google apps design

I love what Google has done.

Search surprised the world (or at least Yahoo!), GMail turned the world of webmail upside-down, Maps effectively launched web2.0, and part of their success has been their spartan yet functional design. I like it, but for a company focused on engineering, the various apps' interfaces (Mail, Voice, Reader, Calendar, for today's example) all differ from each other in noticeable and annoying ways.

for reference; most folks have at least heard of gmail.

search button is a different shape, now search options is a link, not a button.

now items selected in the sidebar extend all the way to the edge of the page.

this is actually very similar to voice, but reader has internal inconsistencies. notice the icon placement in the sidebar: half on the right, half on the left. Trends next to Notes is especially annoying.

while it still feels like I'm using a Google app, ﬂipping between sites makes them feel sloppy.

it brings to mind the blog post Douglas Bowman made when he quit Google. as a classical designer, it must have been hard to function in such an engineering-oriented company. still, I have to wonder how UI inconsistencies between apps (and within them) can take a back seat to investigating shades of blue.

at the end of the day, Google stores my mail, appointments, phone activity, and feeds. I appreciate the emphasis on a solid infrastructure and wouldn't trade it for better design.

posted on friday september 4^th, 2009 at 22:00 (PDT)