Google may be great at building stuff…
by Rob Mason ~ February 25th, 2008 Filed under: Random.
…but they’re rubbish at offering a consistent user experience (IMHO). When using services from one organisation as a user I expect or at least anticipate some level of consistency with things like navigation and layout.
However, Google seem intent on doing their own thing product by product.
The five key services I use from Google are:
All of them are very good at what they do: email I can access anywhere; a free, flexible RSS feed reader; a fantastic website traffic analysis tool that I’d be happy to pay good money for; detailed search engine support; and online document creation and editing. However, they each offer a slightly different user experience from the next, whilst not being the end of the world, it does prove frustrating sometimes, particularly when Google is meant to be “the biggest thing on the web”.
A starter for ten
The mis-match starts with login / landing pages. Each service has similarities in terms of layout on the landing page, but each with their own unique features. Overall there’s nothing contentious here, but it does lead to a slight feeling of lack of dissatisfaction as they don’t seem to have an attention to detail.
Squint at the screenshots and you can see common themes across each service, however Analytics does jump out somewhat with it’s bold orange header and centre-aligned layout (the others being fluid). Each service is clearly distinguished form the next in terms of naming conventions, but sometime it’s part of the logo (Reader or Docs), other times separate (Webmaster tools).
Difference pervade in the footer also. Some offer a simple text version with hyper links to key areas. Others offer a nice graphical option.
Mercifully, the main elements of each page do seem to carry with them some form of consistency. The login item itself is always on the right hand side and new account sign-up directly below. Although each service again comes with subtle variations. New account sign-up for some comes with a nice friendly blue button (Reader or Docs), other times a simple link (Mail) and once nothing at all (Analytics)! Once logged in, if you switch to another service they do at least remember who you are, however again slight variations exist. Moving between Mail, Docs and Reader is seamless, but Webmaster tools and Analytics ask you to login again.
Attention to detail?
It does seem as though they can’t agree on what services to promote. Notice the top left hand side (see below) of the logged in section varies depending on which service you’re in, which is all well an d good, but there’s little consistency. The top rigt hand section suffers from the same problem but is slightly amplified with different colours, links called different things but doing the same thing and others appearing or disappearing at will.
Granted each service does different things, but again there’s little continuity between services as each has it’s own take on how to layout the main viewing area.
Conclusions
All these things are minor irritants, but these little thing add up sometimes. Given that Google is often quoted by some as “design genius” for their clean and simplistic search engine homepage, it’s strange that they don’t seem to have any common design authority or guidelines to ensure user cohesion.
Contact Rob Mason for details on website design and build services in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.