Sunday, July 31, 2011

Google’s new User Interface

Have you noticed Google’s clean, a minimalistic user interface? The new facelift slowly started to spread across Google’s suite of products when Google+ (Google’s answer to Social Networking problems) was introduced. You could say that the new interface has a much more breathing room compared to the previous by looking at the before and after Gmail themes (below). Allowing extra spaces in between links, buttons, within buttons, words, and sentences makes the information on the page easily readable and digestible. By applying different shades of grays to the controls and fonts, the new facelift brings out all the important information to the forefront. Regardless of all the positive aspect about the new interface, you might experience scrolling vertically, roughly about 128 pixels further down (differences in the Gmail’s before and after image height) to view rest of the content, whereas in the old interface the content would be available to you without scrolling vertically.

Gmail Theme (before)


Gmail Theme (after)


Because of the extra spaced links, controls, and large buttons, Google’s new interface is easier to use on my iPad too. I was able to test the new interface with Google News since Gmail only supports iPad friendly web version.

Google News (before)


Google News (after)

1 comment:

  1. A "new face-lift" indeed!
    The different shades make it far more easy to immediately detect some important features of the controls and fonts and that was really needed!! Your BEFORE and AFTER made that very clear - THANKS!

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