Google’s new fade-in start page seems like a bold move at first, but it’s not as crazy as some reactions would have you believe.
A lot of the work we do in interaction design is about increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Allowing users to focus on the task at hand is essential to great user experiences. Google recognizes this, and it’s no secret that most people come there to search.
Here’s what I like
- Primary Persona Focus – It’s few that are courageous enough to actually focus on their Primary Persona’s key goal.
- Perseverance – initially the fade-in yielded longer Time to First Action-delays, but over time, it’s become shorter than before. Applause to the UX team for waiting it out!
Here’s what I think needs work
- Privacy – I can’t tell wether I’m logged in or not if I start searching. This isn’t a big issue, but it’s something to consider.
- Are you feeling lucky? Why not let it join the rest of the secondary actions?
The fade-in happens as soon as you move your mouse or leave the search field. You might be distracted if the content were to fade in as you we’re typing, but it doesn’t. It’s surprisingly refreshing. Great stuff, simply put.
Soon, we’ll be talking about what content goes below the Fold, as well as what belongs after the Fade.
(The effect isn’t available in Safari as I write this)
Delad glädje är dubbel gläjde:
5 Responses to Google's fade-in is what you want
Mitt hjärta klappar hårt för oslagbara användarupplevelser och 2009 var jag med och startade byrån The Amazing Society, där jag sysselsätter mig med att lösa komplexa problem åt smarta människor.
Interesting post, sir.
Thought about this a bit last night and realized that a majority of users that I’ve observed (read average users) that come to Google to conduct a search tend use their mouse to highlight the input field. This behaviour seems to be deeply rooted and occurs regardless if the input field already is highlighted or not when the page in questions finishes loading.
Having that in mind, the new approach to the Google start page could have a negative effect with user being distraced and end up wandering off somewhere else.
@alex drewniak My initial reaction was along those line too. But when you take into account the hard data from Google’s test, it’s clear that it’s not a problem.
Also, wouldn’t moving your mouse immediately give (the uninitiated) user a feeling the rest of the interface just popped up a smidgeon later than the box, like an image loading?
So why do it at all then? As i see it there will be three scenarios: Power users don’t visit google.com, semi-power users who visit google.com just type a query and hit enter without touching the mouse, and the rest will move their mouse immediately when the page is loaded and could have just been served the full content right away. No?
@fredrik Good point. Firstly, we don’t actually know if ”most users” at google.com move their mouse to focus the search field, it is after all already in focus. Google’s post makes no mention regarding this behavior. They do however mention that power users really do exhibit shorter time to first action without the surrounding links.
In the end, it’s hard to speculate without the test data. I often feel envious of the kind of resources they have access to, especially traffic-wise, when it comes to multivariate testing.
I am sorry to say, but Google is hemorrhaging users because of the fade. Long year users know exactly what they want and they want it fast – be it gmail, images, video, pages from their home country etc. We want to make the click at once and not wait. It all takes longer now.
What about the users that use touch screens? What about the delay while waiting to load? Especially for people with slower Internet, Google is really killing it for them. The company has a User Experience department, why don’t they listen to the users?
For a search I would usually hit my homepage and without even looking I would immediately start typing, enter and there I am. Now I’m typing alright, but I find the search field catching on mid first or second keyword. It’s extremely annoying. I am hard pressed to find workarounds since Google ignores the wishes of its users and refuses to provide a disable option. If no workarounds work to my satisfaction I am sorry to say I will have to change my search engine for the first time in nearly a decade. How sad…
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.