
Google Maps & Label Readability - Part 3 - domino
http://www.41latitude.com/post/3183269217/google-maps-label-reability-3
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ianbishop
If you haven't read the first two parts of this series, you really should. I
don't think I've ever read another series of articles about such a boring
topic (5x5 pixel buttons, label strokes) that is so damn interesting. The
difference between each respective company is immediately visible just by a
simple side-by-side glimpse.

I think this is the same sort of 'intense' design that is occasionally
remarked about things like Apple's 'breathing' sleep display. Knowing Google,
it was probably less of a vision thing and more of an aggressive A/B test
thing but the outcomes are undeniable.

Bravo to the author :).

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walkdontrun
It's really interesting that Google seems to be at times able to pull off
wonderful UI design bordering on genius (Chrome, Google Maps) and at other
times just barely able to be at par (most of Android with select exceptions).
I guess this just reflects different teams within Google, but it's a shame
they can't apply their best UI talent across all their products (and
particularly, the products that most need it, like Android).

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baddox
I've never used Android, and I've never quite agreed with the popular
assumption that "Google's UI design is bad." What other examples are there?

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whatusername
Background images on google.com

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buro9
Wait until he notices that the text on Google Maps (on the native mobile app
for Android) is now an overlay, and that this extends to road names.

That this has been done to enable things like collision detection of pieces of
text, and to enable the jump to 45' view to be smooth and still highly
readable.

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i8pizza2night
It's ironic: your HN profile says "My company is Buro 9 Limited and _it's a
vehicle for me to work with the things I love..._ " Yet you mock others for
what they're clearly enthusiastic about.

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buro9
Welcome to HN. You're clearly new as this is your only comment and your
account is less than 6 hours old.

You also edited your comment from the earlier revision of "Do you not have
something intelligent to add" (slight paraphrasing there).

So... just a troll? Unnecessarily scathing for a first post, no?

My comment above was certainly not meant disparagingly or to "pick on" the
author. In fact I enjoy the posts made.

Anyone who has worked on producing densely populated diagrams and charts
dynamically will have an appreciation for this kind work and would also be
keen to hear the subtleties of other peoples solutions to the problem.

~~~
i8pizza2night
My apologies. I thought I detected sarcasm/negativity in your earlier comment
--but I guess I was wrong. (I, too, thought the post was excellent and was
only trying to defend it.)

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jakobsassen
I'd say that this design is quite engineer-driven. It seems, their design is
'just' applied knowledge about perception.

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44loops
A common complaint is that Google is engineer-driven rather than design
driven. Some very impressive counter-evidence in the article.

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jakobsassen
What I meant was a scientific approach to design rather than just designing
what looks good. But than again every good interface designer should take that
approach.

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diceslayer
The micro-scale graphical design is good. It's a pity, however, that big
geographical and data quality blunders are present on Google Maps. Examples :
world projection (Mercator, useless), lack of metadata (dates of the images
?), choice of labels at medium scale (especially with the 'Relief' maps). Such
discrepancy between good graphical precision, esthetics and geographical
imprecision, lack of quality information are misleading a large part of the
public.

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mike496
Google has better thought out color contrast too. The other ones are either
too monochromatic, or the map details overwhelm the labels (think 90's web
page color contrast)

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peng
While readability is impressive, the zoom slider could use a slight tweak.
It's far too easy to zoom out to the maximum setting when you meant to go one
level up.

