Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

Google Makes It Look Easy

Google Labs has done an OSX Dock style [link to http://labs.google.com/googlex/ no longer works] home page. It’s pretty cool. What makes it cool is not the graphical style it presents, but the brilliance of the icon design. If you know what services Google offers, the icon makes sense. (I had to mouse over local, video and options to see what they were.) Once you see the name, the icon makes sense. Compare this to other programs you use. Do you know what all the toolbar icons mean? I usually close toolbars because I don’t find them helpful enough to trade for the screen real estate.

How did this happen? Did it spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus? Possibly. Google has a lot of smart folks working for them, except for the guy who did this. So it could have sprung full form. Far more likely, however, is that they did a prototype, tested it, refined it, tested it more, and finally, having iterated, honed and evolved the icons, released it.

This is no easier than Fred Astaire’s dancing, or Charlie Chaplains pratfalls, or Micheal Jordan playing so hard his feet bled. The brilliance is that after all that effort, they make it look easy.
[Update: At the GoogleBlog, Chikai Ohazama writes:

I gave it to a few friends in the company, who gave it to their friends, some posted it on their blogs, others sent it around on mailing lists, and it eventually made its way to Marissa Mayer, who liked it enough to say, when do you want to put it up on Labs? So after some spit and polish from some enthusiastic Googlers and the keen eye of the UI team, Google X is here.

an elegant description of a process. They even make it sound easy.]

You can find other bits of awe at at Google here, and some dissatisfaction here.

Finally, I want to apologize. I got this link from SteveC. a blog I read, and then lost track of which one I try hard to credit sources, and get annoyed when others don’t. If you posted this before me, and think it was you, let me know.

Originally published by adam on 16 Mar 2005
Last modified on 16 Mar 2005
Categories:   Uncategorized   Usability