[Sigia-l] Google's new home page

[Skot Nelson]

I've never, personally, been that big a fine of Google's extreme interface minimalism. There's a difference between a well thought design goal of a minimalist interface and an interface that's just lazily designed and fails to distinguish between important and necessary interface elements in the name of minimalism.

The contact management in gmail is an example I've used. It sits on the left hand side of the menu bar, indistinguishable from a standard mail folder. Every time I've looked for it, I struggle to find it. Changes made a few months ago to the labels section are also a good example: experienced users have trouble finding labels that have disappeared, sometimes.

This takes it to an extreme. It's good in one way (if people only want to search, it certainly supports that core business) but hiding *every* other interface element seems a little extreme to achieve that goal.

Were people actually going to google's home page and NOT finding the search box? Were they actually getting distracted by the links across the top of the page?

Aside: why aren't people just using the search bar in their browser? I do, and hadn't seen google's home page for years. The built in search bar in Safari & Firefox is just easier.
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Skot Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com

"In aything at all, perfection is finally attained not when
there is no longer anything to add, but when there
is no longer anything to take away."
-- Antonine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars