I read this article on Google Maps this week, and in the hacker news discussion, Someone1234 posted:
Google Map’s data keeps getting better and better, they now have lane warnings (e.g. “right two lanes,” etc) and traffic warnings with the offering to re-route (if they can find a quicker route). Although Google Map constantly offering to re-route me onto a slower route is a little odd (e.g. “want to re-route? It will be a 5 minute longer trip!”).
That all being said, while Google Maps as a data source is amazing, Google Maps as an app and or web-site has a lot to be desired. […]
That reminded me of something I had forgotten about Google: that its attraction to me has never been its UI, but rather its ability to make UI take a back seat to interesting data, algorithms, and speed. It’s easy to forget this, since Google has made a name for itself in every possible field, including front-end Javascript. Their front-end developers are incredible and they innovate with all of these client-side Javascript tools, but it’s important to remember that good frontend engineers and minimalism are totally compatible. Minimalist UI gets out of your way, and lets you do what you wanted, as soon as possible. Minimalist UI stands for a few things:
- Technical competence. A UI can only afford to be minimalist insofar as it delivers interesting product. There is a beauty to this. The analogy is that simple games like Tetris and Bejeweled (and Minecraft for a modern example) entertain without needing a whole lot of window dressing. Sites that present no-bullshit functionality stick in my mind, like clarifai for image recognition.
- Speed. Less to load.
- Clarity of vision/ease of use. No directory is presented on Google’s frontpage, unlike Yahoo, because it is confident search is enough to get you what you want. Also you aren’t distracted from your main task of finding something by having to choose between modes of exploration.
- Security. The less you have going on, the less ground you have to cover to make sure it’s secure.
It reminds me of the philosophies behind web frameworks like flask and tangelo, where if you want to demonstrate some cool functionality, you can spin up a minimalist wrapper around a backend without too much boilerplate. Obviously Google has matured way beyond when it was like the Open Source Report Card (if it ever was), but you can imagine them beginning with the same mindset. They both had a combination of interesting features and algorithms (clustering all github users vs pagerank over all websites), and didn’t overdo the interface that shows off the functionality.
I wonder how much Google is still committed to that vision. I’m reminded of this because I’ve been confused by the Google Maps app before, too. It is tricky to step through the steps of a commute, and the UI seems to have iterated a few times in this direction (of having more firecrackers and less functionality). Likewise with Gmail. There is no obvious benefit to having the compose window exist as a modal over top of the inbox, because when I need it most– when I reply to messages and need to refer to a separate email– the modal collapses into the Drafts folder anyway.
I’ve also been confused by Google Music (which I wrote about in a separate blog post. I’ve since traded in for Spotify Premium). If the purpose is to connect users with music, they have an awful lot of clutter on the way to getting there. The link from the Google Play website (which is the only URL I can remember) takes you to the store version rather than the play-music version of the page even if you are a subscriber, they don’t have good social functionality, and there is no free version. All of those are sort of the dysfunctional results of the problem of it not being a Google product. It’s like Google bought a random web music store and branded it with its logo.
The other anti-pattern I’ve seen lately is forcing Google Plus on everyone on Youtube. I did not want to use my real name on Youtube, and I didn’t even want to think about it after rejecting it once, but the UI was designed in such a way that I was asked again and again every week. If there is a psychologist behind this, whispering things into the product manager’s ears about how effective reminders are, they both need to get fired. Opting out of using my real name involved aiming at a tiny “x” in the corner of the popup modal, and then clicking on another link or two. I think eventually I was simply forced into it.
I can live with the idea that not everything Google tries is necessarily brilliantly successful, but I prefer it when it isn’t mundane garbage. Failed experiments like Google Wave are experiments, and interesting in their own right. Google Music and Google Plus are cynical attempts to cash in on existing fields using subpar technology, and they sort of piddle along, using the brand as leverage and maybe making enough money to justify their existence. Boring.
Open Everything 