Google Search on mobile is getting a new look that attempts to showcase the company’s 22 years of experience in organizing all the world’s information.
The redesign of the Google mobile search experience aims to bring information into focus and make text easier to read with edge-to-edge to results and a more rounded design.
Design is one of those aspects of tech that many people don’t even pay attention to, yet at the same time some small changes can reshape the whole experience, especially for an app that’s used by over a billion people.
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In the coming days Google is planning to roll out an update to the mobile experience on search that aims to make it easier and faster for people to find the information they want.
The five key ideas behind the redesign include bringing information into focus, making text easier to read, creating more “breathing room” via edge-to-edge results, using more color to attract the reader’s eye to important information, and making the interface look more “Googley” or, in other words, with more rounded edges that reflect Google’s circle-centric logo.
“We wanted to take a step back to simplify a bit so people could find what they’re looking for faster and more easily,” Google designer Aileen Cheng said.
The changes reflect Google’s efforts to make search faster on a mobile device. A sample image it showed indicates Google will place descriptors inside colored pill-shaped bubbles. For example, a search for a humpback whale will display shortcuts to the overview, characteristics, sounds, and videos above images of the marine mammal. Plus there’s a new bell icon if users want to get alerts about a subject.
The Google logo is top and center in between a hamburger menu on the left and the user’s avatar on the right. The search term is shown in a bar beneath the logo and the results are beneath that.
That design is closer to the current Google Search app’s home page. The current results page doesn’t display the user’s avatar, while the menu for images, shopping, news and videos are just underlined grey text.
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The update includes more of Google’s own font currently used in Android and Gmail.
“Bringing consistency to when and how we use fonts in Search was important, too, which also helps people parse information more efficiently,” said Cheng.
