68
As per the official Google announcement, the reasoning behind this change is to try out methods which would complement new password authentication methods. To quote the post
Today, you sign in to Google on a page that includes both the ‘email’
and ‘password’ fields on the same page. We’ll be gradually splitting
those two fields into separate pages in ...
62
Good observation.
In my experience this happens for a number of reasons, some intentional and some unintentional.
Intentional reasons to trim whitespace:
Users often cut and paste passwords (yes, use of Notepad as a password manager really happens) and the paste operation for some clients adds a whitespace.
Phrase (multi word) passwords are ...
34
They arrange the items depending on what you search for.
I.E. searching for 'Tax' is likely to return many News results, so that is shown alongside 'web':
Searching for 'Mexico Flag' is likely to return lots of images, so they set 'Images' as the next tab:
Whereas searching for 'Bristol' (A city in England) returns 'maps' as the next tab:
So ...
28
Official google explanation aside (as mentioned in the other answer), there is probably another work at play which goes unmentioned - using UX as stick/carrot method to promote desired behavior.
Note that if you at any time previously checked the "stay signed in" checkbox, even after logging out of the Gmail the google will remember your username (via ...
20
Neither approach is ideal. You almost need a combination of the two.
If I select that I want something to happen every single month, just because it's on the 31st doesn't mean that I don't want it to reoccur.
I would stop trusting my calendar forever if even once it failed to notify me. Better to assume people want it reoccurring than to just be OCD. Those ...
19
These are called 'Dark patterns' and these can be used in many different ways to influence users behaviour.
Social networks as you mentioned put the logout button in a separate menu, Facebook in particular hide the 'deactivate' option very deeply in a settings structure. Some people also believe that you can never delete your Facebook account, when in ...
13
Google actually removes autosuggestions for specific searches.
In which cases?
Searchengineland writes:
Were things being removed?
Yes, and for these specific reasons, Google says:
Hate or violence related suggestions
Personally identifiable information in suggestions
Porn & adult-content related suggestions
Legally mandated ...
13
Responsive design is best practice, except for the most high-end websites
Responsive, mobile-first design gets you the most “bang for the buck” for most web sites or applications. Effectively you can design your web property once, get a good experience anywhere.
But responsive design has its drawbacks, and is arguably a compromise solution that works best ...
12
The way outlook handles it is closer to what I would imagine a persons intentions would be when scheduling an appointment. However Outlook doesn't give you the option to handle it differently, which is a mistake.
You should be given the choice which way you would like it handled when you schedule an appointment for a day that each month doesn't have (28/29-...
11
It seems to be an attempt to :
reduce the need for labelling and custom filtering
allow users to process their emails faster (in a broad sense)
help users to focus on what they feel is important at the moment: checking regular emails, social networks chores and notifications, promotional emails, etc.
11
This is a bug with the Google UI, and not intentional.
You were right to notice the distinction, but it shouldn't be used as any kind of example of good design.
As of now (March 2015), Google is in the middle of a long process of migrating its apps and platforms to Material Design, and it will take a while before most apps are compliant.
Material Design ...
10
If you had 20 links, it would take you longer to scan for the attachment button than it would with two links and an expansion button. They are just optimising the most common use case.
You should always optimise for very common actions over rare actions. How much more common or rare they need to be is a judgement call which should be based on data and ...
10
After thinking about this question for the last couple months and reading some related literature (Stephen P. Anderson's Seductive Interaction Design in particular), I've decided that the continuing existence of the button is likely due to a combination of three factors:
Branding - As @RachelKeslensky writes in her answer: keeping the button says "Yes, you'...
8
What's it called?
I'm not sure if a canonical name exists. But here are some terms that help describe it...
It is a type of menu. (Google Material Design: Menus)
In iOS and Bootstrap parlance it is a type of Popover. (iOS Developer Library: Popovers)
Google specifically calls it an App Launcher. (Google Support: Use the Google Bar)
How do I implement it?
...
7
Gmail is opting for pre-organizing some of the information for the user to avoid clutter.
There are many emails coming from certain sources that will be read at a later date by the user but that maybe don't usually require immediate attention. Filtering or tagging helps, but a user still has to skim through their properly tagged emails from facebook, ...
7
The Google home page is simple and uncluttered.
But, once you search for something - you can filter:
Are we missing something - or are you?
7
Google is using 'Material Design' to give their vast number of different services a unified look and feel – so for google designers using Roboto is mandatory because it's part of their design by definition.
IMHO if you want to build a material design 'inspired' website, you are of course free to quote any design patterns as you like – so using Roboto could ...
7
Not mandatory. But highly recommended.
Roboto was introduced and standardized by Google for supporting devices of different dpi to have readability and legibility of fonts.
You can see that many apps have their own custom fonts which are either unique to their brand or to match their site. So Google cannot make it mandatory.
It's highly recommended ...
7
Getting in the trap of scrolling map area instead of page scrolling is definitely bad experience. Still current solution looks overcomplicated and provides a barrier to interaction.
The design looks a bit contradictory: large map area assumes reach user interaction with map content (primary task), but scrolling beyond map control looks like users don't need ...
7
As a matter of fact I'm quite sure that between the wrench and the kebab icon there was a hamburger.
Either way, the most likely reason for the icon is consistency . This kebab menu icon is the same they're using in Material Design, so they're basically following their own guidelines, see Menus section in MD
A menu is a temporary piece of material that ...
7
As mentioned by @locationunknown in the comments, the vertical position doesn't change when the window is resized.
But to answer your question. I believe it is because Google doesn't want you to travel visually far from the top of the screen.
Most of the important information is in the top of the screen (highlighted with red). Tabs, address bar, profile ...
6
I do not see how the + sign has anything to do with Google+. :)
It is just a matter of balancing the importantance/"commoness" of actions.
By each thing you make directly visible, everything else becomes a little less visible. Google simply pushes the simplicity factor to the edge in their visuals, like always.
For example, it might be faster for some to ...
6
Bells have been used for signaling forever, really.
On that premise, it's easy to go for a bell when it comes to notifications, as they are just that; signals that something is happening.
A bell requires - maybe even demands - your attention, and so does a notification!
As to whether it's industry standard or not, it currently doesn't pass a quick Google ...
6
I'm pretty sure it's because Drive is developped by another team than the team who's working on the Google account canvas. More a question of schedule/production rather than UX/UI thought I guess.
6
Well, I tried to get the answer from the design team (UENO. Created the interface, the renaming part is as it is since then), They simply can't answer it.
I believe that renaming in a modal doesn't have any specific advantage over inline renaming (they must have a better word for that, which I don't know) renaming inside a modal provide clear context and ...
6
Based on the Layout & Technology section of the Accessibility page, the tap area continues to be, at minimum, 48x48dp, thanks to padding:
Touch targets are the parts of the screen that respond to user input. They extend beyond the visual bounds of an element. For example, an icon may appear to be 24 x 24 dp, but the padding surrounding it comprises ...
5
Google Translate (and this includes Google Website Translator as a subfunction) always displays the language selector in the user's browser language which makes totally sense for a translation feature. Therefore, when I'm visiting your website, the options are displayed in german for example.
A translate feature differentiates from a language selector like ...
5
I don't see this as a dark pattern at all.
I haven't done any testing on this, but I've never been the slightest confused about that. The opt in is directly related to the TOS, and this seems to be a good place to put it.
5
Questions I aks myself when choosing the right pagination solution:
Will users be addressing a particular page? If no - then don't do numbers, just prev/next or infinite scroll.
How often items will be published to the feed. If often, then if I give page number to somebody it will become not correct in an hour - he/she will not found the item on that page. ...
5
Google doesn't just do stuff for the sake of doing it
Highlighting what I typed over and over again doesn't really add any value while highlighting the differences helps a user quickly find what they are looking for...
☻
If I had to pick just one then I would go with Option 2 (Google way) since they do a lot of usability testing based on successful ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
