36 ms·

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty muc

by Pacabel 12y ago

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has a usable UI. It isn't perfect, and maybe even looks "dated" in some ways, but it generally works and is understood by its existing users. So-called "hipsters" (that is, people who have an uncompromising view that they're talented "designers" or "UI experts", with a massive ego to back this up, and a fixation on being "trendy") get involved at some point. These people are often relatively young, often have limited experience, and are usually more focused on making designs look "pretty" and "modern" rather than usable. Needing to create work for themselves, these hipsters, coupled with managers who need to appear to be leading something seen as "productive", start on a UI redesign. Often this is done without the involvement or insight offered by the existing developers of the product, nor any of the product's users. Changes are made purely to look "better", with limited to no consideration of how it'll impact the usability of the product. The end result is a total cock-up like this, or like the poor UI of Chrome (and the imitations of it by Firefox, Opera and IE), or a project-killing release like GNOME 3, or an abysmal failure like Windows 8. UIs were generally far more usable in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of the 2000s, before "hipsters" got involved with design. What we see today is a total jumble of inconsistent and incoherent UI design, where usability and efficiency are considered significantly less important than "looking trendy".

chrisrhoden 12y ago
So, in other words, kids these days?
- Pacabel 12y ago
  No, not at all. It isn't really about age. I've dealt with "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s who've come up with very bad UI designs. Likewise, many of the managers or executives advocating for these redesigns are in their 30s, 40s or even 50s. While it may be more of an issue with younger people due to a greater lack of experience and intuition, it's a phenomenon that's quite independent of age.
  - leemcalilly 12y ago
    Your class action ad hominem attack is not constructive.
  - judk 12y ago
    > These people are often relatively young, often have limited experience > "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s These statements cancel each other out, so there's no reason to state either as supposedly providing information content.
    - Pacabel 12y ago
      Are you really suggesting that people can't have second or even third careers? A 40-year-old who got into web design after a lengthy career in print media design, if not some totally unrelated field, is often no more experienced than a 20-year-old who got directly into web design. I know this can be true, because I've worked with both types of people in the past. And "often" does not mean "always", obviously.
  - chrisrhoden 12y ago
    "Kids these days" is rarely strictly about age. It's usually about a class of people who have helped to design the systems we have at present and who are therefore heavily invested in those systems in a variety of ways reacting negatively to a class of people attempting to help design new systems that they will one day defend due to their investment in them. The idea that UX was better in the 1980s kind of gives you away here.
joel_perl_prog 12y ago
Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't no Steve Jobs. That's for sure. It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing, in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful. To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes cements it. Yet here we are...
- Silhouette 12y ago
  I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. That one's easy. It turns out that roles like management and marketing and customer support are actually important for developing good products, but the culture at "engineer"-led organisations doesn't always acknowledge or respect that.
- masterleep 12y ago
  Pegman sealed the deal.
  - Serow225 12y ago
    At least they listened to the outcry and brought them back!
- Shish2k 12y ago
  > I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. It doesn't matter how many smart engineers and ux designers can see the obvious, if one person from upper management can't :( (See also: G+ real names policy)
  - fragsworth 12y ago
    My guess is the original person leading the Google Maps project was very, very competent, and they either moved to another project or quit - and got replaced by someone really awful. I think it happened at some point pre-2013, because Maps was great until then, and has been in decline ever since.
runn1ng 12y ago
I was with you until you started to hate on Chrome GUI. In my opinion, Chrome's GUI is the best thing that could happen to browsers.
- Pacabel 12y ago
  It depends on who you are, and how you use the browser. Maybe the Chrome UI is good for somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability. But for people with large monitors and the need to push a web browser hard, they've merely managed to strip out or hide a lot of very useful functionality, with essentially no benefit. What's left over is non-standard and awkward to use (like Chrome's menu).
  - judk 12y ago
    > somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability The vast majority of users.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. But unfortunately, dumber is always easier to sell. I fear that, as the world depends more and more on technology (and people actually thinking straight), this feedback loop of progressing idiocy might one day undo us.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. Changing humanity on the kind of broad scale that requires is a much broader and longer term project than any commercial entity could survive in the short term if its commercial success relied on it. Its certainly the kind of thing I can see Google being interested in, but not the kind of thing they would be around long enough to do if they didn't have a business strategy that did better at reaching the masses of people that actually exist now as they are than that could ever do.
platz 12y ago
Can't help but think is is an engineers mindset here (remember forms UIs with 50 gray buttons?). UIs were usable but not appealing. Older linux window managers. Designers making things look appealing brings computing to more people (not just pros) than otherwise.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Appealing is good. Usable is more important. Appealing and usable is great. Appealing but baffling and broken is stupid. Most people do not want nor need fancy weird functionality. They just want the maps, or maybe the directions.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
  Except... what they had was appealing enough to people to use. It's unappealing enough now that people don't want to use it (even jumping to bing). Many people will continue to use it because of system defaults and such, but many will look for more usable alternatives. Usability is 'appealing' just as much as visual button styling, maybe moreso.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  " Older linux window managers" You remember that horrible WM everybody seemed to be running 10-15 years ago, 'enlightenment'? Completely unusable but it looked cool with all the shapes and transparencies and etc.
leemcalilly 12y ago
I agree with your argument, but there's no need to go in with the "hipsters" or "looking trendy" thing. I immediately get turned off when someone uses "hipster" pejoratively. You might as well have just used "millenials" or "kids these day." It ruins a perfectly cogent argument.
- Pacabel 12y ago
  Like I said in an earlier comment, age has very little to do with this. "Hipsters" can pretty much be any age. It's more the "hipster" mindset and attitude that's the problem. This attitude involves fashion and trends trumping all other considerations. Maybe that's okay when it comes to something like clothing. It isn't acceptable, however, when it comes to tools that are supposed to be productive, including software. If you've got a better term than "hipster", I'm willing to consider using it. I'm just not aware of any other term that better describes the particular attitude that puts vanity, arrogance, ego, smugness and focus on appearance over everything else.
  - Crito 12y ago
    In this case, I think that I would define "hipster" as "thinks they are the second coming of Steve Jobs." They're basically cargo culting, they saw Steve Jobs stir shit up, so they think that if they stir shit up as well, the world will hail them as geniuses and shower them with riches. The problem is that they give little thought to exactly what they are stirring up, or how they are doing it. Inevitably they just make a hash of everything.
    - zo1 12y ago
      That and they're positively obsessed with JavaScript, Node.js, and a coding style that favors ample and unnecessary usage of anonymous JavaScript functions as nested parameters.
  - girvo 12y ago
    How about instead of using a crappy word that attempts to tar a nebulous ill-defined group of people, you just point out the issues you have with it. No need for the "hipster" straw-man, as far as I'm concerned, and I agree with your points. "Hipster" is over-done, and from where I'm sitting those who use it pejoratively come across as elitist.
baldeagle 12y ago
I was with you until you went on about GNOME 3... oh wait, I was still with you..
- mikeycgto 12y ago
  I enjoy GNOME 3. Have been using it for a long while now and really don't have any major complaints. Granted, I don't use many desktop programs (browsers, terminal, chat programs and nuvola player).
cousin_it 12y ago
It's funny you would make a dichotomy between the "old guard" and the "hipsters", and blame the latter for the problems of the new Google Maps. If there's anyone on Earth who I can name as part of the "old guard" of online mapping, it's Bernhard Seefeld, who invented draggable tiled online maps when he launched map.search.ch in 2004. (Google Maps was launched in 2005.) For the last few years he's been working as the product management director for the new Google Maps. If I had to come up with a reason why the new Google Maps feels worse in many ways, my guess would be second-system syndrome.
- naterator 12y ago
  IMO it's definitely Second-system syndrome. Maps worked fine and didn't need much added/changed, but someone decided that they needed to keep iterating and now we're stuck with all the cludge built on top of it now.
  - dennisgorelik 12y ago
    It wasn't iteration. They threw away code and started from scratch. Things you should never do [1]. Several months ago Google releases totally new version of Google Maps. Google Maps consistently stays as a poor product since then. I think that even first version of Google maps (introduced in 2005) was better. [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.
k0 12y ago
+1 for Bing maps [shudders]. I tried yahoo maps and it is nearly as crappy as the new google maps...hell, Apple maps is superior to the new google maps...and I didn't see that coming.
- dennisgorelik 12y ago
  Could the current Google Maps program manager be a saboteur from Apple or Microsoft?
tolmasky 12y ago
This comment also servers as a short history of the development of iOS 7.
Lagged2Death 12y ago
I think you're right about trendiness and hubris associated with UI redesigns, but I think it might be a mistake to imagine this is some sort of one-time sea-change. I think it's more of a constant churn; those who would "modernize" or "update" all sorts of designs - from software UI to software architecture to real architecture to interior decorating to graphic design and brand identity work - always have (arguably need to have) an unjustified level of self-confidence, a high opinion of their ability relative to the task they've got before them. They're always blind to the tweaking and tuning that was required to produce the thing they've set out to replace. Most of the time, if they had an accurate idea of how monumental a task they were facing, they'd look for something else to do.
User9821 12y ago
I don't think it's 'hipsters' or young designers in general. I think situations like this happen when a bunch of people sit down in a room, and draw something up on a whiteboard. They draw all kinds of flow charts, sales funnels, color emotions, menu mockups, how X study showed 3% more users preferred the search bar 10px from the top, instead of 7px from the top, and how renaming the button from Search, to Go with a silly icon makes the company more human and will improve their image. They get caught up in all these little details and studies, and on paper they can rationalize everything as being perfect. Then, it's a turd in reality, and everyone is left wondering what went wrong, the studies showed B was greater than A, and C was even better than B, and D surpassed C. So, how in the world can the original A be better than D? I don't know, but anyone in the design or development world can verify that it happens. The Simpsons sum it up well in this episode... http://i.imgur.com/VLgpw4L.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VLgpw4L.jpg The car is perfect, big windows and lots of sunlight, a giant cupholder, a horn that plays a catchy tune. Everything is great, until you look at things as a whole. Now, my least favorite aspects of the new Google maps. I use it on almost a daily basis because I travel often, but I'll be trying to experiment with OpenStreetMaps, or Bing. 1. The search input box hides itself. Why in the world is the search hidden, forcing me to X out of directions to see it again? 2. The blue lines for directions make it nearly impossible to tell if the road offers street view. Mousing down on the little man produces blue availability lines, but you can't see them under the directions. 3. I don't believe it's possible to split directions and street view on the screen. This was the view I used most often. Splitting them side by side would make the most sense with widescreen monitors. Now, you just get a little map in the lower left, and it does a weird expanding animation when you hover over. Previously you could drag the little man to pan around the map, but now you have to keep clicking locations to move. 4. Images at the bottom. I'm here for maps, not images, so this makes absolutely no sense. The three little images at the bottom look like buttons for terrain, map, satellite view, bit instead they open these thumbnails. Now, you have to click the earth button to get satellite images, and the weird part, the image thumbnails at the bottom have separate visible/hidden settings depending on the view. If you close the thumbnail bar when viewing a map, then switch to satellite view, you would think it would stay closed. Nope, it'll open itself, because it's enabled on satellite view. You have to toggle it off on each view. 5. The top left dropdown. Way too many boxes expanding, collapsing, etc as I try to navigate. My wishlist... I'm just going to mention one thing, because this has bothered me for ages. Why the heck can't I customize the level of detail? There have been countless times where I just want to see countries and their names, or countries and capital cities. I'm looking at Europe right now, and it's not displaying half of the countries, but displaying city names all over the place. If I zoom in to see all the country names, the map is crowded with hundreds of cities and roads. I always end up doing an image search online for maps, because they achieve this most basic goal. Look at the below image. Google maps on the left. It still doesn't label the Czech Republic in that image. If I zoom out one level, it'll show the Czech Republic, but hide other country names, like Montenegro. Right is just a random map I pulled off an image search. The right map is 100x easier to see the borders and countries. Google maps is an absolute disaster in these situations. If I ask someone that isn't familiar with European geography to find the Czech Republic in the below images, they'll be scratching their heads with Google maps, unless they start zooming in and out hoping the name of the desired country pops into view. http://i.imgur.com/skpNOyd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/skpNOyd.jpg You can show me street view from a coral reef, or roads in some obscure village on a small island, but you can't show me a simple world map with country names? Where are the priorities here? Edit: Switched my homepage to DuckDuckGo instead of Google search, and updated by bookmarks to OpenStreetMap. I'm honestly getting tired of supporting Google, since the list of things they do right gets smaller on a weekly basis. It's time I give someone else a turn.
chetanahuja 12y ago
@Pacabel Absolutely true. The "design" folks are usually pressured to follow fashions. Current fashion in designs in the valley are unfortunately driven by people (ie "hipsters") with "minimal", "negative space", "beautiful" as their main values with usability, discoverability etc. being very low on the list of priorities. Also, I can assert with some confidence, that the number of people choosing the Classic view (from the small question mark at the bottom), is being tracked as a metric of success or failure of the new UI high up on the chain of decision-making inside google.

by Pacabel 12y ago

chrisrhoden 12y ago

So, in other words, kids these days?

Pacabel 12y ago
No, not at all. It isn't really about age. I've dealt with "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s who've come up with very bad UI designs. Likewise, many of the managers or executives advocating for these redesigns are in their 30s, 40s or even 50s. While it may be more of an issue with younger people due to a greater lack of experience and intuition, it's a phenomenon that's quite independent of age.
- leemcalilly 12y ago
  Your class action ad hominem attack is not constructive.
- judk 12y ago
  > These people are often relatively young, often have limited experience > "hipsters" in their 40s and 50s These statements cancel each other out, so there's no reason to state either as supposedly providing information content.
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    Are you really suggesting that people can't have second or even third careers? A 40-year-old who got into web design after a lengthy career in print media design, if not some totally unrelated field, is often no more experienced than a 20-year-old who got directly into web design. I know this can be true, because I've worked with both types of people in the past. And "often" does not mean "always", obviously.
- chrisrhoden 12y ago
  "Kids these days" is rarely strictly about age. It's usually about a class of people who have helped to design the systems we have at present and who are therefore heavily invested in those systems in a variety of ways reacting negatively to a class of people attempting to help design new systems that they will one day defend due to their investment in them. The idea that UX was better in the 1980s kind of gives you away here.

joel_perl_prog 12y ago

Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't no Steve Jobs. That's for sure. It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing, in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful. To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes cements it. Yet here we are...

Silhouette 12y ago
I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. That one's easy. It turns out that roles like management and marketing and customer support are actually important for developing good products, but the culture at "engineer"-led organisations doesn't always acknowledge or respect that.
masterleep 12y ago
Pegman sealed the deal.
- Serow225 12y ago
  At least they listened to the outcry and brought them back!
Shish2k 12y ago
> I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. It doesn't matter how many smart engineers and ux designers can see the obvious, if one person from upper management can't :( (See also: G+ real names policy)
- fragsworth 12y ago
  My guess is the original person leading the Google Maps project was very, very competent, and they either moved to another project or quit - and got replaced by someone really awful. I think it happened at some point pre-2013, because Maps was great until then, and has been in decline ever since.

runn1ng 12y ago

I was with you until you started to hate on Chrome GUI. In my opinion, Chrome's GUI is the best thing that could happen to browsers.

Pacabel 12y ago
It depends on who you are, and how you use the browser. Maybe the Chrome UI is good for somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability. But for people with large monitors and the need to push a web browser hard, they've merely managed to strip out or hide a lot of very useful functionality, with essentially no benefit. What's left over is non-standard and awkward to use (like Chrome's menu).
- judk 12y ago
  > somebody with a tiny screen and a near-complete lack of technical ability The vast majority of users.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. But unfortunately, dumber is always easier to sell. I fear that, as the world depends more and more on technology (and people actually thinking straight), this feedback loop of progressing idiocy might one day undo us.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > And that continuous pandering to them is what will bring the downfall of the information age. We are dumbing down our technology, where we should be forcing people to get smarter instead. Changing humanity on the kind of broad scale that requires is a much broader and longer term project than any commercial entity could survive in the short term if its commercial success relied on it. Its certainly the kind of thing I can see Google being interested in, but not the kind of thing they would be around long enough to do if they didn't have a business strategy that did better at reaching the masses of people that actually exist now as they are than that could ever do.

platz 12y ago

Can't help but think is is an engineers mindset here (remember forms UIs with 50 gray buttons?). UIs were usable but not appealing. Older linux window managers. Designers making things look appealing brings computing to more people (not just pros) than otherwise.

DanBC 12y ago
Appealing is good. Usable is more important. Appealing and usable is great. Appealing but baffling and broken is stupid. Most people do not want nor need fancy weird functionality. They just want the maps, or maybe the directions.
mgkimsal 12y ago
Except... what they had was appealing enough to people to use. It's unappealing enough now that people don't want to use it (even jumping to bing). Many people will continue to use it because of system defaults and such, but many will look for more usable alternatives. Usability is 'appealing' just as much as visual button styling, maybe moreso.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
" Older linux window managers" You remember that horrible WM everybody seemed to be running 10-15 years ago, 'enlightenment'? Completely unusable but it looked cool with all the shapes and transparencies and etc.

leemcalilly 12y ago

I agree with your argument, but there's no need to go in with the "hipsters" or "looking trendy" thing. I immediately get turned off when someone uses "hipster" pejoratively. You might as well have just used "millenials" or "kids these day." It ruins a perfectly cogent argument.

Pacabel 12y ago
Like I said in an earlier comment, age has very little to do with this. "Hipsters" can pretty much be any age. It's more the "hipster" mindset and attitude that's the problem. This attitude involves fashion and trends trumping all other considerations. Maybe that's okay when it comes to something like clothing. It isn't acceptable, however, when it comes to tools that are supposed to be productive, including software. If you've got a better term than "hipster", I'm willing to consider using it. I'm just not aware of any other term that better describes the particular attitude that puts vanity, arrogance, ego, smugness and focus on appearance over everything else.
- Crito 12y ago
  In this case, I think that I would define "hipster" as "thinks they are the second coming of Steve Jobs." They're basically cargo culting, they saw Steve Jobs stir shit up, so they think that if they stir shit up as well, the world will hail them as geniuses and shower them with riches. The problem is that they give little thought to exactly what they are stirring up, or how they are doing it. Inevitably they just make a hash of everything.
  - zo1 12y ago
    That and they're positively obsessed with JavaScript, Node.js, and a coding style that favors ample and unnecessary usage of anonymous JavaScript functions as nested parameters.
- girvo 12y ago
  How about instead of using a crappy word that attempts to tar a nebulous ill-defined group of people, you just point out the issues you have with it. No need for the "hipster" straw-man, as far as I'm concerned, and I agree with your points. "Hipster" is over-done, and from where I'm sitting those who use it pejoratively come across as elitist.

baldeagle 12y ago

I was with you until you went on about GNOME 3... oh wait, I was still with you..

mikeycgto 12y ago
I enjoy GNOME 3. Have been using it for a long while now and really don't have any major complaints. Granted, I don't use many desktop programs (browsers, terminal, chat programs and nuvola player).

cousin_it 12y ago

It's funny you would make a dichotomy between the "old guard" and the "hipsters", and blame the latter for the problems of the new Google Maps. If there's anyone on Earth who I can name as part of the "old guard" of online mapping, it's Bernhard Seefeld, who invented draggable tiled online maps when he launched map.search.ch in 2004. (Google Maps was launched in 2005.) For the last few years he's been working as the product management director for the new Google Maps. If I had to come up with a reason why the new Google Maps feels worse in many ways, my guess would be second-system syndrome.

naterator 12y ago
IMO it's definitely Second-system syndrome. Maps worked fine and didn't need much added/changed, but someone decided that they needed to keep iterating and now we're stuck with all the cludge built on top of it now.
- dennisgorelik 12y ago
  It wasn't iteration. They threw away code and started from scratch. Things you should never do [1]. Several months ago Google releases totally new version of Google Maps. Google Maps consistently stays as a poor product since then. I think that even first version of Google maps (introduced in 2005) was better. [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.

k0 12y ago

+1 for Bing maps [shudders]. I tried yahoo maps and it is nearly as crappy as the new google maps...hell, Apple maps is superior to the new google maps...and I didn't see that coming.

dennisgorelik 12y ago
Could the current Google Maps program manager be a saboteur from Apple or Microsoft?

tolmasky 12y ago

This comment also servers as a short history of the development of iOS 7.

Lagged2Death 12y ago

I think you're right about trendiness and hubris associated with UI redesigns, but I think it might be a mistake to imagine this is some sort of one-time sea-change. I think it's more of a constant churn; those who would "modernize" or "update" all sorts of designs - from software UI to software architecture to real architecture to interior decorating to graphic design and brand identity work - always have (arguably need to have) an unjustified level of self-confidence, a high opinion of their ability relative to the task they've got before them. They're always blind to the tweaking and tuning that was required to produce the thing they've set out to replace. Most of the time, if they had an accurate idea of how monumental a task they were facing, they'd look for something else to do.

User9821 12y ago

I don't think it's 'hipsters' or young designers in general. I think situations like this happen when a bunch of people sit down in a room, and draw something up on a whiteboard. They draw all kinds of flow charts, sales funnels, color emotions, menu mockups, how X study showed 3% more users preferred the search bar 10px from the top, instead of 7px from the top, and how renaming the button from Search, to Go with a silly icon makes the company more human and will improve their image. They get caught up in all these little details and studies, and on paper they can rationalize everything as being perfect. Then, it's a turd in reality, and everyone is left wondering what went wrong, the studies showed B was greater than A, and C was even better than B, and D surpassed C. So, how in the world can the original A be better than D? I don't know, but anyone in the design or development world can verify that it happens. The Simpsons sum it up well in this episode... http://i.imgur.com/VLgpw4L.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VLgpw4L.jpg The car is perfect, big windows and lots of sunlight, a giant cupholder, a horn that plays a catchy tune. Everything is great, until you look at things as a whole. Now, my least favorite aspects of the new Google maps. I use it on almost a daily basis because I travel often, but I'll be trying to experiment with OpenStreetMaps, or Bing. 1. The search input box hides itself. Why in the world is the search hidden, forcing me to X out of directions to see it again? 2. The blue lines for directions make it nearly impossible to tell if the road offers street view. Mousing down on the little man produces blue availability lines, but you can't see them under the directions. 3. I don't believe it's possible to split directions and street view on the screen. This was the view I used most often. Splitting them side by side would make the most sense with widescreen monitors. Now, you just get a little map in the lower left, and it does a weird expanding animation when you hover over. Previously you could drag the little man to pan around the map, but now you have to keep clicking locations to move. 4. Images at the bottom. I'm here for maps, not images, so this makes absolutely no sense. The three little images at the bottom look like buttons for terrain, map, satellite view, bit instead they open these thumbnails. Now, you have to click the earth button to get satellite images, and the weird part, the image thumbnails at the bottom have separate visible/hidden settings depending on the view. If you close the thumbnail bar when viewing a map, then switch to satellite view, you would think it would stay closed. Nope, it'll open itself, because it's enabled on satellite view. You have to toggle it off on each view. 5. The top left dropdown. Way too many boxes expanding, collapsing, etc as I try to navigate. My wishlist... I'm just going to mention one thing, because this has bothered me for ages. Why the heck can't I customize the level of detail? There have been countless times where I just want to see countries and their names, or countries and capital cities. I'm looking at Europe right now, and it's not displaying half of the countries, but displaying city names all over the place. If I zoom in to see all the country names, the map is crowded with hundreds of cities and roads. I always end up doing an image search online for maps, because they achieve this most basic goal. Look at the below image. Google maps on the left. It still doesn't label the Czech Republic in that image. If I zoom out one level, it'll show the Czech Republic, but hide other country names, like Montenegro. Right is just a random map I pulled off an image search. The right map is 100x easier to see the borders and countries. Google maps is an absolute disaster in these situations. If I ask someone that isn't familiar with European geography to find the Czech Republic in the below images, they'll be scratching their heads with Google maps, unless they start zooming in and out hoping the name of the desired country pops into view. http://i.imgur.com/skpNOyd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/skpNOyd.jpg You can show me street view from a coral reef, or roads in some obscure village on a small island, but you can't show me a simple world map with country names? Where are the priorities here? Edit: Switched my homepage to DuckDuckGo instead of Google search, and updated by bookmarks to OpenStreetMap. I'm honestly getting tired of supporting Google, since the list of things they do right gets smaller on a weekly basis. It's time I give someone else a turn.

chetanahuja 12y ago

@Pacabel Absolutely true. The "design" folks are usually pressured to follow fashions. Current fashion in designs in the valley are unfortunately driven by people (ie "hipsters") with "minimal", "negative space", "beautiful" as their main values with usability, discoverability etc. being very low on the list of priorities. Also, I can assert with some confidence, that the number of people choosing the Classic view (from the small question mark at the bottom), is being tracked as a metric of success or failure of the new UI high up on the chain of decision-making inside google.