were displayed. This was in a Google Apps environment with 20-ish people participating.
I remember when screen presentations could be somewhat cryptic -- per your description as well as other instances. But, as you point out, there was usually a manual. Now? Often it seems to be down to guessing and poking around. Or asking friends. But if you are a bit older and not constantly talking over such things with your friends, that means of edification is somewhat starved.
P.S. Thanks for the response. And as I said, I'm curious about the perspective of someone on "the other side". I'm not trying to be unduly critical, here; just, this is an issue I've consistently bumped up against, from my own perspective.
> 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 independent of viewport size and space.
For example, LukeW's "Don't Divert the Train" http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1798 moves content from behind navigation and into the user's already-occurring action stream. The button is removed entirely, as is the designer's need to consider how communicative icons are for representing actions.
This requires a broader view of how features relate to each other through a design process that discovers other paths to successful behavior. Approaches like the hamburger menu, in addition to the usability issues you note, solve functional goals but have fallen out of vogue for their ineffectiveness at encouraging specific actions. Label-less icons, while attractive and convenient, suffer similar problems. As getting users successful quickly is generally an important goal (before they've internalized your app's unique visual language), the current trend of putting core functionality behind opaque symbols seems counterproductive.
Some of the most effective solutions to this I've seen require solutions beyond visual representation. They address the problem through dimensions independent of viewport size and space.
For example, LukeW's "Don't Divert the Train" http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1798 moves content from behind navigation and into the user's already-occurring action stream. The button is removed entirely, as is the designer's need to consider how communicative icons are for representing actions.
This requires a broader view of how features relate to each other through a design process that discovers other paths to successful behavior. Approaches like the hamburger menu, in addition to the usability issues you note, solve functional goals but have fallen out of vogue for their ineffectiveness at encouraging specific actions. Label-less icons, while attractive and convenient, suffer similar problems. As getting users successful quickly is generally an important goal (before they've internalized your app's unique visual language), the current trend of putting core functionality behind opaque symbols seems counterproductive.
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.
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.
Interestingly enough, LukeW is now doing product/design for Google.
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 very short time effects of the change (and change all by itself, even change for the worse can have a short term positive effect just because something is new). On another note: A/B testing has another limitation, which is that you're optimizing for the bulk, please one person more and you more or less automatically annoy another.
And most A/B testing focuses on the very short time effects of the change (and change all by itself, even change for the worse can have a short term positive effect just because something is new). On another note: A/B testing has another limitation, which is that you're optimizing for the bulk, please one person more and you more or less automatically annoy another.
There are plenty of talented people working on ranking and webspam too.
There's a limit to how parallelizable those problems are. At some point, more people working on an algorithm doesn't make it faster or better, it just makes it more confusing and worse. Mythical Man Month applies as much to Google as it did to IBM. And so you might as well put people onto optimizing the rest of the page as well, because they'll do more good there than having yet another cook in the ranking algorithm kitchen. (I'd argue that there are too many people working at Google in general...I left, so I'm no longer contributing to that problem. But then, there were probably too many people when I joined, so I contributed to it for 5 years.)
There's a limit to how parallelizable those problems are. At some point, more people working on an algorithm doesn't make it faster or better, it just makes it more confusing and worse. Mythical Man Month applies as much to Google as it did to IBM. And so you might as well put people onto optimizing the rest of the page as well, because they'll do more good there than having yet another cook in the ranking algorithm kitchen. (I'd argue that there are too many people working at Google in general...I left, so I'm no longer contributing to that problem. But then, there were probably too many people when I joined, so I contributed to it for 5 years.)
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.
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 would have been taught to clever undergrads or first-year grad students who specialized in math, economics, machine learning, industrial engineering, etc.
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 would have been taught to clever undergrads or first-year grad students who specialized in math, economics, machine learning, industrial engineering, etc.
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 problem is that many of the folks involved had encountered very surprising and counter-intuitive interactions between features, and because of that, they didn't trust the textbook models. For example, at one point we had a very convenient embedded-Python experimentation framework that let us rapidly try things out. Our main data-scientist on the project decreed that we were not to use it, because a number of the externalities that framework introduced - higher latency, and potential error conditions - could confound the metrics in ways that were not well-understood at the time. Data is useless unless you can trust that it actually represents reality.
Stats textbooks all make certain assumptions about reality when they present the models, and if reality doesn't conform to the assumptions, the models won't conform to reality. Certain factors were well-studied enough that we could build useful models from them - that was the point of all the experimentation around color, after all. (I wonder if those conclusions still hold, anyway: data has an expiration date, and I recall personally running an experiment that directly contradicted an experiment Marissa Mayer had run 6-8 years previously.) But that requires a lot of hypothesis testing and verification: it's never a matter of "well, the model says so, therefore it must be", but rather "well, the model says so, let's run an experiment to see if the model's predictions line up with reality, and if they do, we have a pretty strong - but not ironclad - indication that we can use it for future calculations."
tl;dr: Largest and best-funded social science program I've ever seen.
The biggest problem is that many of the folks involved had encountered very surprising and counter-intuitive interactions between features, and because of that, they didn't trust the textbook models. For example, at one point we had a very convenient embedded-Python experimentation framework that let us rapidly try things out. Our main data-scientist on the project decreed that we were not to use it, because a number of the externalities that framework introduced - higher latency, and potential error conditions - could confound the metrics in ways that were not well-understood at the time. Data is useless unless you can trust that it actually represents reality.
Stats textbooks all make certain assumptions about reality when they present the models, and if reality doesn't conform to the assumptions, the models won't conform to reality. Certain factors were well-studied enough that we could build useful models from them - that was the point of all the experimentation around color, after all. (I wonder if those conclusions still hold, anyway: data has an expiration date, and I recall personally running an experiment that directly contradicted an experiment Marissa Mayer had run 6-8 years previously.) But that requires a lot of hypothesis testing and verification: it's never a matter of "well, the model says so, therefore it must be", but rather "well, the model says so, let's run an experiment to see if the model's predictions line up with reality, and if they do, we have a pretty strong - but not ironclad - indication that we can use it for future calculations."
tl;dr: Largest and best-funded social science program I've ever seen.
> 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)
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)
>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.
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.
> One of our biggest problems was that since we tried to change everything at once, the metrics went haywire
Isn't that the problem with empirical methods in general? They are great for measuring the effect of small simple things (like small changes to a web page), but are much less effective in measuring bigger things (like say, programming language A vs. programming language B).
Isn't that the problem with empirical methods in general? They are great for measuring the effect of small simple things (like small changes to a web page), but are much less effective in measuring bigger things (like say, programming language A vs. programming language B).
Absolutely. Business is an interesting field because you derive a fairly large advantage from being correct about reality, but that advantage counts for nothing if you're so slow that somebody else changes the reality while you're figuring it out.
That is a very succinct way of putting it, thank you.
> 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.
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.
That's true for McDonald's, but certainly not the other three.
All of them has a favicon which is also a part of their logo.
But all three logos were designed and introduced at the same time as their corresponding favicon. Your claim was that the favicon was just a copy of an existing part of the logo.
Your claim was that a favicon could be a different font than in the logo. But these examples are all a part of the logos. Google would have needed to rebrand their logo to do the same.
The claim was, "Using a different font [on your favicon than the one you use in your wordmark] would make absolutely no sense."
I believe I have successfully refuted that claim.
I believe I have successfully refuted that claim.
I think you're mistaking their symbol for "a different font". Each one of those has a logotype and a symbol, which make up their visual identity (the word 'logo' is used interchangeably for those, or their combination). They are merely using the existing symbol as favicon - the stylized N/B/B. Google's symbol at the time was the uppercase G in the same font, so creating a new one for the favicon would be considered a rebranding.
Interestingly, the blue g favicon is still there on the front page at https://www.google.com/favicon.ico (cache is off).
nope, just cached https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?cache
It must be cached somewhere within Google, since shift refresh doesn't update the old url and it's https.
favicons cache differently. You either need to enter a different favicon address (favicon.ico?v=2) or reload and restart the browser.
I know it's weird, but favicons are weird.
I know it's weird, but favicons are weird.
But it's just an image right? Does the browser decide to treat the image different because of the format or the extension? I'm pretty sure you can use png files as favicons if you want.
Anyways I tried it in IE, including restarting it and it still showed the old lowercase g.
Anyways I tried it in IE, including restarting it and it still showed the old lowercase g.
But it's updated on, at least, www.google.ca
Maybe it's a regional thing. I still see the old favicon on both sites.
Got the new one on google.ca. Try resetting the cache.
The new favicon is way better IMO. On the other hand, the main logo... I think this sums it up: "seem as much like a preschool as humanly possible".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10153449
I'm just not a fan of extremely flat designs.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10153449
I'm just not a fan of extremely flat designs.
Today's google doodle seems to reinforce that "as much like preschool as humanly possible" is exactly what they were shooting for here.
https://www.google.ca/?doodle=22175023&hl=en&nord=1
https://www.google.ca/?doodle=22175023&hl=en&nord=1
New favicon? https://www.google.com/favicon.ico - is still the old one.
The new one probably not populated to all their location yet, but adding a random query string does the trick.
https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?newlogo
(I'm seeing a four-colors capitalize G.)
https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?newlogo
(I'm seeing a four-colors capitalize G.)
I don't think that works very well as a favicon - I see a "c" first and then my eyes have to force it into a G.
Thank you for linking it, hadn't reached my interwebs yet.
Thank you for linking it, hadn't reached my interwebs yet.
why does adding "?" work at getting a different logo? not a web guy here
I'm not sure how it works at Google, but adding a random query string usually helps because of how proxy servers handle caching. Proxy servers usually treat an URL with different query string as different resource and cache them separately (e.g. /posts?page=2 is definitely not the same as /posts?page=1).
This is not only applies to caching by ISP, but also includes caching by the website itself as well (some websites put proxy in front of their server to cache rarely changed portion of the site, or even using CDN.).
This is not only applies to caching by ISP, but also includes caching by the website itself as well (some websites put proxy in front of their server to cache rarely changed portion of the site, or even using CDN.).
interesting, thanks!
Anything after "?" is a query parameter that the server can read and then apply additional logic to for a response. In this case, they have code that responds to new logo and returns the new logo instead of the previous one.
It's actually not querying anything, since it works for any query you pass. What happens is that you're bypassing cache because you're loading a different page, as explained by sirn above.
https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?anyquery
https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?anyquery
Looks like Google's search pages pull the favicon from here:
https://www.google.com/images/branding/product/ico/googleg_l...
That big colorful G is much nicer than the squiggly blue lowercase one.
Wondering the same. If it has changed, then ISP cache will take some time to reflect.
If your ISP is caching HTTPS requests, you have a problem.
Well, it's one that they had a choice from before, which they hadn't picked.
First column, fourth row down: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/SEnK37orPGI/AAAAAAAAAp...
Honestly, the block letter G on the far right, next to the lollipop, is the icon with the most character.
Actually fits their rebranding, too, but I don't think anyone at Google pays much attention.
Everyone's been seeing a lot of rainbows lately, too.
First column, fourth row down: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/SEnK37orPGI/AAAAAAAAAp...
Honestly, the block letter G on the far right, next to the lollipop, is the icon with the most character.
Actually fits their rebranding, too, but I don't think anyone at Google pays much attention.
Everyone's been seeing a lot of rainbows lately, too.
Have you only been looking at them on a computer? On a phone, and especially on a watch, flat designs seem far superior to me.
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 worried about optimizing to a local maxima, but that's not a criticism of A/B testing, it's a criticism of the diversity of the available inputs.
User testing is great, and very useful for so many people.
BUT, when you're the size of Google, or Facebook, or Microsoft, Things look a bit different.
Most people are far more conservative than they realise, but also, perversely, adapt quite quickly to change if they experience it day-to-day. This means that if an interface has enough inertia, then a change that performs badly in user testing, can actually quite quickly be accepted by people. (PROVIDED it's actually better).
In the first example, every change to the Facebook UI is met by a barrage of criticism and hatred, but they seem to actually make good decisions, so the changes get absorbed by users, and things continue.
Having said that, Microsoft struggle, because they often make changes that are fundamentally bad decisions, and have to back-down. For example, the Office ribbon took a while to be accepted, but is /generally/ liked nowadays by people, because it was functionally a good change (yes, some people will disagree, but the majority wins on this front). Taking broad user testing results on the ribbon would probably have stopped microsoft from progressing with it. On the other hand, the 'Metro'/Tile UI in windows 8 was an actual usability disaster, and has forced them to revert to a more common pattern until someone can design new metaphors that actually improve usability in windows.
Finding test subjects that aren't used to, and comfortable with, the google font/design styles, to give objective feedback on a change, is really hard.
[ I didn't mention first time round, but I /really/ don't like the new logo, that lowercase g makes me cringe inside every time I see it. ]
BUT, when you're the size of Google, or Facebook, or Microsoft, Things look a bit different.
Most people are far more conservative than they realise, but also, perversely, adapt quite quickly to change if they experience it day-to-day. This means that if an interface has enough inertia, then a change that performs badly in user testing, can actually quite quickly be accepted by people. (PROVIDED it's actually better).
In the first example, every change to the Facebook UI is met by a barrage of criticism and hatred, but they seem to actually make good decisions, so the changes get absorbed by users, and things continue.
Having said that, Microsoft struggle, because they often make changes that are fundamentally bad decisions, and have to back-down. For example, the Office ribbon took a while to be accepted, but is /generally/ liked nowadays by people, because it was functionally a good change (yes, some people will disagree, but the majority wins on this front). Taking broad user testing results on the ribbon would probably have stopped microsoft from progressing with it. On the other hand, the 'Metro'/Tile UI in windows 8 was an actual usability disaster, and has forced them to revert to a more common pattern until someone can design new metaphors that actually improve usability in windows.
Finding test subjects that aren't used to, and comfortable with, the google font/design styles, to give objective feedback on a change, is really hard.
[ I didn't mention first time round, but I /really/ don't like the new logo, that lowercase g makes me cringe inside every time I see it. ]
> Business decisions should be data driven.
The evolutionary, data-driven approach will never yield a Nest thermostat, iPhone, Helvetica, or flag of New Mexico. We have no idea how to even begin to write a fitness function for good design.
The evolutionary, data-driven approach will never yield a Nest thermostat, iPhone, Helvetica, or flag of New Mexico. We have no idea how to even begin to write a fitness function for good design.
Actually Helvetica is an evolution of the 1896 typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk
But it wasn't designed by an evolutionary algorithm; it was designed by a genius typographer who trusted his own sense of taste.
I'm not sure where you think taste comes from besides evolution of ideas and data analysis done by black-box functions inside people's heads.
Formalizing that process and using externally-collected data is just de-black-boxing something that happens in a black-box form in the professional's mind.
Formalizing that process and using externally-collected data is just de-black-boxing something that happens in a black-box form in the professional's mind.
Also, making decisions based on wishy-washy difficult-to-quantify human traits like "genius" and "sense of taste" seems unnecessarily risky, compared to making them based on measurements from repeatable tests.
I'm not advocating design by committee. I'm advocating justification with data. The designers should propose candidate designs. But the decision about which one to go with (or whether to redesign at all) should be supported by whether going with it furthers the business's goals.
You point out the need to pick the right measurement, and I agree, but it could be as simple as "What's the effect on conversion?" It has to be something! You can't just say "We're re-designing because I'm a HMI genius."
You point out the need to pick the right measurement, and I agree, but it could be as simple as "What's the effect on conversion?" It has to be something! You can't just say "We're re-designing because I'm a HMI genius."
When a company is capable of replicating those black-box functions as an algorithm or business process, then it will be ready to launch the era of automated design.
Until then, the best known way to design something nice is to hire a talented designer and trust their instincts.
Until then, the best known way to design something nice is to hire a talented designer and trust their instincts.
[deleted]
> The evolutionary, data-driven approach will never yield a Nest thermostat, iPhone, Helvetica, or flag of New Mexico
...for now, given today's technology, but I wouldn't bet on it long term. History is full of examples of things we once thought only humans could do.
But once many candidate designs are available to choose from, what better a way is there to unambiguously decide on the best besides testing and measuring?
...for now, given today's technology, but I wouldn't bet on it long term. History is full of examples of things we once thought only humans could do.
But once many candidate designs are available to choose from, what better a way is there to unambiguously decide on the best besides testing and measuring?
As I said, the problem is writing the tests and knowing what to measure. How do you discern between a bunch of tests and measurements that are poorly-designed, and a bunch that are well-designed? You gather a bunch of people with good taste, and trust their gut.
But at that point, why not just cut out the middleman, forget the tests, and let the artists be artists?
See also: Footnote 3 of http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html#f3n
But at that point, why not just cut out the middleman, forget the tests, and let the artists be artists?
See also: Footnote 3 of http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html#f3n
signup flows to see which one onboards users better.
The trick is: there is no global "better" — only 'better', given a specific group of users.
Which users though? Running a million 40 year olds from Iowa through your website flow will generate a widely different result from running a million 13 year olds in Atlanta through the same process.
Google is still stuck in the "one design for everybody in the world" mindset, so they have to be appealing to everybody, which naturally makes them bland.
success metrics you're using
Success metrics! The paradox of these hyper-optimization methods is they largely apply in hyper-trivial situations. Once you are big enough, you just tell people how things will be. They don't get to have a say anymore.
The trick is: there is no global "better" — only 'better', given a specific group of users.
Which users though? Running a million 40 year olds from Iowa through your website flow will generate a widely different result from running a million 13 year olds in Atlanta through the same process.
Google is still stuck in the "one design for everybody in the world" mindset, so they have to be appealing to everybody, which naturally makes them bland.
success metrics you're using
Success metrics! The paradox of these hyper-optimization methods is they largely apply in hyper-trivial situations. Once you are big enough, you just tell people how things will be. They don't get to have a say anymore.
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.
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.
I love it. Quite often logo redesign processes gets completely out of hand, but this was a significant improvement over the older version: Cleaner, more modern and beautiful in all its simplicity. Bravo!
I agree. In fact, I half expected them to write alphabet (name of the company). I wasn't aware of the new logo and had browsed to Google.com to search for something.
Yeah I think it's pretty nice too. Works really well with the material design elements for most their applications.
I agree. Material design to me seemed like a great step as well. The different looks between Google products didn't seem so bad till they started to move everything over to material design and I realized how fragmented the previous designs were. Didn't even see the problem till it was fixed. slow clap
> Didn't even see the problem till it was fixed
Most design problems are this way. Even after you fix them they are often not obvious to the user despite improving the UX.
Most design problems are this way. Even after you fix them they are often not obvious to the user despite improving the UX.
I like the attention they brought to the angle/attitude of the 'e'. Never appreciated before how it has a friendlier feel.
It is pioneered by Alfred Heineken in 1954 to cheer up the brand Heineken.
The sloped crossbar on ‘e’ is characteristic of early Roman typefaces of the so-called Venetian or Humanist class¹, which were inspired by Carolingian script².
Catull³, the font on which the former Google wordmark was based (it's not exactly Catull — some details are simplified, like the serif edges being snapped to 45°), is actually closer to the script than to typical Venetian typefaces — which, once you've seen the whole thing, blows the idea of the old logo looking ‘more professional’ out of the water, unless your profession is ‘medieval scribe’.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox-ATypI_classification#Human...
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
³ http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/catull-bq/
Catull³, the font on which the former Google wordmark was based (it's not exactly Catull — some details are simplified, like the serif edges being snapped to 45°), is actually closer to the script than to typical Venetian typefaces — which, once you've seen the whole thing, blows the idea of the old logo looking ‘more professional’ out of the water, unless your profession is ‘medieval scribe’.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox-ATypI_classification#Human...
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
³ http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/catull-bq/
Elektra the label and dell also modified and stylized "E"s in their logos.
I think these things might make a small difference but overall it's not important.
I view Heineken as a boring lager which has little character, probably due to being produced in industrial quantities. A jaunty 'e' isn't going to fix that.
Same for google. So long as they continue to bang out appropriate search results I'm with them. Right until they don't.
I view Heineken as a boring lager which has little character, probably due to being produced in industrial quantities. A jaunty 'e' isn't going to fix that.
Same for google. So long as they continue to bang out appropriate search results I'm with them. Right until they don't.
Logo design and typography are intended to affect you subconsciously, not consciously.
That tilted 'e' is meant to advertise the brand in the middle of dozens of other logos in the store, and draw consumers in from that myriad of choices based on psychological cues and associations they may not even be aware of. The effect is important in aggregate - some large number of potential customers conditioned over a lifetime of advertising to associate different typographic styles with emotional states and narratives being slightly more conducive to pick your beer over others than they otherwise might have been, because now it's 'nicer.'
That tilted 'e' is meant to advertise the brand in the middle of dozens of other logos in the store, and draw consumers in from that myriad of choices based on psychological cues and associations they may not even be aware of. The effect is important in aggregate - some large number of potential customers conditioned over a lifetime of advertising to associate different typographic styles with emotional states and narratives being slightly more conducive to pick your beer over others than they otherwise might have been, because now it's 'nicer.'
That's what designers tell you anyway.
Objective support for this hypothesis is thin on the ground.
In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision. Whatever bounce effect businesses get from a new logo can usually be explained just as much by novelty as by implied psychological voodoo.
Generally, I'm suspicious of management-by-logo. When I see logos being updated at vast expense for no good reason, I worry about the direction a company is heading in.
Objective support for this hypothesis is thin on the ground.
In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision. Whatever bounce effect businesses get from a new logo can usually be explained just as much by novelty as by implied psychological voodoo.
Generally, I'm suspicious of management-by-logo. When I see logos being updated at vast expense for no good reason, I worry about the direction a company is heading in.
> That's what designers tell you anyway.
And everybody else in the world.
> In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision.
Great. Then replace the Chanel or Louis Vuitton logos with a bright primary colored Google logo, and see what their purse sales are like a year from now. I'm sure millionaire socialite women would love to have their bright red-blue-green-yellow logos on their Saint Laurent jacket (although it would be perfect for Moschino...)
Sorry dude, but you're over thinking this. Logos are part and parcel to brand identity, and everything about branding determines sales.
If you don't have a good logo, you don't have a good business.
And everybody else in the world.
> In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision.
Great. Then replace the Chanel or Louis Vuitton logos with a bright primary colored Google logo, and see what their purse sales are like a year from now. I'm sure millionaire socialite women would love to have their bright red-blue-green-yellow logos on their Saint Laurent jacket (although it would be perfect for Moschino...)
Sorry dude, but you're over thinking this. Logos are part and parcel to brand identity, and everything about branding determines sales.
If you don't have a good logo, you don't have a good business.
This is a false comparison. Logos for clothes sit on the clothes which are themselves judged entirely on their appearance.
Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.
> If you don't have a good logo you don't have a good business
Come on my good man, get a grip!
Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.
> If you don't have a good logo you don't have a good business
Come on my good man, get a grip!
> This is a false comparison. Logos for clothes sit on the clothes which are themselves judged entirely on their appearance.
Some do. The vast majority of designer clothes don't.
People buy the brand, not the product.
> Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.
People bought into the Google brand identity. They were the first to eliminate all the crap around their web search engine, so it would just be a single text box. This made sure people know what Google was - the simple search interface. All of this is part of the brand's visual identity.
Do you think they do an empirical study on this when they first made it?
It is your brand that sells your product.
The shape of the letter 'e' is part of that marketing that sells your product.
In fact, EVERYTHING you do is fundamentally related to sales. You are always closing.
Some do. The vast majority of designer clothes don't.
People buy the brand, not the product.
> Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.
People bought into the Google brand identity. They were the first to eliminate all the crap around their web search engine, so it would just be a single text box. This made sure people know what Google was - the simple search interface. All of this is part of the brand's visual identity.
Do you think they do an empirical study on this when they first made it?
It is your brand that sells your product.
The shape of the letter 'e' is part of that marketing that sells your product.
In fact, EVERYTHING you do is fundamentally related to sales. You are always closing.
>It is your brand that sells your product.
This is backwards - the product sells the brand. Brands do not just come out of nowhere; people have to like the product first before they can establish loyalty.
This is backwards - the product sells the brand. Brands do not just come out of nowhere; people have to like the product first before they can establish loyalty.
Their brand is having a very good search engine. Ever think that the marketing guy is good at persuading you that the marketing guy is the most important thing?
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"));
crappySearch(searchTerm.remove("Jeeves how do I"));
The rotated 'e' reminds me of Pac-Man, eating everything in reach.
The 'e' thing was hamfisted and implies they're a "hey fellow kids" company.
The e has been slanted since the 1999 logo
edit:
I agree ... but this is just the price for showing up at this level of the game. It is of course a major effort for those professionals who executed on it, and is beyond my capabilities - but it's not strategic level stuff - just like stealth fighters are not strategic level stuff anymore.
(My previous and clearly downvote-magnet post that is a little more detailed):
An updated, simple look and feel is not a matter for congratulations. Look at stealth airplanes. If you don't have a stealth warplane, the modern SAMs can take you out no problem, with stealth the odds are much more in your favour. Stealth tech is the table stakes, the price any superpower or superpower-to-be must pay just to show up.
If Google had not done this, or had done it badly, then we would worry. Behind the scenes many many professionals worked hard to make sure it went well - as expected.
This is something I personally would never achieve - I could not steer a multi-national rebranding. But Google has to - it's the price just for staying in the game.
So kudos to those involved, it took years of your experience and effort. But for Google, it's just what needed to be done to keep up. And if we should not be distracted, internally they really must not be distracted.
I agree ... but this is just the price for showing up at this level of the game. It is of course a major effort for those professionals who executed on it, and is beyond my capabilities - but it's not strategic level stuff - just like stealth fighters are not strategic level stuff anymore.
(My previous and clearly downvote-magnet post that is a little more detailed):
An updated, simple look and feel is not a matter for congratulations. Look at stealth airplanes. If you don't have a stealth warplane, the modern SAMs can take you out no problem, with stealth the odds are much more in your favour. Stealth tech is the table stakes, the price any superpower or superpower-to-be must pay just to show up.
If Google had not done this, or had done it badly, then we would worry. Behind the scenes many many professionals worked hard to make sure it went well - as expected.
This is something I personally would never achieve - I could not steer a multi-national rebranding. But Google has to - it's the price just for staying in the game.
So kudos to those involved, it took years of your experience and effort. But for Google, it's just what needed to be done to keep up. And if we should not be distracted, internally they really must not be distracted.
I don't like it. It seems more juvenile in the same way comic sans gets criticized for. The loss of character on the lower case g is especially unfortunate.
Non est disputandum I guess.
Non est disputandum I guess.
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.
It is because the terminal cut of the g attempts to geometrically bisect the bar of the e, whilst simultaneously trying to resemble a smile. Those are irreconcilable design objectives. The capital G is still wasting vast quantities of space. I agree, overall, this new typography has a kindergarten aesthetic. It's not for me, certainly.
However I think the colour blocking and letter shaping on the new favicon is superb.
However I think the colour blocking and letter shaping on the new favicon is superb.
It seems off-putting right now, but even the Airbnb logo redesign has become less offensive looking over time looking so I think people will adjust to Google's new logo and look back and see the old version as outdated.
I kinda like and also don't really care. But I do also see the juveline aspect of it. It does remind of letters/font I'd see on a wall in daycare
The smaller version of the logo looks just like comic sans to me and if I'm not directly looking at the bigger version I also see comic sans. I am really not liking it.
I don't like it. To me it looks like a doodle a 12 y.o. made and reminds me of comic sans.
That seems like what they're aiming for? Seems to go against the seriousness that they seem to be pulling into android's mechanisms, but it's in line with historic google as a "fun place".
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 google talk will no longer be supported soon" ...
... 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 google talk will no longer be supported soon" ...
I agree and I wish I had insight into what exactly is going on inside Google. A couple of hypotheses:
1. Someone (or a group of people) within mistakenly believes this design aesthetic[1] is good and have gained a lot of political power. I guess they like things that look pretty in screenshots instead of things that are actually useful or intuitive?
2. They're heavily optimizing for some metric (engagement, user growth, whatever) that is orthogonal to (or has a small component along) the usability vector.
[1] Simplistic defaults, not easily configurable, flat, tons of whitespace, etc...
1. Someone (or a group of people) within mistakenly believes this design aesthetic[1] is good and have gained a lot of political power. I guess they like things that look pretty in screenshots instead of things that are actually useful or intuitive?
2. They're heavily optimizing for some metric (engagement, user growth, whatever) that is orthogonal to (or has a small component along) the usability vector.
[1] Simplistic defaults, not easily configurable, flat, tons of whitespace, etc...
Well, you didn't ask me, but I think it's gotten progressively better, and better, and better. Different, sure, and if your definition of worse is "different than before", well, you aren't going to like it.
So, just to give a counter point.
So, just to give a counter point.
I'm curious, do you have any specifical examples of things that got worse? I.e. density, new compose moles? Why are they worse for you specifically.
The nine dot menu instead of a small header row was a terrible change. First because it is an extra click every time for a commonly used task and second because no one had any clue what the hell nine dots were supposed to mean. A friend of mine that worked at google told me the official name is "app drawer". I have no idea how that's supposed to look like a drawer.
More generally the entire move from words to pictograms looks to me like a regression to a technology that was superseded by a superior one 5000 years ago.
More generally the entire move from words to pictograms looks to me like a regression to a technology that was superseded by a superior one 5000 years ago.
Really? That seems smart to me. How often do you use the links in that drawer? Seems better to remove all that text up top and replace with a small icon for something that is rarely used.
Every time I want to look at my calendar I need to re-remember where the hell they hid it at.
I expect it to be in the drop down on the left, since Gmail and Google Calendar are otherwise so well integrate, but nope, it is hidden in the little square.
The first couple times I had to actually Google how to access my calendar from within Gmail (I can always go to calendar.google.com of course)
I expect it to be in the drop down on the left, since Gmail and Google Calendar are otherwise so well integrate, but nope, it is hidden in the little square.
The first couple times I had to actually Google how to access my calendar from within Gmail (I can always go to calendar.google.com of course)
Well, I for one used those links to navigate between Google properties: from Gmail to YouTube, for instance.
Now I just don't go to YouTube when something on Gmail piques my interest.
That one click was a huge amount of effort for casual browsing, and forces a re-evaluation of idle browsing between properties.
Now I just don't go to YouTube when something on Gmail piques my interest.
That one click was a huge amount of effort for casual browsing, and forces a re-evaluation of idle browsing between properties.
Ugh, you definitely do not use more multiple google services if you think that.
Even today, years afterwards, I was on the phone checking my calendar and I totally lost the train of the conversation as I was hunting in that dumbass thing for the calendar.
The worst part is that, yes, the top was getting stuffed, but instead of letting you choose what you wanted in your menu, they added that navigation monstrosity instead.
Even today, years afterwards, I was on the phone checking my calendar and I totally lost the train of the conversation as I was hunting in that dumbass thing for the calendar.
The worst part is that, yes, the top was getting stuffed, but instead of letting you choose what you wanted in your menu, they added that navigation monstrosity instead.
I just find it bizarre the number of people that do this. For me, I open a new tab, and start typing "calendar.google.com", but I don't even get past c or ca on most computers before it autocompletes.
And can't you customize that menu? Just make it work for you.
And can't you customize that menu? Just make it work for you.
For service I use frequently, I pin a tab so they are always open. So for me, the app drawer is rarely used.
I just leave calendar and gmail open all the time.
Before, I actually used the top menu to navigate from one Google service to another.
Now, I just rely on Firefox’ autocompletion of the URL bar, or I just use Thunderbird instead of GMail, or here.com maps instead of Google maps.
Now, I just rely on Firefox’ autocompletion of the URL bar, or I just use Thunderbird instead of GMail, or here.com maps instead of Google maps.
Wow, this menu is so useful! I got annoyed when they removed the links to the different apps and just assumed this 9 dot thing was a part of their new account switcher design and never tried clicking on it.
It requires three clicks to edit the subject line and I still sometimes click in the wrong place trying to find it and I've edited subjects dozens of times. It also requires it to open in a different editor. The default reply window is a tiny piece of shit by default. They added the stupid tabbed system that I turn off every time I have to make a new gmail account. It's not always clear whether I want Google or Gmail settings to change some preference, and the buttons for them are right next to eachother. Hangout chats blink until you click within that specific hangout box. I can't even find the option to link GMail accounts but I know I've done it before. If you hit reply and make no changes then close it, it saves it as a draft. Spam and Trash folders and all labels are hidden by default (have to expand). I could go on.
Everyone at Google uses gmail.
[deleted]
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.
The priority inbox thankfully can be turned off. It was trying to solve a problem that didn't exist - the ability to sort messages. The tagging of incoming mail with tags sorted that problem, and search made finding mail a moot point too.
I disabled priority inbox on browser and mobile devices and it's very usable again, so thanks to whoever kept that as an option.
I disabled priority inbox on browser and mobile devices and it's very usable again, so thanks to whoever kept that as an option.
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...)
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?
This appears to be an irritating trend. Look at the gedit redesign on GNOME3 and see how the removal of all buttons and features is heralded as a GOOD thing?!?!?!
I understand the "let's not confuse the user" approach but simplifying everything down to have zero features reduces the computer to a useless tool, as all the features have gone. It's like a Swiss army knife where they decided that all the blades and options were too fiddly and confusing so they just give you a spork instead.
I understand the "let's not confuse the user" approach but simplifying everything down to have zero features reduces the computer to a useless tool, as all the features have gone. It's like a Swiss army knife where they decided that all the blades and options were too fiddly and confusing so they just give you a spork instead.
Have they added a way to select which microphone to use yet? I mean a way to do it outside of an active call.
Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.
In their bid to keep things clean and automatic, they really made everything more confusing. I know people who have gotten lost because they didn't realize Google maps was hiding directions. They always try to do things instantly instead of letting the user press enter. (This is especially annoying on Google Express.) There's something to be said for the old web when you clicked and then got results...
I hate that feeling of having to type as fast as possible, so the instant fetching won't waste bandwidth or distract me before I've finished giving it all the information it will need. Multi-step processes like getting directions can be annoying this way, as it reloads every time you change a parameter (like entering an address, swapping source and dest. addresses, or changing transportation mode), so if you have to do all three to get what you actually want you're really going to be waiting. Am I just a weird user? I mean, I know my frustration isn't very rational, but is user frustration ever rational? It hurts the product either way.
Sometimes I just do a general Google search (from Chrome's omnibar with Instant searching disabled) for the directions I need. It usually auto-detects it's a maps query and has a card ready to go with options. Then I don't have to wait for suggestions to load or for the map to pan around.
Sometimes I just do a general Google search (from Chrome's omnibar with Instant searching disabled) for the directions I need. It usually auto-detects it's a maps query and has a card ready to go with options. Then I don't have to wait for suggestions to load or for the map to pan around.
I just tried a one-step query in Google Maps itself, and it worked, so that's helpful ("From Address 1 to Address 2").
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).
I'd change it back to the way it was prior to the redesigns.
It used to work fine. The big problem with the current version is the almost complete absence of legible affordances.
There are all kinds of buttons with logos on them that do stuff. But until you learn what they do, their functions are mysterious.
Basic things like Traffic used to be obvious, one-click features. Now they're hidden in the burger menu, so at best they're two clicks away, and at worst a non-trivial percentage of users has no idea they exist. (Etc.)
It used to work fine. The big problem with the current version is the almost complete absence of legible affordances.
There are all kinds of buttons with logos on them that do stuff. But until you learn what they do, their functions are mysterious.
Basic things like Traffic used to be obvious, one-click features. Now they're hidden in the burger menu, so at best they're two clicks away, and at worst a non-trivial percentage of users has no idea they exist. (Etc.)
I second all of the above. For me, though, the major regression is the priorities of the search field. Prior to the redesign Maps seemed to know the exact location I needed regardless of the amount of detail I included in the query (i.e. tossing in the name of an intersection without street/ave/blvd info). Now, I seem to need to almost always include exact details (zip, precise USPS-blessed street address) for it to find what I'm looking for.
Not all the time, but enough of a difference that it feels seriously hindered post redesign.
Not all the time, but enough of a difference that it feels seriously hindered post redesign.
Sticking the UI over top of the map really is silly. The 10 pixels of map I can still see between the search box and the border of the screen are completely useless, but make the page considerably noisier (more edges/transitions).
I too enjoyed the side bar. It's mysterious but it made me feel like there was more real estate. The map wasn't covered with boxes, whereas in the new design the 40% left handside of the map is unusable. Also, when searching a place, it resets the zoom, it zooms until I see the inside of that place (such as, the city center), whereas I generally want to see where the city is located with a bit more context. Same for a path: it puts the origin and destination on the viewport edges, whereas I generally want to locate the route, therefore see slightly more context. Slightly enough that it's painful.
I agree. When they've updated their maps it was frustrating, it still is. Old version was much much better.
(The app, on iOS)
I have no idea how to switch between satellite and map view. I have no idea where to look for that option - or if that option exists. There's a burger menu, so I tap that. There's a list of options. Satellite is in that list, and is highlighted. The option I want, and I don't know what it's called, doesn't appear to be in that list of menu items. I tap the map to collapse the burger menu. I hold the screen then release. A pin is dropped. I don't think I want a pin, but I have no idea how I dismiss the pin. When the pin is placed a small thing pops up at the bottom of the window. None of that looks relevant. I, completely accidentally, pull it, and a bit more appears. None of that is relevant either (but now I've accidentally discovered how to get street view). I pull it again because something happened the first time and yet more stuff appears, but nothing relevant. I realise that it can't be this hard, so I go back to the burger menu and unintuitively click "satellite". I don't want satellite, and this menu item is already highlighted, and it never occurs to me that someone would put a toggleable item in a list of menu entries without any indication that it's a toggle. But bamn there it is.
So, how would I change Maps? Just put a few more affordances in there. Maybe watch how people unfamiliar with the app try to do stuff.
There are lots of things I like about maps. There's some churn in businesses on my street and maps always seems happy to change info.
In the past there was a ton of research into user interaction with UI. Obviously loads of that fails on mobile, but Google is a smart data driven company that could create a new body of work for mobile.
I have no idea how to switch between satellite and map view. I have no idea where to look for that option - or if that option exists. There's a burger menu, so I tap that. There's a list of options. Satellite is in that list, and is highlighted. The option I want, and I don't know what it's called, doesn't appear to be in that list of menu items. I tap the map to collapse the burger menu. I hold the screen then release. A pin is dropped. I don't think I want a pin, but I have no idea how I dismiss the pin. When the pin is placed a small thing pops up at the bottom of the window. None of that looks relevant. I, completely accidentally, pull it, and a bit more appears. None of that is relevant either (but now I've accidentally discovered how to get street view). I pull it again because something happened the first time and yet more stuff appears, but nothing relevant. I realise that it can't be this hard, so I go back to the burger menu and unintuitively click "satellite". I don't want satellite, and this menu item is already highlighted, and it never occurs to me that someone would put a toggleable item in a list of menu entries without any indication that it's a toggle. But bamn there it is.
So, how would I change Maps? Just put a few more affordances in there. Maybe watch how people unfamiliar with the app try to do stuff.
There are lots of things I like about maps. There's some churn in businesses on my street and maps always seems happy to change info.
In the past there was a ton of research into user interaction with UI. Obviously loads of that fails on mobile, but Google is a smart data driven company that could create a new body of work for mobile.
I know you're making a bigger point, but just in case you are still wondering: have you tried to touch the highlighted satellite option again to unhighlight it? Some of the items in that menu enable and disable layers. Satellite is one such layer. Keep in mind that some of the layers are mutually exclusive, so you can't have public transport layer and traffic layer, which probably makes sense as it avoids cluttering by layers which are rarely needed simultaneously. This was confusing to me until I got a hang of it. This has been the case on Android for a while, but I have never tried the iOS app, so its behavior may be different. Besides that, I get your pain about pins being dropped whenever the map is touched (or clicked on desktop) to get rid of drop-downs and menus.
I hate the dynamic dialog underneath the map search box that automatically shrinks and expands in and out with various location information on it. It seems to always close when I want to look at it, and expand to cover the area of interest when I don't care about the info. A user has to spend some time trying to figure out the rules when the dialog expands or contracts or fight the logic... I would much rather prefer maps take a dedicated portion of screen for that info, and let me show or hide it explicitly.
This is a huge pet peeve. Things growing and shrinking as you click on them. The link is in one place when my brain tells my finger to click but by the time the mouse button is depressed the link has moved somewhere else.
I guess it's just the sacrifice we make for a cool looking web page.
I guess it's just the sacrifice we make for a cool looking web page.
Suggested changes:
1. Ensure you can enter two addresses into the search delimited by " to " and it be able to correctly split into directions, as you would expect. I tend to expect this to work and it took maps messing this up several times on different occasions to burn it into my head to put the destination address in the search, then click on directions, then enter my starting address.
2. If I type in "from (address)" and search it should show my address in the top of the directions from/to and focus on the "to" field. This is really broken currently, because it always seems to think I want directions to somewhere instead of from. Similarly, if I type in "to (address)" it should open directions and place the address in the correct field.
3. Sometimes the "near me" feature doesn't work. Try it with all sorts of things like "bathroom near me" and see how well it works.
Speaking of mass transportation, it'd be great if Alphabet could spend some money and effort on that. It makes much more sense from a business point-of-view than Google cars do- how much more R&D money is going to be sunk on that before all is said and done? Will it be worth it? Electric cars have to get their energy from somewhere, and everyone having their own car takes a toll on the environment. I understand it's a big place, but if you have the money to roll out fiber and wifi everywhere, you can buy buses, which are much cheaper.
1. Ensure you can enter two addresses into the search delimited by " to " and it be able to correctly split into directions, as you would expect. I tend to expect this to work and it took maps messing this up several times on different occasions to burn it into my head to put the destination address in the search, then click on directions, then enter my starting address.
2. If I type in "from (address)" and search it should show my address in the top of the directions from/to and focus on the "to" field. This is really broken currently, because it always seems to think I want directions to somewhere instead of from. Similarly, if I type in "to (address)" it should open directions and place the address in the correct field.
3. Sometimes the "near me" feature doesn't work. Try it with all sorts of things like "bathroom near me" and see how well it works.
Speaking of mass transportation, it'd be great if Alphabet could spend some money and effort on that. It makes much more sense from a business point-of-view than Google cars do- how much more R&D money is going to be sunk on that before all is said and done? Will it be worth it? Electric cars have to get their energy from somewhere, and everyone having their own car takes a toll on the environment. I understand it's a big place, but if you have the money to roll out fiber and wifi everywhere, you can buy buses, which are much cheaper.
Does GMaps use WebGL? I remember a brief moment in time during some WebGL beta when everything worked incredibly smoothly: scrolling, zooming, you name it. Personally, my main frustration with GMaps is the lagginess, as well as the fact that it looks interactive while it's loading the initial tiles, but is in fact just a series of still images.
Stop pretending you don't know where I am when I'm not logged in. I'm not going to log-in as I don't trust you, but I know you know who I am anyway.
If you know they know who you are why don't you log in, and if you don't trust them then why do you use the site at all
Yeah, this is an insult to our intelligence.
Yes! This is exactly how it used to work.
- Stop forcing users to sign into google maps mobile just to save their home/work directions. They took that option away and it's infuriating to old farts like me that I will _deliberately have a worse experience_ just so I don't have to sign in
- Stop hijacking basic user interactions like the mouse click. On desktop, if you click the map it will reverse geocode where you clicked (and show you the nearest road to it.) Although I understand the utility of such a feature, I have never ever wanted that. I live in NYC and no one has a car. I just want to change focus off of the constantly expanding and moving navigation window thing. I search for something, then click the background, and now my search is gone. Then I click the location area to get my search back, and nothing happens. I click the background to get rid of the stupid useless direction window, and now everything is gone. Oh, except the thing I clicked is now reverse geocoded for me. Infuriating.
- I challenge people to do the following on desktop: share a location in the middle of a park (hint: drop a pin first)
- Stop hijacking basic user interactions like the mouse click. On desktop, if you click the map it will reverse geocode where you clicked (and show you the nearest road to it.) Although I understand the utility of such a feature, I have never ever wanted that. I live in NYC and no one has a car. I just want to change focus off of the constantly expanding and moving navigation window thing. I search for something, then click the background, and now my search is gone. Then I click the location area to get my search back, and nothing happens. I click the background to get rid of the stupid useless direction window, and now everything is gone. Oh, except the thing I clicked is now reverse geocoded for me. Infuriating.
- I challenge people to do the following on desktop: share a location in the middle of a park (hint: drop a pin first)
Here some of my current complaints:
I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess.
Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.
And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]
[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
------
And here some suggestions:
- Allow the user to turn of 3D buildings. They are annoying, kill loading times, and are buggy and just a mess of polygons that looks more like abstract art than buildings.
- Use recent satellite imagery. When Bing and Here maps have images that are 10 (!) years newer than what Google uses, it’s just inacceptable
- Stop having a UI where everything changes while people click on it – Google’s own guidelines say that you should keep stuff predictable. Especially due to the slow loading times people often try to click somewhere, while they try to click some box moves, and they click something completely different. This is extremely frustrating, I’d even begin to call it clickjacking.
I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess.
Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.
And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]
[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
------
And here some suggestions:
- Allow the user to turn of 3D buildings. They are annoying, kill loading times, and are buggy and just a mess of polygons that looks more like abstract art than buildings.
- Use recent satellite imagery. When Bing and Here maps have images that are 10 (!) years newer than what Google uses, it’s just inacceptable
- Stop having a UI where everything changes while people click on it – Google’s own guidelines say that you should keep stuff predictable. Especially due to the slow loading times people often try to click somewhere, while they try to click some box moves, and they click something completely different. This is extremely frustrating, I’d even begin to call it clickjacking.
There's an option to disable 3D in the menu to the left of the search bar.
See? That’s one of the largest issues. Totally useless UI, no one finds any option. Thanks, btw, but that still doesn’t fix the satellite imagery from 2005 or the obscenely slow loading times (and extreme performance issues, Google maps is just soooo slow).
I, and everyone I know now switched to here, and we’ll probably stick with that for the next years.
I, and everyone I know now switched to here, and we’ll probably stick with that for the next years.
Vector tiles that work with trackpads correctly. (try to use two fingers on a trackpad to zoom in, and compare that to https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/examples/).
Also, the new faux-3d effect in the satellite imagery is really irritating.
Also, the new faux-3d effect in the satellite imagery is really irritating.
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 into the search box and it will find the address I had in mind. No street/city separation, no extra box for businesses, no strict order of name, address, zip code, city. And if it's unclear to maps, the suggestions almost always include what I had in mind.
- 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 into the search box and it will find the address I had in mind. No street/city separation, no extra box for businesses, no strict order of name, address, zip code, city. And if it's unclear to maps, the suggestions almost always include what I had in mind.
- 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.
- 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.
"Home" seems to be ok but "home" just gives me Home Depot results. Though if it's a Thursday or for some reason cloudier than normal "Home" will also give me Home Depot results.
* Disable that "feature" which rotates the map to show directions based on which way I'm facing. Why? Because a) I know my directions and b) GPS is frequently OFF and it rotates all screwy.
* Remember which city I'm in and index search results FIRST against my historical results and SECOND against local results and LASTLY against the world database at large. It's very frustrating re-opening google maps app, tying in something I queried for 10 minutes before and it starts auto-completing to somewhere across an ocean or two.
* Remember which city I'm in and index search results FIRST against my historical results and SECOND against local results and LASTLY against the world database at large. It's very frustrating re-opening google maps app, tying in something I queried for 10 minutes before and it starts auto-completing to somewhere across an ocean or two.
No more attempting to make things 3D when you zoom in. Way way too slow.
Scroll wheel should zoom in instantly (go to maps.bing.com for how to do this a little better, though to be fair to everyone Bing did take a step towards Google in the last ~month with their maps update and it is much slower. It used to be open as soon as you hit enter in the address bar)
Generally the maps could label streets more frequently. Far too often I'm confused about what street I'm looking at because the label is somewhere off screen.
Scroll wheel should zoom in instantly (go to maps.bing.com for how to do this a little better, though to be fair to everyone Bing did take a step towards Google in the last ~month with their maps update and it is much slower. It used to be open as soon as you hit enter in the address bar)
Generally the maps could label streets more frequently. Far too often I'm confused about what street I'm looking at because the label is somewhere off screen.
a. Bring back the sidebar.
b. On Android, add a menu option to download maps - "OK MAPS" is not obvious, easy to remember or in any way sensible in the slightest.
c. Make 3D mode work smoothly on an Android tablet. I have the LTE version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition and it is jerky, stuttery and slow in 3D mode. Compared to Apple maps on the base model iPad3 next to it, it is poor indeed.
b. On Android, add a menu option to download maps - "OK MAPS" is not obvious, easy to remember or in any way sensible in the slightest.
c. Make 3D mode work smoothly on an Android tablet. I have the LTE version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition and it is jerky, stuttery and slow in 3D mode. Compared to Apple maps on the base model iPad3 next to it, it is poor indeed.
I've never, ever used Google maps on a computer and had it work well. It's always at least a little laggy/slow even on a 60Mbps connection on a nice laptop.
I think above all they test on fast internet connections.
Honestly, I have an ~110Mb cable connection (From a fast CDN I can acheive downloads in excess of 13MB/sec) and new Google Maps is still a dumpster fire that is inferior to old Google Maps in every way I can imagine.
Ditto and I have a gigabit connection. Slooooow. I just profiled the maps start page and it transferred 2.5MB in 182 requests and took 2.56s to load. This compared to 544ms for the Google homepage. It's like their optimization team never got invited to Google Maps.
It's a CPU+GPU hog.
It always feels like they concentrate on the mobile navigation product and ignore the desktop which has a much wider range of uses.
Google Maps on the iPhone really is awful. Sometimes you swipe to close something, sometimes you click a teeny tiny little x, sometimes you click a left arrow as in going back.
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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.
To be fair, are there good web maps? OSM is much worse, for instance. Google maps are pretty usable by comparison.
I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess.
Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.
And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]
[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.
And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]
[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN
Thanks for the alternative!!
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.
Does anyone reading this work at Google?
Amen.
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.
I never had any issue with Google maps apart from slow loading maps (which is probably my connections fault). What issues are you experiencing?
Here's a bit more info on the design process:
https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
> including building a special variant of our full-color logo that is only 305 bytes, compared to our existing logo at ~14,000 bytes.
That's huge for low-bandwidth users.
That's huge for low-bandwidth users.
Why? This is one of the most cacheable resources. Also, it's displayed reasonably often, so I'd expect it to be rarely evicted from the device-local cache.
First impressions matter, and caches do not help with that in the slightest.
It doesn't really matter, because most of the top search results you click on will probably include 1MB of ad tracking javascript anyway.
Sad but true!
Here, the sad response to slow web page load times on mobile is normally "just get a modern internet connection!" or "use 4G" etc. but if we had desktop apps that took forever to load, you'd hear complaints pretty soon. A response of "get a faster computer" isn't accepted there, and accepting all this boatload of javascript isn't good either.
I can't remember the link but the average page size has been skyrocketing the past few years, which I think is sad. All that network traffic, electricity usage and CPU processing just for the same jQuery code to be flung across the Internet a billion times.
Here, the sad response to slow web page load times on mobile is normally "just get a modern internet connection!" or "use 4G" etc. but if we had desktop apps that took forever to load, you'd hear complaints pretty soon. A response of "get a faster computer" isn't accepted there, and accepting all this boatload of javascript isn't good either.
I can't remember the link but the average page size has been skyrocketing the past few years, which I think is sad. All that network traffic, electricity usage and CPU processing just for the same jQuery code to be flung across the Internet a billion times.
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What's most interesting to me is not so much the logotype itself (which is nice; the tilted 'e' is the perfect sans reference to the angled stroke in Catull), but that one of the top-tier identity components is a unified loading spinner.
While Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft all have their own branded spinners, Google has probably had both the most visually adventuresome and the most inconsistent spinners across all its products. Beyond unifying these, though, one can see this as a step past mere unification, and an attempt to take ownership of an unavoidable part of the cloud paradigm, latency. It's a pretty interesting move in terms of branding-UX coordination.
While Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft all have their own branded spinners, Google has probably had both the most visually adventuresome and the most inconsistent spinners across all its products. Beyond unifying these, though, one can see this as a step past mere unification, and an attempt to take ownership of an unavoidable part of the cloud paradigm, latency. It's a pretty interesting move in terms of branding-UX coordination.
Maybe they're backing the spinner with latency data collection across all their apps...
I'll be the first one to say it: I liked the older better. There was literally nothing wrong with it, it did not look dated at all.
We've been using the new logo internally for a week. Give it a day, and then go back and look at the old logo, and then tell me how dated it looks.
My series of responses within the span of 30 minutes:
* "It looks like fridge magnets for kids! I don't like it; the iconic lower case g is gone cause of designers obsession of san-serif == modern."
* "Glad that they continue to embrace their playful culture tho."
* "You know what, it's growing on me."
* "Haha, they tilted the e, how cute. Oh god what is happening to me!?"
* "Geeze, how old is Google books? They haven't even updated the logo!"
* "It looks like fridge magnets for kids! I don't like it; the iconic lower case g is gone cause of designers obsession of san-serif == modern."
* "Glad that they continue to embrace their playful culture tho."
* "You know what, it's growing on me."
* "Haha, they tilted the e, how cute. Oh god what is happening to me!?"
* "Geeze, how old is Google books? They haven't even updated the logo!"
nah, i still prefer the old one. I've been looking at the new one for a week and I don't see it as better or worse. Just different.
I'm not sure if you're using the same definition of "dated." Of course, once the logo has been changed, the old one is objectively dated, in the sense that it has been discontinued as of some previous date. I think the other commenter was claiming that, on its own, the previous logo did not look like it was an old logo only appropriate for a previous era.
(a) It still shows the old logo on Google.de
(b) The new one looks overly simplistic – and too geometric. It ignores the lessons typographs have learnt in centuries. Usually, you want glyphs that look balanced – the new logo does not look balanced.
(b) The new one looks overly simplistic – and too geometric. It ignores the lessons typographs have learnt in centuries. Usually, you want glyphs that look balanced – the new logo does not look balanced.
Actual honest question: what does it mean to "use a logo for a week"? I don't understand what I would do to "give it a day," unless you just mean wait and see how I feel tomorrow.
what other secrets from the future can you share with us since you are privileged to live inside the source of all knowledge?
They actually give a reason why they changed it in the blog post. Saying that the old one was designed for desktops and the new one is meant to scale better (for things like watches and phones I'd guess).
Edit: to add from their design blog[0], the new logo can be sent to a client in 305 bytes of compressed SVG (vs 14,000 bytes for the old logo). So it helps with lower bandwidth. The design post also mentions scaling of the logo.
[0] https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
Edit: to add from their design blog[0], the new logo can be sent to a client in 305 bytes of compressed SVG (vs 14,000 bytes for the old logo). So it helps with lower bandwidth. The design post also mentions scaling of the logo.
[0] https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
Yes, anytime there is a logo change there is a bunch of marketing talk about why. It's all bullshit. At the end of the day it was because someone wanted to make their mark and got a chance to do it. A tweaked logo won't affect Google's outcome one iota.
And it will be slightly changed in another couple of years by some new VP who wants to shake things up and get that next promotion.
And it will be slightly changed in another couple of years by some new VP who wants to shake things up and get that next promotion.
>"It's all bullshit. At the end of the day it was because someone wanted to make their mark"
Anything them there MBA-types do is bullshit, am I right? In fact, I have no idea why Google doesn't run from the command line only!
I'm sure glad to have HN around to tell me how most of the machinations of a large global corporation are pointless.
By the way, do you have one shred of evidence that this was a VP looking to get promoted?
Anything them there MBA-types do is bullshit, am I right? In fact, I have no idea why Google doesn't run from the command line only!
I'm sure glad to have HN around to tell me how most of the machinations of a large global corporation are pointless.
By the way, do you have one shred of evidence that this was a VP looking to get promoted?
No, MBAs do a lot of important things and I have no idea if anyone involved in the post has an MBA. The language used in this post uses a lot of words to explain nothing. It's basic corporate bullshit. MBAs are good at it, but by no means are they the only shovelers.
> Yes, anytime there is a logo change there is a bunch of marketing talk about why. It's all bullshit.
You refute that the old logo didn't scale down to smaller screens well? Getting the logo visible across mobile devices was a major part of the redesign. If your job is logos and branding, that seems like a real problem. And branding does affect a company's outcome, certainly more than "one iota". You are acting like a terrible cynic and troll.
You refute that the old logo didn't scale down to smaller screens well? Getting the logo visible across mobile devices was a major part of the redesign. If your job is logos and branding, that seems like a real problem. And branding does affect a company's outcome, certainly more than "one iota". You are acting like a terrible cynic and troll.
> A tweaked logo won't affect Google's outcome one iota.
Ah, but it will. When you're a company like Google, with hundreds of millions of users a day, it's only a matter of time that something like an outdated logo will start to lose you customers. People make sub-conscious inferences about your product based on appearance. If you start looking like that thing everyone used to use, they'll start looking for alternatives.
Ah, but it will. When you're a company like Google, with hundreds of millions of users a day, it's only a matter of time that something like an outdated logo will start to lose you customers. People make sub-conscious inferences about your product based on appearance. If you start looking like that thing everyone used to use, they'll start looking for alternatives.
Is that your gut instinct or is there research to suggest that that's the case?
My personal process for using Google (not saying everyone is the same, but...) goes something like this:
1. Type "g" into the address bar
2. Press enter, because www.google.com auto-populates at that point
3. Start typing my query while the animation of the day is loading
4. Press enter
5. Review the results
My personal process for using Google (not saying everyone is the same, but...) goes something like this:
1. Type "g" into the address bar
2. Press enter, because www.google.com auto-populates at that point
3. Start typing my query while the animation of the day is loading
4. Press enter
5. Review the results
Why not just run the search straight from your browser's address bar or search field?
I could, but it's more of a force of habit- but if I did that would further prove my point that the choice of logo doesn't make any difference to people using the site for search.
Yes, I always think it's the designer equivalent of the programmers who always blame pre-existing codebases no matter what, until they refactor it the way they like.
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When I was younger I didn't use Yahoo! because I disliked their logo and the use of ! in their name.
Petty? Yes. Did it effect their market share? By at least 1 - yes.
I highly doubt I was the only one to act like that. Design matters. Even if you don't think it does.
E:
For those wondering, I also didn't enjoy listening to Panic! At the Disco. They also eventually dropped the !.
Petty? Yes. Did it effect their market share? By at least 1 - yes.
I highly doubt I was the only one to act like that. Design matters. Even if you don't think it does.
E:
For those wondering, I also didn't enjoy listening to Panic! At the Disco. They also eventually dropped the !.
I guess I shouldn't ask if you're a Godspeed You! Black Emperor fan...
> They actually give a reason why they changed it in the blog post.
This was the part where I literally thought "How do they come up with this bullshit?".
It doesn't sound genuine at all.
This was the part where I literally thought "How do they come up with this bullshit?".
It doesn't sound genuine at all.
Uncharitably, I'd say the old logo looked much more professional, and so didn't jive with Google's corporate ethos of "seem as much like a preschool as humanly possible". The new one definitely fits better in that respect.
When you're collecting the world's data, it's in your best interest to come off as cuddly as possible. It works.
My initial reaction is that I like the old one better for now, on my desktop, in a static sense.
But the new one is nice, and the functionality behind it from scaling to leading the users through task-flows just makes too much sense.
And like the shift on iOS, I probably won't like the aesthetics of the old design compared to the new in a few days anyway.
But the new one is nice, and the functionality behind it from scaling to leading the users through task-flows just makes too much sense.
And like the shift on iOS, I probably won't like the aesthetics of the old design compared to the new in a few days anyway.
I agree--there's something--I don't know, "disposable" or "fadish" or "bland" about the feel of the new one. It seems to have lost personality.
It's design. It'll change even when it doesn't need to, almost by definition.
Wow, that's an uncharitable opinion of design and designers. They're highly-trained professionals too, and redesigns like this aren't done just for the heck of it -- according to the blog post, this measurably increases performance on small screens and in low-bandwidth contexts.
Being able to do everything with SVGs is admittedly nice. But if Google was worried about performance on small screens and in low-bandwidth contexts, we wouldn't have Material design, as it's animations have quite a bloated effect on performance. Particularly on devices with low power/low processing. Page loads on desktops for some Google sites are up to ten seconds now.
But yes, most redesigns are done just for the heck of it. I have a pretty uncharitable opinion of design and designers too, if only because very few Silicon Valley designers seem to have any idea how the users experience (and hate) their work. (I remember back when I heard about Google doing heavy testing with normal users before making changes, and it's very clear that that stopped when Duarte stepped in.)
But yes, most redesigns are done just for the heck of it. I have a pretty uncharitable opinion of design and designers too, if only because very few Silicon Valley designers seem to have any idea how the users experience (and hate) their work. (I remember back when I heard about Google doing heavy testing with normal users before making changes, and it's very clear that that stopped when Duarte stepped in.)
> But if Google was worried about performance on small screens and in low-bandwidth contexts, we wouldn't have Material design, as it's animations have quite a bloated effect on performance. Particularly on devices with low power/low processing. Page loads on desktops for some Google sites are up to ten seconds now.
Poorly performing animations do not work that way.
Poorly performing animations do not work that way.
There's Material Design Light, which seems to work pretty well for low-performing browsers: http://www.getmdl.io/index.html
Doesn’t help with Google Maps, or Inbox, which take ages (literally, sometimes half a minute) to load and still lagg forever.
You're about as far from a definition for design as one could be.
> There was literally nothing wrong with it, it did not look dated at all.
It definitely didn't look dated. That's because no other tech company in the world imitated Google's choice to use a font inspired by 15th century typography that literally looks like it was created with a calligraphy brush.
It definitely didn't look dated. That's because no other tech company in the world imitated Google's choice to use a font inspired by 15th century typography that literally looks like it was created with a calligraphy brush.
Oddly, I prefer the "crayon-grained" version of it that appears at the end of their home page's scribbling animation just before it turns into solid colors.
The solid colors seem too "loud" to me; they should probably be pastel. I think they are more noticeable now because the letters are so thick.
Also, the capital "G" looks wrong; I think the part that looks most strange is the upper curl, which doesn't seem to go far enough.
The solid colors seem too "loud" to me; they should probably be pastel. I think they are more noticeable now because the letters are so thick.
Also, the capital "G" looks wrong; I think the part that looks most strange is the upper curl, which doesn't seem to go far enough.
You're totally right, the solid color version hurts my eyes looking at it because it's so bright and loud.
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 for the Windows logo, then completely replacing Windows' logo with a grayscale tilted pane of glass.
Why? Why fix what's not broken? Why replace the well-known with the unrecognisable?
Google's logo, the one they used from 1999-2010, was also iconic. It was easily readable: it had a typeface made for legibility and style, not made to be mathematically simple. It contrasted well with any background. It was the logo that everyone knew.
And while this particular change isn't quite so drastic as Microsoft's was, it's still strange to me. Why is it necessary? People surely won't think less of Google for sticking with the one they've used for so long. It doesn't make them look dated: they had already tweaked the hues and the drop-shadow slightly so it fits in. And the company's not headed in some radical new direction that they need to symbolically gesture about.
I don't get it. I probably never will.
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 for the Windows logo, then completely replacing Windows' logo with a grayscale tilted pane of glass.
Why? Why fix what's not broken? Why replace the well-known with the unrecognisable?
Google's logo, the one they used from 1999-2010, was also iconic. It was easily readable: it had a typeface made for legibility and style, not made to be mathematically simple. It contrasted well with any background. It was the logo that everyone knew.
And while this particular change isn't quite so drastic as Microsoft's was, it's still strange to me. Why is it necessary? People surely won't think less of Google for sticking with the one they've used for so long. It doesn't make them look dated: they had already tweaked the hues and the drop-shadow slightly so it fits in. And the company's not headed in some radical new direction that they need to symbolically gesture about.
I don't get it. I probably never will.
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.
I don't understand marketing either, but I doubt a company like Google makes a change like this until it's been focus-grouped and A/B tested ad nauseam.
That's exactly the problem with these sort of changes. They lack heart. They're not made because of intuition or legitimate business value, they're made to generate publicity and done in the interests of a small subset of people who use the product (in this case, focus groups, etc.).
It's largely arbitrary what a company's logo looks like to me, but aesthetically this change seems largely unnecessary.
It's largely arbitrary what a company's logo looks like to me, but aesthetically this change seems largely unnecessary.
I had not noticed that about Microsoft but it is a very good point! Thanks for mentioning it.
The tilted monochrome pane of glass is truly funny.
The tilted monochrome pane of glass is truly funny.
The favicon still hasn't changed: https://www.google.com/favicon.ico
I can't imagine the nightmare it must updating the logo for a company like Google. There must be so many forgotten places that will be missed.
I can't imagine the nightmare it must updating the logo for a company like Google. There must be so many forgotten places that will be missed.
I think they just don't worry about it. Some Google sites still look like they did six years ago. They just make sure their big sellers that they're currently marketing look new.
EDIT: Can someone tell me how this comment is somehow objectionable? It's not like every app they publish on the Play Store or every site they have at *.google.com is using Material.
EDIT: Can someone tell me how this comment is somehow objectionable? It's not like every app they publish on the Play Store or every site they have at *.google.com is using Material.
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I used to work for a company that was acquired by a larger company it took us a good year before all the instances of the logo were found and replaced.
As of 13:33 EDT, it has. Just have to refresh.
I strongly suspect that the timing of this change is not random.
Android Marshmallow will probably feature it. Their design article even show how google now and voice search are supposed to look on mobile with the new logo.
The change has gone very smoothly on the web, but yes I am pretty sure that in some dark corners of their least used properties, there are some forgotten logos.
The change has gone very smoothly on the web, but yes I am pretty sure that in some dark corners of their least used properties, there are some forgotten logos.
Just when I thought we might be starting to pivot away from flat design - does anyone know of a different design paradigm that is being used by smaller/fringe designers who are tired of flat/minimal UX/UI?
Yes. Check out adaptive design. Instead of responsive, start talking in a way that specific user wants. No one-for-all design, which has to cater to both the power user and grandma, but a design that adapts itself to your (or similar) behavior. For example: count the times that users use 2-3 steps to perform the same task, then automatically make it a one-click process for them. Being able to change the top bar color on HN is also a form of adaptive design, just one requiring manual action.
Throwback 90's?
I'm so glad we're mostly rid of useless ornamentation: endless bevels, drop-shadows, gradients, and skeuomorphism...
There are many different takes on flat design, so it's not a design mono-culture. Google, Microsoft and Apple all have unique, flat, design languages.
I'm so glad we're mostly rid of useless ornamentation: endless bevels, drop-shadows, gradients, and skeuomorphism...
There are many different takes on flat design, so it's not a design mono-culture. Google, Microsoft and Apple all have unique, flat, design languages.
More like throwback 1920's when Grotesque sans fonts became commonplace for signage and inscriptions on buildings.
Huh, I never thought of that, how they're all so different. Microsoft uses flat, very contrasting rectangles, versus google uses rounded shapes and pastel colors.
What's wrong with gradients when used in a non-skeuomorphic way?
>different takes on flat design
Yes, they all use a different color scheme.
Yes, they all use a different color scheme.
But perhaps a bit better than the '90s? It's uncluttered but everyone knows they shouldn't use <blink> and <marquee>.
Just because you don't understand what they do doesn't make them useless ornamentation.
Just curious, why did you think there was a pivot away from flat design?
I'm also interested in learning about some alternative designs though.
I'm also interested in learning about some alternative designs though.
In my experience "flat design" seems to have become synonymous with hidden and undiscoverable. Metro and Material were/are horrible in this respect (I don't use iOS so I don't know how Apple's version fares in that regard).
My experience is that it seems to be based on the philosophy of "just touch things to learn what they do" but then you're constantly punished with "oh, you touched something so things changed". It's a minefield.
It's not particularly the "flat" design that's at fault here, but it's lumped with this simultaneous trend of feature deletion and cryptoUI.
My experience is that it seems to be based on the philosophy of "just touch things to learn what they do" but then you're constantly punished with "oh, you touched something so things changed". It's a minefield.
It's not particularly the "flat" design that's at fault here, but it's lumped with this simultaneous trend of feature deletion and cryptoUI.
A major part of material is that nothing is hidden.
No right clicking, no long press, overflow style menus are meant to be used sparingly.
No right clicking, no long press, overflow style menus are meant to be used sparingly.
Perhaps in theory, but not in practice. One thing about material is that you can't even see the edges of widgets. Sometimes you have to touch exactly on top of some letter because the sensitive area doesn't have any padding. Often when you think you're touching one thing, you end up touching another. Sometimes you have really tiny sensitive areas surrounded by vast wastelands of insensitive negative space with no visual separation of the two. Material also doesn't work well with pointing devices, IMHO. ModernUI seems to have evolved a little better in that aspect. I sense my Chromebook experience devolving with each update.
Why do we need another paradigm? Stop designing websites to be identical.
Object-Oriented? Functional? Why do we need more programming paradigms? Stop writing programs to be identical.
Flat design is easy to accomplish for designers who never learned how to draw, or do computer modeling.
Unfortunately, most design programs don't actually teach these foundational skills. That means there are a lot of designers out there who are forced to work in an oversimplified print-design style to hide their incompetence.
As someone who hires for this stuff, finding skilled designers is unimaginably hard.
I hear designers constantly complaining about the lack of jobs. They're full of it. The problem is the lack of skilled applicants. Design has become filled with lazy people, while being arguably one of the hardest fields to be good at. I've had ads out in a major US city for months for a very good paying design job, and have yet to see a portfolio that looked even moderately professional.
That's really where this all comes from, flat design hides designer incompetence.
Unfortunately, most design programs don't actually teach these foundational skills. That means there are a lot of designers out there who are forced to work in an oversimplified print-design style to hide their incompetence.
As someone who hires for this stuff, finding skilled designers is unimaginably hard.
I hear designers constantly complaining about the lack of jobs. They're full of it. The problem is the lack of skilled applicants. Design has become filled with lazy people, while being arguably one of the hardest fields to be good at. I've had ads out in a major US city for months for a very good paying design job, and have yet to see a portfolio that looked even moderately professional.
That's really where this all comes from, flat design hides designer incompetence.
While flat design can certainly help cover up incompetence, I don't know if I'd agree with "that's where this all comes from." A lot of it is driven by functionality: flat designs generally scale better visually across devices, and generally produce smaller file sizes so downloading images is faster.
Agree strongly that good designers are very hard to come by - it takes years of experience combined with some level of innate talent to be a top level designer.
Agree strongly that good designers are very hard to come by - it takes years of experience combined with some level of innate talent to be a top level designer.
The level and breadth of skill you're describing sounds more in tune with someone who isn't calling themselves "just a designer". They'd have a broader digital arts background and advertise themselves as illustrators too.
Maybe change the job title and see what happens?
Maybe change the job title and see what happens?
Interesting. Are you open to training?
I've always viewed success as passionate curiosity. If the mindset is there, but not the skill, you can teach the later.
I've always viewed success as passionate curiosity. If the mindset is there, but not the skill, you can teach the later.
Do you have an email where I could forward you a resume for a designer?
I assume by resume you mean portfolio?
richard [|)07] laborde [@7] gmale
richard [|)07] laborde [@7] gmale
Yes, portfolio. Thank you.
richard [|)07] laborde [@7] gmale
Months at a time? Try paying more.
We've offered a salary twice the median for our city, plus benefits, paid transportation, 401k matching and 3-year enrollment to our profit sharing plan.
It's not a pay issue as best as I can tell.
It's not a pay issue as best as I can tell.
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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 still can't fill the position. It doesn't make any sense.
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 still can't fill the position. It doesn't make any sense.
Sure it can make sense, it was already said in the post you replied to; it's possible for there to be a lack of high-level professionals.
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.
So I don't think if I were a good graphic designer now, I'd be stoked on 70k a year in most locales.
Didn't you just say you haven't been able to find one with the money you're offering? I'm not sure where you're located, but it's certainly possible that you're not paying enough.
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I would be cool if everything was done with SVGs and styles that could be efficiently accomplished with SVGs. But I do kinda miss the more... Windows XP-style design.
I've always avoided the term "flat design" as I would call it an oversimplification of several different concepts and tools designers use. You might find this thing I wrote back in 2013, just before iOS 7 was unveiled, interesting: http://interuserface.net/2013/05/flat-is-not-the-opposite-of...
There are many, but my vote goes for flat 3d [0]. It is a natural progression from purely flat. It adds more context, and gives the designer more room (an extra dimension!) to be innovative without being intrusive.
Flat animated is sort of where it is at now. Google's material would fall under flat animated as well as much of iOS 8/9, but drop shadows and gradients are better replaced with subtle tones and accenting along the lines of posterized Anime art [1].
As a designer if you can make Google and Apple's latest efforts look dated, you've done an excellent job. Flat 3d sort of does that.
--
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=flat+3d+ui&es_sm=93&source=l...
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=posterized+art&es_sm=93&sour...
Flat animated is sort of where it is at now. Google's material would fall under flat animated as well as much of iOS 8/9, but drop shadows and gradients are better replaced with subtle tones and accenting along the lines of posterized Anime art [1].
As a designer if you can make Google and Apple's latest efforts look dated, you've done an excellent job. Flat 3d sort of does that.
--
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=flat+3d+ui&es_sm=93&source=l...
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=posterized+art&es_sm=93&sour...
Doesn't really do anything for me one way or the other. It's fine, but so was the previous design. It's just... meh.
I find myself reminded of an xkcd strip: https://xkcd.com/915/
I find myself reminded of an xkcd strip: https://xkcd.com/915/
So how far can Google take the "kid friendly" aesthetic?
Anyone remember Colorforms? http://www.liveandlearn.com/shop/images/Original_Colorforms....
Anyone remember Colorforms? http://www.liveandlearn.com/shop/images/Original_Colorforms....
I was always a Lite-Brite man myself...
http://i.imgur.com/8efMGD0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8efMGD0.jpg
I understand why Google needed to update their identity, but it feels like this logo has gone through endless committee after committee.
It doesn't actually convey any brand to me, just a very safe interpretation of Material Design. That seems short-sighted to me, since an identity typically lasts much longer than a design language.
It doesn't actually convey any brand to me, just a very safe interpretation of Material Design. That seems short-sighted to me, since an identity typically lasts much longer than a design language.
The animation on google.com even implies it was designed by committee, as apparently separate hands reach up to place each letter. I thought that was funny.
Not only the logo, they have changed the size of search box: http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-more-height-to-their...
And not for the first time! I remember when the buttons and search field had your OS's default button height and styling. Those days are sadly long-gone.
Fear not! You can have the 1999 logo and search experience again right now! http://www.google.com/custom
Oh my god, no! It's 8 pixels taller! My world is falling apart!
Just kidding, I like it =)
Just kidding, I like it =)
I expected more attention to detail for a project this big. They are using the new logos in a few places now. All suffer from various problems. The one on the Google Official Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/google-update.html) has hinting problems most noticeably on "l" symbol (zoomed version – http://i.imgur.com/1kRZB5o.png). The same with the logo on the Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) and with the presented Google Logotype on the Google Design blog (https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident..., https://g-design.storage.googleapis.com/production/v5/assets...). The black SVG logo at the bottom of the last page has some unkempt figures and a leftover line.
On a positive note, the logo image (http://googleblog.blogspot.ru/2015/09/google-update.html) is well optimized with Zopfli (https://github.com/google/zopfli). However, I don't see why the new logo is smaller (from here – https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...). I could bring down the size of the previous one (http://i.imgur.com/lfmoqgP.png) to 8 174 bytes (originally 14 022 bytes) vs 13 804 bytes for the new one. Of course, SVG versions are both much smaller.
On a positive note, the logo image (http://googleblog.blogspot.ru/2015/09/google-update.html) is well optimized with Zopfli (https://github.com/google/zopfli). However, I don't see why the new logo is smaller (from here – https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...). I could bring down the size of the previous one (http://i.imgur.com/lfmoqgP.png) to 8 174 bytes (originally 14 022 bytes) vs 13 804 bytes for the new one. Of course, SVG versions are both much smaller.
This reminds me of how Microsoft, when they changed their logo to a squared off Windows flag, didn't even try to hint it and it was a blurry mess everywhere.
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.
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.
I think you're trying a bit too hard here. Google has had this sort of branding for a long time, including pre-snowden.
They went from "lively and fun" with bright colors to "childish" with the font on this latest iteration ( once again, the doodle says it all). Given the company's bank account, and the fact that we're talking about the company's main logo, i don't think this kind of evolution is only due to one designer's decision.
I like it except I wish they had kept the old kind of lower case g (TIL it's called a "double story g": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G#/media/File:LowercaseG.svg), there's something pleasantly unnecessary about that kind of g.
Yeah I like it too. And thanks for the "double story g"... I always referred to it as "those scissor handles g": http://www.ekal.pk/barber-scissors/fancy-scissors-070s.jpg
This font fits in perfectly with the Alphabet theme. Straight out of a kids book.
This is the first thing I saw, a play on "alphabet" lettering you'd see on a classroom wall. I dig it with that in mind.
In hindsight, the Alphabet page has had the uppercase G from the new Google logo all along.
https://abc.xyz/
https://abc.xyz/
Wait, what. At roughly the 1:34 mark, the voice pulls up photos of her kid with a pumpkin. Do you have to tag your photos with "pumpkin" first or is the recent "Choose the picture of waffles" in Recaptcha fueling that?
The '"Choose the picture of waffles" in Recaptcha' actually is training a neural network, which then is used to tag your photos.
No, they are automatically classifying photos. If you have photos in Google Photos, you can try it out with words such as "forest", or "dog", or "grill". It's pretty cool and scary at the same time :-)
I did not know they were doing anything other than identifying faces that you've already tagged. Grabbing the pumpkin, whatever out of the photo is just wonderful.
It's even better than that. It can recognize landmarks. I can ask it "Show me pictures of myself in Paris" and it finds 25-year-old scans that I uploaded that haven't got any kind of geographic data in the EXIF.
The technology underpinning this stuff has been brewing / percolating / developing for years [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...]
Automatic photos classification is just the most visible iteration of the tech.
Automatic photos classification is just the most visible iteration of the tech.
You don't even need to tag faces. It finds all the faces that have been in your photos and picks one for each to be the search "face" for that person.
It's pretty terrific. You can search for things like "wedding" or "beach" or "birthday" or "christmas", people's names, "march 2008", "kyoto", etc, and it uses everything at its disposal: the image itself, the EXIF data, geotagging, the date it was taken, the filename, the album name...
From the video: "Think about how far Google has evolved from the ten blue links."
I do, and it's not always a good thing.
Also, I don't think I'm a fan of that new typeface. The cutesiness with the rotated 'e' on the end is sort of teeth-grating to me: it breaks up the rhythm of the rest of the wordmark.
I do, and it's not always a good thing.
Also, I don't think I'm a fan of that new typeface. The cutesiness with the rotated 'e' on the end is sort of teeth-grating to me: it breaks up the rhythm of the rest of the wordmark.
The slanted e is a callback to the previous Google logo, which also had a slanted e.
The O's were slightly tilted too, no?
They still are in the new logo. They're perfect circles, but they've been rotated to the exact same angle as the old "o"s.
It looks a bit like Circular, which has also been adopted by Alphabet (see the page source for abc.xyz), Google's parent company. Circular has been quite popular of late with many companies adapting and adopting it for their identity.
I think the Alphabet logo is based on Product Sans mentioned here https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident... (The lower-case ‘a’ is distinctive.) I wonder whether abc.xyz will switch the body text now that the new Google style is public.
I ran a survey to gauge the reaction toward the logo change and shared the results at http://blog.zmxv.com/2015/09/crowds-reaction-to-googles-new-...
HN discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161043
HN discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161043
Not an improvement in the multicolor "G" icon - the weakest color (yellow) effectively bisects the G vertically at a hot point along the horizontal axis - hot because it's the very leftmost spot that most eyes will encounter first.
I'm really glad they have finally left the serif font behind. No matter how much I read about the benefits of serifs, I can't fight the immediate association: serif = old, sans-serif = modern.
That's too simplistic, don't you agree? This is exactly why I prefer serif.
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...
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.
Holo was supposed to be the unified Android design for all time, and it barely lasted two years. Even after the "Material" thing, Google has inconsistently applied it's supposed golden standard, and some Material elements, like the FAB, have actually been REMOVED from Google Keep in favor of the more Holo-esque bottom action bar, for example.
Material Design will probably be suddenly replaced by something with an equally trendy name when Google needs more PR.
Material Design will probably be suddenly replaced by something with an equally trendy name when Google needs more PR.
Wow, Gruber's not a fan [1]. Can't say I'm surprised, but this seems harsh even coming from him.
[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/01/google-logo
[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/01/google-logo
I'm using an original Google Nexus 7 (2012 with latest Android) and try to view this page using an original Google browser (Chrome) and this is one of the few pages that make chrome crash. Same on my motorola razr i.
I love it when pages that talk about “cross platform“ behave this way.
I love it when pages that talk about “cross platform“ behave this way.
Same on Vanilla Android/Chrome on Motorola G2.
I only noticed this when I saw it on LinkedIn side-by-side.
The Microsoft logo and the Google logo are very similar in style: http://i.imgur.com/s7kR6jJ.png
The blocks in the middle are the colors from both the logos.
The Microsoft logo and the Google logo are very similar in style: http://i.imgur.com/s7kR6jJ.png
The blocks in the middle are the colors from both the logos.
I found it hard to compare colors using your blocks, so I remade your image: http://i.imgur.com/auB75fj.png
The yellow is very, very similar.
The yellow is very, very similar.
That looks like Bauhaus font, that used to be so common for all things Atari.
Here is an example:
http://www.atarimania.com/2600/boxes/hi_res/yars_revenge_col...
(look at the first line, with its slanted e -- like the last e in Google.)
More observations on Atari Abahaus here:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/164954-deans-foods-using-at...
Here is an example:
http://www.atarimania.com/2600/boxes/hi_res/yars_revenge_col...
(look at the first line, with its slanted e -- like the last e in Google.)
More observations on Atari Abahaus here:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/164954-deans-foods-using-at...
I love Atari, and I can see some small similarities (the capital 'G' and the lowercase 'e'). But overall, I can't say that I agree. For what it's worth, I like the Bauhaus font a bit more.
I'm sure Groupon will be just thrilled to see all the Google app icons updating to contain a bold, sans-serif letter G.
http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nexu...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.groupon
http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/nexu...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.groupon
The logo they used from 1999 - 2010 [1] was the best. It was clear, distinctive, and pleasing to the eye. The one they used after that until 2013 was a step backwards, but not too much worse. Those two are better than the rest by a huge margin.
This latest logo is... I don't have the right words. Looks daycare copy. Welcome to Google. We're not useful, we're safe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_logo
This latest logo is... I don't have the right words. Looks daycare copy. Welcome to Google. We're not useful, we're safe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_logo
Do not like the "Sans Serif" trend. Serifs can be good and Google looked awesome with serifs.
None of Google's logos seem particularly good or interesting to me. From a business standpoint, pre-school style design is probably the image they want to portray; that Google is very simple and easy to use. If you're going to criticize the logo, criticize it on it's merits as a logo: giving the first impression you want to foster in it's users. Not just whether or not you think it looks prettier.
Some weird alignment with the "l" in Google. It's 2 pixels off the baseline: http://i.imgur.com/BeSYG3a.png
It also does not work with the country subtitle. These are touching the letter "e", perhaps showing they forgot to test this with different country names and x-height.
It also does not work with the country subtitle. These are touching the letter "e", perhaps showing they forgot to test this with different country names and x-height.
For a company with so much money I find it amazing how often they turn out products with ugly/unfriendly user interfaces.
Google is putting a much greater emphasis on design, and their recent products show.
What recent products are you thinking of?
What recent products are you thinking of?
I don't usually find their interfaces ugly per se; if anything I find they've made sacrifices in the user experience for the sake of making things prettier.
I can't count the times Google Maps inexplicably zooms out to show me my directions to a coffee shop 10 minutes from me at the level of the entire state. Or when I type in "home" (which I have set), it suggesting I travel to a place in London called "Home Sweet Home" (I'm from the US). Or sometimes just zooming all the way out to show me my location at the global scale when I want to know what's near me.
I can't count the times Google Maps inexplicably zooms out to show me my directions to a coffee shop 10 minutes from me at the level of the entire state. Or when I type in "home" (which I have set), it suggesting I travel to a place in London called "Home Sweet Home" (I'm from the US). Or sometimes just zooming all the way out to show me my location at the global scale when I want to know what's near me.
The video reminds me of [EPIC 2014](http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/).
Nice design, but dynamic logos for two days in a row... I don't know...
If anyone needs that, to disable these logos just add this URL:
If anyone needs that, to disable these logos just add this URL:
https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/*
I didn't think they could make it look any more as if it were aimed at 5-year-olds, but they've done it.
Seriously, though, it's probably a better logo. It's simpler and has a more weight while the old one was kind of overly light and spindly. I wouldn't be surprised if the next step in the logo's evolution would ditch the candy colors and go with a single color, in which the new logo would look just fine. That might strike some as sacrilege but it would work much better as a logo and look less like a set of plastic toys for preschoolers.
Seriously, though, it's probably a better logo. It's simpler and has a more weight while the old one was kind of overly light and spindly. I wouldn't be surprised if the next step in the logo's evolution would ditch the candy colors and go with a single color, in which the new logo would look just fine. That might strike some as sacrilege but it would work much better as a logo and look less like a set of plastic toys for preschoolers.
I first noticed the new logo in Google Mail, where I use the light grey theme, so the logo is grey as well, and small. My first impression was: bad, very bad. Too bold, and unbalanced. It's better on Google Search, but still somewhat unbalanced. I'll get used to it, I'm sure.
I'm curious how Brand New will rate it.
http://underconsideration.com/brandnew/
I'm curious how Brand New will rate it.
http://underconsideration.com/brandnew/
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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.
Quite the opposite, actually. http://i.imgur.com/bKBcIyX.jpg [1]
[1] https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
[1] https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-ident...
Yes, I said "optical" spacing. Not real spacing.
The link you provide is interesting. However, any technical explanation doesn't solve the optical illusion that the last three letters appear to be closer together than the first three letters.
The link you provide is interesting. However, any technical explanation doesn't solve the optical illusion that the last three letters appear to be closer together than the first three letters.
Yes – that’s why normally you use serif fonts and modify the width of the strokes dynamically. Also the reason why the old 'o's were tilted.
Ironically, the "Goo" spacing is actually about 25% narrower that that between the "gle" characters
It seems they didn't update http://www.google.com/press/images.html yet, but the doodle is available here:
https://www.google.com/doodles/googles-new-logo
A critique, "Google’s new look is tragic sans": https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/09/01/g...
I don't know why "news" like that are always considered so important. That logo is ugly, but so was the previous one. It doesn't seem like it terribly hurt their business. Not that I don't care about style — I admire good style. But it is secondary, at least for google. They do well with whatever logo there is.
they have a Doodle of the change its live now https://www.google.com.au/logos/doodles/2015/september-1st-d...
In case the link is not working: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
Interesting to me is that in the video they use "you can Google it" and "let's Google it". In the past they - apparently - have made pains to avoid using Google as a verb as that's a type of genericisation of the trademark in to a term for internet searching in general.
They've always been fine with people using it as a verb, as long as it's only used to mean searching with Google, not searching in general. That's what would risk genericisation.
Well, in German dictionaries are already listing "to google, searching in the internet for something, more specific, searching in the internet with a search engine, usually Google™."
That pretty much means the trademark is essentially gone.
That pretty much means the trademark is essentially gone.
Completely off topic,but can anyone point me to any google-related post which has not crossed 500 pts?
The animation crashed my android stock browser (and reset other running apps). It ran fine in firefox.
I feel like we-don't-care-about-design is kind of Googles thing. The new logo seems terrible, but that's appropriate. It could be a picture of pretty much anything, or there could be no logo. Regardless, I plan to continue using Google to search the WWW.
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 omnipresent creepy spy company. Therefore this naive, happy and care free logo. Vulgar in my eyes. Most people in this thread seem to miss this?
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?
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.
"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.
A turning point in a company's history has to come with rebranding. Otherwise the message won't be as strong. The emotional attachment will fade away with time I am sure. I will miss the logo as well.
As much as I want to hate this for being change just for the sake of change...I really don't. So I guess that's a point in its favor.
The amount of marketing-speak in the blog post does make me a little queasy though.
The amount of marketing-speak in the blog post does make me a little queasy though.
I used this new logo and turned (rotated) it into a new Google Scholar logo: http://i.imgur.com/j7L0goJ.png
In some places the favicon is not completely updated, as of this writing: http://google.co.in/favicon.ico
What I still like about google is it (mostly) still works without javascript and even without cookies.
Only groups is unreadable without javascript.
But they recently killed the old style google maps, the new one is horrid.
Only groups is unreadable without javascript.
But they recently killed the old style google maps, the new one is horrid.
It took me a bit to find the word I wanted to use to describe what Google's old logo had vs. the new one. I think the old logo was classier. This new one is sort of uninspiring.
I can almost feel the awkward vibe that went into not directly comparing search results over the years. It would have made the demise of real organic search too obvious.
Nice changes today, google! Really classy retro look! [0]. lol
[0]: http://i.imgur.com/ni6pCdb.png
[0]: http://i.imgur.com/ni6pCdb.png
Have they used polymer for buttons in google main page? It is interesting, it kinda shows polymer will become one of google's main project's.(If i am correct)
I love it, especially the singular "G". Wonderfully clean and modern - even though I didn't think the old "Google" was dated at all.
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.
I'd say it falls into "geometric sans-serif" because of its adherence to primitive shapes and near-lack of adornment.
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...
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Rockwell...
It's a very similar move that Facebook recently did. Move to a rounded sans serif. Facebook said it was to look more "friendly".
I can understand the reasons and like the dots/G but the whole word looks childish to me. Liked the old one and its longevity as well.
The l in the new logo is shorter than the G and it's driving me bonkers! Also the spacing doesn't seem quite right.
Looks like http://www.partycity.com/
It reminds me of a coloured arrow rotating backwards in time. Sort of like OSX's beachball but going the wrong way.
Rarely it happens a design change looks good on first sight.
This is that instance. Well done GOOG / abc.xyz
The tilted 'e' immediately reminds me of Enron.
You know: "Even the 'E' was crooked."
You know: "Even the 'E' was crooked."
Internet Explorer.
Yellow type on white is always bad design no matter how much the rest of the logo improves.
The new favicon resembles some sort of gay pride logo. It's a bit off-putting.
I ha-- I'm used to it.
The new Web UI for Google Play Music is horrendous. Sure, it looks nice, but the older interface was much simpler and easier to use (not to mention more responsive).
On the new logo... just went to google.com for the first time today. Ugh, no. I winced when I saw it.
On the new logo... just went to google.com for the first time today. Ugh, no. I winced when I saw it.
Anyone else feel the need to do a parody video demonstrating how the ads have encroached on the organic link space over the years?
Not hating, I actually like the new look, it was just the first thing I thought of when they mentioned the original "ten blue links".
Not hating, I actually like the new look, it was just the first thing I thought of when they mentioned the original "ten blue links".
[deleted]
I like the 'e'; looks like it's laughing.
Folks really seem to care a lot about a silly logo.
Urgh preferred the original 2013 flat serif font.
It feels kiddish and playful (in a positive way)!
Who ever actually goes directly to google.com? The only way I noticed this insignificant change was in my interactions with the results page. Why does this non-news have 375 points?
As you point out yourself, the Google logo exists in many places besides their homepage. (Plus many people still visit the homepage, even if you and I don't.)
I do. Just because you don't does that make you assume no one else does? and your actions represent every user on the internet?
I have my browser set to open google with every new tab.
I like the "Dots in Motion" language.
The G looks very similar to the G in the GuldenCoin logo (https://guldencoin.com/)
THIS IS HUGE! Totally worth the points, not.
Google will own RGB(Y) and sue and buy ebay.
First one to guess what effect this will have on $GOOGL? I mean, after all Google does things for a profit...
This is definitely good :)
New CEO, new logo. Nothing new there. Probably changed the carpet too. They always do.
Looks like the change that eBay did to it's logo last (?) year.
The G looks like a power button. Quick, someone critique that.
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gay
I don't know why someone changing the font in their logo should ever be HN's top news item. There is definitely more interesting stuff going on in tech this week.
Yeah, this is stupid. Who gives a fuck?
Wow, this is an very bold and risky move. The familiarity with the Google search prompt plays a significant role in user retention. Is this a sign of Google worrying about their current situation?
If they are worrying about this, they may have just alienated their old users. I think it is simply the result of a more design-oriented culture at Google. After Google+ tool unification, now a design unification.
I myself do not like this redesign, but I also did not like the old one. I am basically very averse to changes like this (probably a mental issue). I also do not like how Chrome hijacks the window style, or how Android automatically updates to a new Youtube app with a drastically new UI. I am probably a minority though, and still capable to use custom styles to change the logo back to the old "Backrub" logo, but I wonder if there are more who see these major redesigns as an invasion of sorts into their daily routines. Just as you created a mental map of the application, they change the location of the buttons, or show a different favicon.
If it is not too much to ask (or risky to maintain), think of keeping an "old.*.com" domain. There are users who will gladly make use of that. Being able to use your own design, or turn off "with this new logo we save 9999 bytes on mobile" distractions is also UX. And it would be good UX for me.
With this new logo, for me, the counter now starts at zero for Google. A clean slate. For all I care they may be the Facebook they so desperately desire to mimic.
I myself do not like this redesign, but I also did not like the old one. I am basically very averse to changes like this (probably a mental issue). I also do not like how Chrome hijacks the window style, or how Android automatically updates to a new Youtube app with a drastically new UI. I am probably a minority though, and still capable to use custom styles to change the logo back to the old "Backrub" logo, but I wonder if there are more who see these major redesigns as an invasion of sorts into their daily routines. Just as you created a mental map of the application, they change the location of the buttons, or show a different favicon.
If it is not too much to ask (or risky to maintain), think of keeping an "old.*.com" domain. There are users who will gladly make use of that. Being able to use your own design, or turn off "with this new logo we save 9999 bytes on mobile" distractions is also UX. And it would be good UX for me.
With this new logo, for me, the counter now starts at zero for Google. A clean slate. For all I care they may be the Facebook they so desperately desire to mimic.
I don't know about the logo, but I'll do know about Google's voice recognition. Yesterday, on my commute home I came across an accident that blocked the road. I pulled out my iPhone, loaded the Google app, and asked "give me directions home" and Google gave me directions home. Siri wouldn't have been able to do that. Siri can schedule my timers... and not much else, I don't trust it to take me home. I followed the Google directions and came across a road that had a lot of traffic. I glanced at my phone and saw another road (Google Maps) and followed it and enjoyed a lovely drive down a dirt road and saved myself some time (and other waiting for me on a backed up road). I got home only a few minutes later than normal.
Blah blah... I don't care about Google's logo, but I use my iPhone like a commodity and use Google's apps and services for the most important things. There are iPhone only apps I like, but when it comes to my mobile needs it's all about making calls (phone, a commodity), getting on the web (Chrome), and directions (Google Maps) dominates 2 of those 3.
Blah blah... I don't care about Google's logo, but I use my iPhone like a commodity and use Google's apps and services for the most important things. There are iPhone only apps I like, but when it comes to my mobile needs it's all about making calls (phone, a commodity), getting on the web (Chrome), and directions (Google Maps) dominates 2 of those 3.
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/SEnK37orPGI/AAAAAAAAAp...) it's obvious (again, with the benefit of hindsight) that they were all very inside-the-box. Apparently nobody even considered trying a different font.
This pg comment from that thread turned out to be particularly insightful, given today's news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211649