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February 12, 2007
A to z of Google Information Architecture
Here are 26 different sets of menu items for different Google Services. There must be one Information Architect at Google who has got the determination to bring some consistency to this hodge-podge of menu items.
There is an attempt at being consistent in the menu designs, but someone needs to sit down a write a style guide. The Googlers can't even agree on whether they should be using "Sign Out" or "Sign out". The font sizes are almost the same. Apart from Analytics they all agree on the text colour. The only people using FAQ instead of Help are Alerts. AdSense use Log Out instead of Sign Out, and they put it before the Help item instead of after it.
The A to Z of Google Menu Options | |
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AdSense |
 |
AdWords |
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Alerts |
 |
Analytics |
 |
Base |
 |
Books |
 |
Calendar |
 |
Co-op |
 |
Docs |
 |
Finance |
 |
Froogle |
 |
|
 |
Groups |
 |
History |
 |
|
 |
Maps |
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My Account |
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News |
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Notebook |
 |
Page Creator |
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Patents |
 |
Personalised |
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Photos |
 |
Reader |
 |
Video |
 |
Webmaster Tools |
And you may have noticed the new blue menu list that has started to appear in the left hand side of some Google pages.
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|
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Calendar |
 |
Docs |
They haven't even got the same entries. It is Mail or Gmail? Should it be more or all my services?
Is it so disorganised inside Google that they can't even get these basic items right?
February 12, 2007 in Design, Google, Information Architecture | Permalink
Comments
consistensy is not necessarily always a mean to achieve usability!
Posted by: Pascal Magnenat | 27 Mar 2007 18:23:48
@andreas
Its segue. Not Segway™.
You can easily spot the difference. One makes you look like you have more money than sense, the other makes you look like a pretentious idiot.
I agree on the google menus. Also I am as yet unable to share documents outside my domain in google apps, yet am able to do some from my own personal account.
Still. I <3 google.
Posted by: John | 21 Mar 2007 16:44:20
it's not a big deal. the menus are context-specific. context is something that many IAs can't get their heads around just yet. you know, different apps, different needs, different people, different ways of thinking about things...
Posted by: somebody | 10 Mar 2007 00:38:12
yep. that is abysmal. How many hours have i spent looking for "all my services" or something. Try to get to your adwords from your mail or vice versa. Looks pretty much uncoordinated. It reminds me of
Content is King - in the meaning if you have superior content, people will use it even without much comfort from usability......
Posted by: andreas | 9 Mar 2007 10:59:47
Interesting... this is a good segway to my latest post "Is Google's business model progressive disclosure?" sort of similar issues...
http://tinyurl.com/2hdco4
Posted by: Frank Spillers | 3 Mar 2007 21:12:19
Good analysis. But i think these are minor but still inconsistent.
They also have a More>> link when clicked shows a page with all its service offerings and the link More>> still remains (though the link is removed).
Posted by: Rajarajan | 27 Feb 2007 04:53:02
All of the items you point to are low frequency use items - and in fact it's abundantly clear what each text means. I'll buy the pure language problems: mail vs. gmail and possibly sign out/log out - though.
Going the way of Microsoft would mean actually slowing down everybody to "fix" these "problems". For a good description of how useful a "quality process" for this would be - have a look at this Windows design war story: http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html
Posted by: Claus | 22 Feb 2007 14:30:27
great analisys... I think that various staffs are no-time-synchronized
Posted by: raimondo | 21 Feb 2007 19:30:38
Impressive work capturing all those images! That just must be a mistake on their part, too few people know usability enough :)
Posted by: Emil Stenström | 21 Feb 2007 19:16:08
I really don't see why it _should_ be the same. Various products have various audiences, and serve various needs.
Posted by: Veky | 17 Feb 2007 22:56:53
They're going the way of Microsoft!
Posted by: Rob Mason | 13 Feb 2007 13:15:19
