Google's 'new' design: More than meets the eye | Hacker News Reader

Google's 'new' design: More than meets the eye

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22 pointskiriappeee11 comments

Here's the link he's referring to: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/06/google-new-results-page/

Edit: I see now that there's a link the to the TC article well-hidden at the bottom of the article. It's cleverly disguised as a link to something called http://me.lt, which returns a 405 method not allowed error when I visit it.

Edit the 2nd: removed vitriol.

hey sorry. the link referring to it is a shortened one via the rockmelt browser.

I have the new results coming up in my searches and I strongly dislike it. Very poorly spaced, hard to perceive header / detail groups, colours are MUCH too faded, skinny fonts, spacing requires _much_ more scrolling, uneven spacing between results isn't intuitive. Sorry Google but I have to vote for 'UI Mess' on this one.

There are several threads forming on the Google forums complaining, though that happens almost every time you change something people are used to. This time however I am with them whole-heartedly.

In fact, I had got another search result test page, where it was even worse ! The main differences were that there were no dividing lines, and in addition to the washed out palette, the usually green 'url' section was also gray !!

Unfortunately, i didn't have the presence of mind to take a screen shot and two refreshes later it was gone .. was amusing though :)

Think about it. When was the last time that you really had to dig past the 2nd page of results in a Google query to find what you were looking for. A few obscure searches aside, when was the last time you had to go beyond the first page?

Uh. Pretty much every day. I guess I have obscure interests. Then again, when I search for 'common' things, stepping past blogspam and content farms takes awhile.

I hope every single one of these predictions is wrong. I do not like infinite loading, I have NO desire to rearrange Google results and I do not like the new design that was on TC.

I always come back to Google, from Bing to DDG, because of how quickly I can scan the results. The contrast, size, spacing is all very good. The new layout Google is testing wastes way too much vertical space.

that's why they are "testing" it. If the data proves that the new design is 'better' then they'll end up using it.

I've been using it for a couple days now and I quite like it. In reality doesn't make much of a difference.

Also, is it just my browser, or does the homepage at http://www.google.com immediately rearrange itself as soon as you start typing, in order to make room for the Google Instant results?

If so, they need to make their UX people pee in a cup every so often, just for research purposes. Do not move the #$#@ form while I'm typing in it! Sheesh.

It's been like that ever since they rolled out Google Instant last year. While you in particular might not like it, it's been a pretty big hit in the web development community and average user experience.

Really? I don't remember them compressing the whitespace above the Google logo as soon as the user starts typing. Maybe that's why I turned Instant off last year...

Just so people know. Just predicting what this is is not my only intention. I keep seeing members of the tech community dumping nearly every new idea or iteration the moment they first see it and I think as people who call themselves tech enthusiasts that's a real dumb thing to do. You can't progress without change, you can't change without trying and trying means experiments.

Being part of the tech world means being part of the fastest evolving community and the one that gives room for all further innovation in nearly every other sector.

My biggest purpose in doing this is to try and show that given an apparent lemon, how you can try and make lemonade out of it, or rather how to try and build up on what's available for you rather than always wanting to stay in one's comfort zone.

One point about arranging results. Google power users only. And Google would have an algorithm being modified to suit your interests. If crowd sourcing doesn't work, if friend recommendations don't work because of the noise then your obvious best choice would be to have an algorithm work the way the user wants it to work. And how do you do that if the user can't tell what he/she wants. Hence the rearranging of results which is the user saying "No Google, I kind of like official pages more than blog posts" (or vice versa).

PS - Thanks a lot to the great HN community which sent the traffic soaring through my blog. I'm trying to score a position as a professional tech blogger eventually and this sort of stuff gives me a lot of motivation to keep at it.

- Dreams are meant to be lived.

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