In general, I’ve been a huge fan of Google’s UI changes. It makes the service seem fresher, more relevant and easy to use. Overall, it’s a nice progressive move that shouldn’t totally freak out a user base made up of a huge variety of user skill levels, operating systems, you-name-it. But there are a few spots where it starts to break down. For instance, this is the upper-right hand corner of the Google Voice UI now.
I mean, that’s just plain confusing. There are nine controls packed into that little space and they are almost completely unrelated to one another in terms of functionality.
I love that Google is iterating quickly on it’s products and that it’s pushing it’s UI to be more modern. There’s nothing worse than being stuck in an old UI because your user base can’t or won’t adapt. Ask Amazon. But, I also hope that Google acts quickly to come through a clean up areas like the above so that they continue to drive that Google hallmark of ease of use and clarity down through all of their products.
