Google Introducing New Visual Design Across All Products

I really can't stand the black bar at the top of the screen. After so many years of low contrast it feels way too distracting. But the redesign isn't going to bother me that much since I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for months.

Edit: If you can't stand the black bar either, just switch to the secure version of Google: https://encrypted.google.com/ They haven't changed it yet and it usually lags behind on updates.

raldi• 15 years ago

This is the sort of thing that seems hugely distracting for a day or two, and in a week or two you'll be so used to it that, if someone were to take it away, going back to the way it was would seem like a huge distraction. For about two days.

NathanKP3• 15 years ago

That is true, eventually our brains will readjust and we will tune it out as usual. I suppose for the meantime the huge contrast will draw more attention to Google+ when they release its full features for everyone.

Lewisham4• 15 years ago

Obviously, the nav bar has been internal for a while. I was not a big fan when I first saw it either, but now I've grown to quite like it. It's across all the products, and it sort of stamps the page as "you're at Google", much in the same way that you feel when you see the orange at the top of HN, or the blue at the top of Facebook. Even if you're tuned out, its in your peripheral vision and you get that sense of place.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm an intern at Google)

matthewn• 15 years ago

I get the black bar on the secure version too. :(

NathanKP3• 15 years ago

Hmm, that's strange... I'm not seeing it. The way Google rolls out tests and betas though there is never any way of knowing if you might be in a test group seeing something different from other people. Many times I've seen random features pop up and then disappear. (I assume because Google was testing something with a subset of people.) In one case I even received an email from Google telling me I was in a private beta of a new feature that I was not supposed to tell other people about it. I'm still pretty proud of that actually.

lhnz• 15 years ago

I like the new navbar. I think it will draw more attention to google's other products. It also doesn't disturb me from the rest of the page, since it just seems like the window has been reduced vertically.

Angostura2• 15 years ago

I too like the new nav-bar. I think it's a bit odd that clicking on the 'More' option doesn't produce a dropdown in the same colour, however

jarin• 15 years ago

Argh this is terrible, I fear change.

peregrine2• 15 years ago

Google is criticized for never updating their style and never taking design risks. They are now updating their style and taking design risks. Some people will never be happy.

DrCatbox2• 15 years ago

Looks fantastic!

alexandros• 15 years ago

I can never understand this sort of comment.

Obviously the people who criticise the lack of updates are not the same people who are criticising the update.

This observation can only make sense if you aggregate the public into a single person represented by the loudest complaining minority's opinion at any given time. Well, yes, then that person would be wildly inconsistent. But it doesn't actually exist.

peregrine2• 15 years ago

At the time the entire comment thread was filled with people complaining about the new look and how awful it was.

I am thoughtlessly grouping a large group of people together and making an argument against them.

My bad.

beck5• 15 years ago

Don't google make dozens of changes tiny changes a day to their search page?

simonw• 15 years ago

I don't think it's fair to say they never take design risks considering the redesign of their homepage a while back where they made everything but the search interface invisible unless you moved the mouse.

MikeCapone3• 15 years ago

I had forgotten about that one. When did it disappear?

cpeterso3• 15 years ago

I'm surprised Google kept the I'm Feeling Lucky button. When was the last time someone used it on purpose? The rumor I heard last week was that the button was on the chopping block.

igorgue2• 15 years ago

And now with instant search you can't even click that button anymore...

maigret• 15 years ago

Interesting, IBM recently introduced a dark gray title bar before Google. http://www.ibm.com/us/en/

Zakuzaa• 15 years ago

Even Apple.com has a dark grey bar at the top.

jigs_up• 15 years ago

What was wrong with the way it was? I preferred the simplicity of the previous title bar.

anigbrowl• 15 years ago

Though not mentioned here, you can look forward to some substantial changes in News soon as well, if the tests I have seen are any guide (as a user; I don't speak for Google in any way).

yanw• 15 years ago

I approve of the new Maps UI: http://maps.google.com/

malnourish2• 15 years ago

The block elements (like the search button) look nice and are touch-friendly. It also reminds me of Windows Phone 7.

r00fus• 15 years ago

I love it. Large buttons, low complexity, pre-eminent search input. Similar to how jQueryUI themes look.

paganel• 15 years ago

On my 13 inch MacBook the map itself only takes 50% of the actual screen real-estate, the rest is filled up with garbage (big search buttons, this toolbar which is not map-related, the left side-bar which is a giant, white, empty rectangle the first time when I open the page, the "change map-type" buttons which have gotten unnecessary bigger and bigger over time etc.). Compare this to Wikimapia's "here's the map on 98% of your screen, do what you want with it". Anyway, maybe it's just me, going to Google Maps because I love looking at maps and not clicking on stupid adds.

flyosity3• 15 years ago

I think the dark grey bar across the top is a big problem for a few UX & psychological reasons.

First, it's mentally oppressive. The black bar at the top is like working in a room with a low ceiling painted black all day. It makes you feel boxed in.

Next, lighter colors that exist in the sky (blues, greys) tend to work better at the top of interfaces. If you consider the screen to be your full field of vision and relate it to what your eyes normally see when outside, the top-most area of the screen is "the sky". Making the absolute top part of a webpage black makes me think about a black sky which is ominous and indicates a storm is coming.

Finally, it just looks unfriendly and robotic. Blue is a more humanistic color and is more pleasing. I can't think of a worse choice for this newly-redesigned top bar than the dark grey/black they decided on.

nooneelse• 15 years ago

> "I can't think of a worse choice for this newly-redesigned top bar than the dark grey/black they decided on."

Really? Did you try much, because... danger red, hot pink, puke green... that took like three seconds to think up. Ergo, I think you are engaging in at least quite a bit of hyperbole here, leading me to consider dubious pretty much everything else you said.

jimmyjim• 15 years ago

It should be okay in this forum for him to mean "worse choice within the realm of reason" when he says "worse choice" without explicitly saying it.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

It really isn't that serious.

lukifer• 15 years ago

I agree, I find it a major eyesore.

VMG• 15 years ago

me too, but I wonder how much of it is familiarity

rgraham• 15 years ago

Me too. The other day I was looking across the room at a box with a dark-colored top flap and I felt deeply claustrophobic and acutely oppressed. I shed a single tear in mere contemplation.

vorg2• 15 years ago

> lighter colors that exist in the sky (blues, greys) tend to work better at the top of interfaces

Yep. The old blue on white background strip was easy to look at. The new color never looked good on Blogspot. Sometimes a single bad design choice can tip the balance between making something pleasant to use, or not.

An example: I upgraded my version of Open Office a month ago, for the first time in 3 years. There was one single change they made with the margin color in the word processor so when the left cursor is sitting at the left margin, I can't see it very easily. Because I move around documents a lot, and let the cursor sit while rereading, this is quite irritating. After a month, I've started pasting OO document text into Wordpad for editing, and repasting them into Open Office when complete. I sometimes wonder if a spy for Microsoft was behind that margin color change.

Another example: I only started using Open Office because Wordpad was similarly crippled by Microsoft a few years ago (starting with XP service pack 2, I think). Whenever you save a document, the page view changes so the cursor's at the top, also irritating after no problems with versions up to then. But I'm using it again because it seems a little less irritating than that Open Office change, which I can't find any way to fix in the menus. I suspect in that case Microsoft deliberately crippled it to force users to fork out for MS Office.

So perhaps this change will tip the balance for some users who want a new search engine. Perhaps a spy for Baidu was behind the change, or someone who's "family back home" has been influenced by Baidu.

monkeypizza• 15 years ago

why don't you just change the margin color in OO?

icebraining4• 15 years ago

Personally, I like dark bars, since they contrast with the webpage, so I use a dark Firefox theme. Now Google's bar seems just another Firefox toolbar here, it almost seems customized ;)

vibrunazo• 15 years ago

Dark colors use less energy. Someone please think about the environment! :)

malnourish2• 15 years ago

I think they could simply offer a choice, much like they do with the background.

However I think it should default to the light blue and be saved as a cookie for those who prefer not to be logged into gmail all the time.

Lewisham4• 15 years ago

I am sure a Chrome extension will appear soon that will let you switch it around.

watty• 15 years ago

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or these are genuine concerns. Black is not my favorite design color but I think it works well for Google and contrasts well in this case.

The black bar at the top is like working at night time, Google (the content) being the light that guides the way. Blue bars work well on the bottom, giving the feeling of floating peacefully in the ocean, yet at the top cause distress - as if the user is drowning. Yes, I'm making this shit up and trying to sound as ridiculous as OP.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

And they say nerds don't grok design.

flyosity3• 15 years ago

But at least I get paid lots of money to talk and think about this stuff ;)

cpeterso3• 15 years ago

Google tested 41 shades of black and users preferred #2d2d2d.

yicai2• 15 years ago

no offense but this sounds like tasting 41 piles of shit and users preferred horse's.

that black bar is so oppressive.

roadnottaken2• 15 years ago

This. Also it's inconsistent with the bar at the top of the Gmail interface. Perhaps this will be rectified/consolidated going forward. Overall it seems like a strange choice for the company that popularized the clean white interface.

Lewisham4• 15 years ago

I think this is a rollout issue, and Gmail will adopt it soon, as the rest of the products have.

I don't know what "soon" is.

(DISCLAIMER: I work at Google, but do not work on consumer products and have no particular info about this).

statictype2• 15 years ago

Finally, it just looks unfriendly and robotic. Blue is a more humanistic color

You nailed it with this one. This is how Google rolls. They prefer generic screens to ones that are designed by humans, because they want to convey the idea that Google is not a curated source of information, but a machine generated unbiased view of the world.

I'm generalizing a bit, but this is almost verbatim what was written in In the Plex.

magicalist• 15 years ago

I too divined this from their choice of black instead of blue.

So are we doing astrology next or going straight to phrenology?

jcapote• 15 years ago

You nailed exactly what I couldn't put my finger on with that black bar.

josephcooney• 15 years ago

Would a blue bar across the top have been too similar to the chrome used in Windows (since windows 95 it's been a light blue bar across the top, XP 'Luna' had a darker blue bar)? It was only in Vista/Win7 that the blue bar across the top went away from window chrome, but perhaps they wanted to avoid that comparison?

scelerat• 15 years ago

I find it just plain distracting.

brianmatter2• 15 years ago

funnily enough, apple.com has a dark grey bar across the top but i've never heard you open your mouth about it, and you're quite known to open your mouth about anything. your opinion is pointless and useless because you are such a fanboi

glhaynes• 15 years ago

Your point is excellent; it's a shame you had to spoil it with all the personal stuff.

flyosity3• 15 years ago

I whipped up a new design for the top bar and posted the CSS for it in a new HN submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2709736

abbasmehdi• 15 years ago

People like you for who you are, not for what you're trying to be. This departure from minimalism is pretty un-Googly. I thought their philosophy was ‘functionality over usability over design’ and latency being the "prized family jewel".

I hope the new guy on top didn't start thinking "Let's be more like Steve's company". :)

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

The top bar made me think I was back on my Wordpress blog...

cageface• 15 years ago

Google's old utilitarian aesthetic is finally evolving into a credible counter to Apple's design hegemony. I particularly like the clean, open design of the new Honeycomb interface, with less of a dependence on explicit box sections.

51Cards2• 15 years ago

This is the same bad UI decision Google made with Gingerbread. Somewhere deep inside Google is a UI person who thinks that medium grey on a black background is easy to read. They got their opinion into Gingerbread making the status bar very difficult to see... not to mention making all the icons much smaller. (my girlfriend who has some vision problems downgraded back to Froyo just because she couldn't see the status bar in 2.3.x). Now the same designer has got their opinion into the main Google UI. I have good eyesight and I'm even finding the new top bar to be difficult to scan. IMO this was not a wise decision at all.

nostrademons• 15 years ago

FWIW, the people who did this UI redesign have nothing to do with Android.

51Cards2• 15 years ago

It really was a tongue in cheek comment ;) Main point is this trend towards grey on black is a UI nightmare.

grannyg00se• 15 years ago

I find the black top bar to be too stark a contrast against the mostly white results page. It makes it seem as though something extremely important is up there.

How is this supposed to be an improvement? I feel like they changed it just for the sake of change without any actual focus on usability.

Zaim2• 15 years ago

That's what they were going for. Too many people were tuning the top bar out for their liking probably. Now it's unmissable.

cpeterso3• 15 years ago

scary: if you visit google.com with Google Chrome, you can search by voice, even from your desktop computer (if you have a microphone and many laptops do). The idea is cool, but this seems like a huge security/privacy problem!

icebraining4• 15 years ago

>seems like a huge security/privacy problem!

Not really; websites may ask for speech input (using the 'speech' attribute[1] in certain HTML tags), but the browser keeps full control of the feature, so they can't enable it themselves without your intervention.

Of course, since Google controls Chrome, they can control that too, but on the other hand, they already could - any native app can record sound. The solution for that is simply not installing applications you don't trust.

[1] https://docs.google.com/View?id=dcfg79pz_5dhnp23f5

igorgue2• 15 years ago

Black is the new black?

zaidf• 15 years ago

Google Instant. Now this. Is google just bored so much so that they are trying to fix things that were never broken?

This is a company that cared so, so much about every pixel of their homepage. And yet, they've just introduced a whole new set of colors and styles in one go.

I won't go as far as calling this the start of goog decline. But it's def headed to bloatland IMO.

courtewing• 15 years ago

A unified bar at the top could be absolutely amazing for people that use a lot of google products. My biggest beef with google right now is that even with a unified login, there doesn't seem to be any sort of common interaction between the various google components that I use.

Also, you don't like google instant? I thought that was one of the best features they've implemented in any of their products since... well, for a really long time.

MikeCapone3• 15 years ago

Agreed. Instant's great, and easy to turn off if you don't like it.

thwarted• 15 years ago

I had this exact problem (multiple gmail/gapps accounts that I'm in all day) and the experience got a lot better a few days ago when this consistently colored bar across the top was rolled out to me.

lucascolusso• 15 years ago

Killing design classics with Google

Coca-cola bottle, iPod shuffle and the London telephone booths revisited: http://post.ly/2IeYK

cake• 15 years ago

I'm surprised that they don't explain more their design choices (mainly the black bar).

wazoox• 15 years ago

From what I know of Google (knowing more every day as I'm reading In the plex), they certainly did a whole lot of A/B testing before choosing this black bar. It nonetheless sticks out unpleasantly. I really dislike it. Yahoo News has a dark blue bar which is a lot more pleasant. When using a personalized background image, it also is somewhat better. But on the standard Google page, meh.

mourique• 15 years ago

I think they did this to promote the menu bar to all non-tech or non-internet people. I can think of a lot of people who might see the bar for the first time because it itches their eye (my mum for example). It's kind of a meta-element made for browsing the googlesphere (aka internet?). I like it.

But they still have this _blank opening new tabs for mail, cal and everything. That's just bad.

panacea• 15 years ago

It also seems to become something more like the Windows taskbar, or the osX dock/menubar. It's the 'Googlebar'.

three14• 15 years ago

The grey on black text works better on good monitors than on my laptop. I lose contrast when the viewing angle changes, so if my laptop screen tilts a little to much, the text becomes unreadable. I wonder if the designers tested on a non high-end laptop.

dontlikevisual2• 15 years ago

I don t like the new visual of google. I don t like to have a menu like this. It looks to serious...

dontlikevisual2• 15 years ago

I don t like at all the new visual of Google. Too strict, too serious. Don t like the menu box.

Google Introducing New Visual Design Across All Products

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