If you have visited a Google site in the last twenty four hours you may have noticed the normally subdued light blue shortcut bar at the top of the screen has been replaced by a rather more striking black and red number. This is a part of a company-wide redesign that Google announced yesterday on their official blog.
Under the title “Evolving the Google design and experience”, Creative Director Chris Wiggins explained that the update will focus on three key areas. Firstly, “Focus” – meaning Google only wants you to see the data you want to see, and is clearing out all the surrounding clutter to make sure the data you want is always front-and-center.
This may seem slightly counter-intuitive from a company who makes a packet from advertising, but we’ll have to wait for the redesigned pages to launch before we see what they’ve cooked up. Wiggins posted a preview of the redesigned Google homepage, which features a slightly smaller logo, and pushes all extraneous content down to the edges of the page, meaning the “focus” is truly on the search box.
The second element is “Elasticity”, which simply means Google is looking to homogenise its experience across devices of all sizes. Not only will this pay dividends for the user in terms of a consistent experience, it will also mean less work for Google if they can produce one version of all of their services that works on any device.
The third and final area is “Effortlessness”. Google is leaning heavily on new web technologies such as WebGL and HTML5 to make their services as streamlined and user-friendly as possible.
The first site to see a visual refresh has been Google Maps, which has seen the addition of some chunky new buttons where before there were text links, as well as improved search results and navigation.
Wiggins promises that more Google services will be getting a spit-shine “over the course of the next few months”, including search results and GMail.
