

Google Introducing New Visual Design Across All Products - nostrademons
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolving-google-design-and-experience.html

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flyosity
I think the dark grey bar across the top is a big problem for a few UX &
psychological reasons.

First, it's mentally oppressive. The black bar at the top is like working in a
room with a low ceiling painted black all day. It makes you feel boxed in.

Next, lighter colors that exist in the sky (blues, greys) tend to work better
at the top of interfaces. If you consider the screen to be your full field of
vision and relate it to what your eyes normally see when outside, the top-most
area of the screen is "the sky". Making the absolute top part of a webpage
black makes me think about a black sky which is ominous and indicates a storm
is coming.

Finally, it just looks unfriendly and robotic. Blue is a more humanistic color
and is more pleasing. I can't think of a worse choice for this newly-
redesigned top bar than the dark grey/black they decided on.

~~~
watty
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or these are genuine concerns. Black is
not my favorite design color but I think it works well for Google and
contrasts well in this case.

The black bar at the top is like working at night time, Google (the content)
being the light that guides the way. Blue bars work well on the bottom, giving
the feeling of floating peacefully in the ocean, yet at the top cause distress
- as if the user is drowning. Yes, I'm making this shit up and trying to sound
as ridiculous as OP.

~~~
danilocampos
And they say nerds don't grok design.

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peregrine
Google is criticized for never updating their style and never taking design
risks. They are now updating their style and taking design risks. Some people
will never be happy.

~~~
alexandros
I can never understand this sort of comment.

Obviously the people who criticise the lack of updates are not the same people
who are criticising the update.

This observation can only make sense if you aggregate the public into a single
person represented by the loudest complaining minority's opinion at any given
time. Well, yes, then that person would be wildly inconsistent. But it doesn't
actually exist.

~~~
peregrine
At the time the entire comment thread was filled with people complaining about
the new look and how awful it was.

I am thoughtlessly grouping a large group of people together and making an
argument against them.

My bad.

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51Cards
This is the same bad UI decision Google made with Gingerbread. Somewhere deep
inside Google is a UI person who thinks that medium grey on a black background
is easy to read. They got their opinion into Gingerbread making the status bar
very difficult to see... not to mention making all the icons much smaller. (my
girlfriend who has some vision problems downgraded back to Froyo just because
she couldn't see the status bar in 2.3.x). Now the same designer has got their
opinion into the main Google UI. I have good eyesight and I'm even finding the
new top bar to be difficult to scan. IMO this was not a wise decision at all.

~~~
nostrademons
FWIW, the people who did this UI redesign have nothing to do with Android.

~~~
51Cards
It really was a tongue in cheek comment ;) Main point is this trend towards
grey on black is a UI nightmare.

~~~
stock_toaster
I am wondering if this is more a move to unify design elements from Andriod
with the Google web presence...A way to bridge the gap between the mobile UI
(andriod) experience, and the google-web-at-large UI experience. I imagine as
part of branding and customer imprinting.

Even if that is not the base reason, it is interesting to consider.

~~~
Raphael
Hmm, maybe. The mobile site now has the menu look like tabs. Very cute, like a
miniature Chrome.

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grannyg00se
I find the black top bar to be too stark a contrast against the mostly white
results page. It makes it seem as though something extremely important is up
there.

How is this supposed to be an improvement? I feel like they changed it just
for the sake of change without any actual focus on usability.

~~~
Zaim2
That's what they were going for. Too many people were tuning the top bar out
for their liking probably. Now it's unmissable.

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zaidf
Google Instant. Now this. Is google just bored so much so that they are trying
to fix things that were never broken?

This is a company that cared so, so much about every pixel of their homepage.
And yet, they've just introduced a whole new set of colors and styles in one
go.

I won't go as far as calling this the start of goog decline. But it's def
headed to bloatland IMO.

~~~
courtewing
A unified bar at the top could be absolutely amazing for people that use a lot
of google products. My biggest beef with google right now is that even with a
unified login, there doesn't seem to be any sort of common interaction between
the various google components that I use.

Also, you don't like google instant? I thought that was one of the best
features they've implemented in any of their products since... well, for a
really long time.

~~~
thwarted
I had this exact problem (multiple gmail/gapps accounts that I'm in all day)
and the experience got a lot better a few days ago when this consistently
colored bar across the top was rolled out to me.

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lhnz
I like the new navbar. I think it will draw more attention to google's other
products. It also doesn't disturb me from the rest of the page, since it just
seems like the window has been reduced vertically.

~~~
Angostura
I too like the new nav-bar. I think it's a bit odd that clicking on the 'More'
option doesn't produce a dropdown in the same colour, however

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mcastner
You can see the new navbar in action on Google+: <https://plus.google.com/>

I preferred the lighter theme personally…

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mourique
I think they did this to promote the menu bar to all non-tech or non-internet
people. I can think of a lot of people who might see the bar for the first
time because it itches their eye (my mum for example). It's kind of a meta-
element made for browsing the googlesphere (aka internet?). I like it.

But they still have this _blank opening new tabs for mail, cal and everything.
That's just bad.

~~~
panacea
It also seems to become something more like the Windows taskbar, or the osX
dock/menubar. It's the 'Googlebar'.

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anigbrowl
Though not mentioned here, you can look forward to some substantial changes in
News soon as well, if the tests I have seen are any guide (as a user; I don't
speak for Google in any way).

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wazoox
From what I know of Google (knowing more every day as I'm reading _In the
plex_ ), they certainly did a whole lot of A/B testing before choosing this
black bar. It nonetheless sticks out unpleasantly. I really dislike it. Yahoo
News has a dark blue bar which is a _lot_ more pleasant. When using a
personalized background image, it also is somewhat better. But on the standard
Google page, meh.

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jarin
Argh this is terrible, I fear change.

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abbasmehdi
People like you for who you are, not for what you're trying to be. This
departure from minimalism is pretty un-Googly. I thought their philosophy was
‘functionality over usability over design’ and latency being the "prized
family jewel".

I hope the new guy on top didn't start thinking "Let's be more like Steve's
company". :)

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three14
The grey on black text works better on good monitors than on my laptop. I lose
contrast when the viewing angle changes, so if my laptop screen tilts a little
to much, the text becomes unreadable. I wonder if the designers tested on a
non high-end laptop.

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NathanKP
I really can't stand the black bar at the top of the screen. After so many
years of low contrast it feels way too distracting. But the redesign isn't
going to bother me that much since I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for
months.

Edit: If you can't stand the black bar either, just switch to the secure
version of Google: <https://encrypted.google.com/> They haven't changed it yet
and it usually lags behind on updates.

~~~
raldi
This is the sort of thing that seems hugely distracting for a day or two, and
in a week or two you'll be so used to it that, if someone were to take it
away, going back to the way it was would seem like a huge distraction. For
about two days.

~~~
Lewisham
Obviously, the nav bar has been internal for a while. I was not a big fan when
I first saw it either, but now I've grown to quite like it. It's across all
the products, and it sort of stamps the page as "you're at Google", much in
the same way that you feel when you see the orange at the top of HN, or the
blue at the top of Facebook. Even if you're tuned out, its in your peripheral
vision and you get that sense of place.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm an intern at Google)

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maigret
Interesting, IBM recently introduced a dark gray title bar _before Google_.
<http://www.ibm.com/us/en/>

~~~
Zakuzaa
Even Apple.com has a dark grey bar at the top.

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aidscholar
I really don't want a big black bar on top of my gmail.

~~~
DrCatbox
Make your own web mail?

~~~
martey
Or use a userscript to override the toolbar's CSS?

~~~
false
Or even better, use the user stylesheet. This is CSS job after all :)

Chrome: <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=2393>

FF: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/>

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cageface
Google's old utilitarian aesthetic is finally evolving into a credible counter
to Apple's design hegemony. I particularly like the clean, open design of the
new Honeycomb interface, with less of a dependence on explicit box sections.

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sandipagr
appears in other google products but not in gmail.

~~~
icebraining
It does in the "normal" Gmail, but not in Apps.

~~~
sandipagr
It does not appear for me in both "normal" gmail and Apps. It does however
appear in calendar, docs, reader and others

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dontlikevisual
I don t like the new visual of google. I don t like to have a menu like this.
It looks to serious...

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dontlikevisual
I don t like at all the new visual of Google. Too strict, too serious. Don t
like the menu box.

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cake
I'm surprised that they don't explain more their design choices (mainly the
black bar).

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jigs_up
What was wrong with the way it was? I preferred the simplicity of the previous
title bar.

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yanw
I approve of the new Maps UI: <http://maps.google.com/>

~~~
paganel
On my 13 inch MacBook the map itself only takes 50% of the actual screen real-
estate, the rest is filled up with garbage (big search buttons, this toolbar
which is not map-related, the left side-bar which is a giant, white, empty
rectangle the first time when I open the page, the "change map-type" buttons
which have gotten unnecessary bigger and bigger over time etc.). Compare this
to Wikimapia's "here's the map on 98% of your screen, do what you want with
it". Anyway, maybe it's just me, going to Google Maps because I love looking
at maps and not clicking on stupid adds.

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georgieporgie
The top bar made me think I was back on my Wordpress blog...

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igorgue
Black is the new black?

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cpeterso
scary: if you visit google.com with Google Chrome, you can _search by voice_ ,
even from your desktop computer (if you have a microphone and many laptops
do). The idea is cool, but this seems like a huge security/privacy problem!

~~~
icebraining
>seems like a huge security/privacy problem!

Not really; websites may _ask_ for speech input (using the 'speech'
attribute[1] in certain HTML tags), but the browser keeps full control of the
feature, so they can't enable it themselves without your intervention.

Of course, since Google controls Chrome, they can control that too, but on the
other hand, they already could - any native app can record sound. The solution
for that is simply not installing applications you don't trust.

[1]: <https://docs.google.com/View?id=dcfg79pz_5dhnp23f5>

------
lucascolusso
Killing design classics with Google

Coca-cola bottle, iPod shuffle and the London telephone booths revisited:
<http://post.ly/2IeYK>

