More About YouTube's Latest Experimental border

A week ago, I reported that YouTube tests a new border based on Cosmic Panda. The most important attribute is the redesigned homepage that helps you find new channels and explore the videos from your subscriptions. YouTube started to post extra information about the new interface and it's now obvious that it will replace existing UI in the near future (the link only works after you've enabled the new interface).

"We've given YouTube a refresh. When you log in, you'll be greeted with fresh activity from your subscriptions. You can also browse and add new Channels to your homepage. Connect with Google+ and Face book to share your favorites with friends. There's plenty to discover, so login and give it a spin."

There's also an article about the new border for channels.

This new look and feel makes it easier for viewers to find and observe content. It also makes it easier for Channel creators to systematize and showcase exactly what they want. We incorporated your Feedback from the "Cosmic Panda" Channels and Watch experiment, and are eager to present:

* A more streamlined and consistent design

* An easier way to find and view videos

* New, more flexible layouts for featured content, and

* A way to keep your audience engaged even when you don't have new uploads

It's interesting to observe that the new homepage and the new channels are built around feed views and activity streaming to make YouTube even more social.

The new channels are less customizable: you can only choose an avatar, a background image, a background color and a template (creator, blogger, network, everything).

Update: The new interface is accessible for everyone.

Android Addresses UI Shortcomings

It's astonishing to see how much Android's user interface has distorted ever since Matias Duarte was hired by Google to get better Android. Matias has previously worked on Sidekick, Helio and Palm's WebOS, so Android is a perfect fit for him. In only 9 months, Matias Duarte and his team managed to talk to a lot of Android's UI shortcomings: a virtual keyboard that wasn't good enough, an uninspired border for multitasking, the hidden menus that required to click on a soft key to display them, rigid soft keys that were restricted to a single direction. Here's, for example, the steering bar that replaces the hidden menu for common actions:

In an Engadget interview, Matias says that Honeycomb is the future of Android in terms of user knowledge. His job is to make Android's interface so good that companies like HTC or Samsung don't have to spend so much time improving it. The stock user interface will raise the bar high enough to be more than a solid groundwork.

You're not working on one product, you're not saying "we're one company, upright integrating and making one product and we're going to focus on one market and we're going to try and meet that mainly need." But instead, the idea is that there's a common problem that every company that wants to do well in making computing better, making computing mobile has and that's the basic platform problem. We're not only going to try to find a way to get everybody to benefit from it, we're going to do it for free. We're going to work on building this common tide that rises all boats.

It's attractive to think of Android as "the tide that rises all boats", a platform that accelerates mobile development not just for smartphones, but also for tablets, media players, digital cameras, TVs, cars, appliances and much more.

It's amazing to see how much Android's user interface has changed ever since Matias Duarte was hired by Google to improve Android. Matias has previously worked on Sidekick, Helio and Palm's WebOS, so Android is a perfect fit for him. In only 9 months, Matias Duarte and his team managed to address a lot of Android's UI shortcomings: a virtual keyboard that wasn't good enough, an uninspired border for multitasking, the hidden menus that required to click on a soft key to display them, inflexible soft keys that were limited to a single orientation. Here's, for example, the navigation bar that replaces the unseen menu for common actions:


In an Engadget interview, Matias says that Honeycomb is the future of Android in terms of user experience. His job is to make Android's border so good that companies like HTC or Samsung don't have to spend so much time improving it. The stock user interface will raise the bar high sufficient to be more than a solid foundation.

You're not working on one product, you're not saying "we're one company, upright integrating and making one product and we're going to focus on one market and we're going to try and meet that particularly need." But instead, the idea is that there's a common problem that every company that wants to do well in making computing better, making computing mobile has and that's the fundamental platform problem. We're not only going to try to find a way to get everybody to benefit from it, we're going to do it for free. We're going to work on building this common tide that rises all boats.

It's attractive to think of Android as "the tide that rises all boats", a platform that accelerates mobile growth not just for smartphones, but also for tablets, media players, digital cameras, TVs, cars, appliances and much more.

Google Maps Tests New Navigation UI

Dave P., a reader of this blog, spotted a new UI for the views and layers offered by Google Maps. The new interface enlarges the buttons that let you switch to the satellite view and to the embedded Google Earth, removes the button that lets you switch to the traditional view and adds a layer panel that's only displayed when you mouse over the satellite button.

Another change is that the list of recent searches and Google Maps views is displayed in the layer panel, so you can quickly switch between custom maps, driving directions, local search results and Google Maps layers.

Next Week's Google Search Event

Did you know that Google has an Experimental Happiness team? One of the engineers that are part of this team is Othar Hansson, who is a tech lead for the rich snippets and a member of the Google's Search UI Group.

Did you know that Google has a search czar? His name is Ben Gomes. "I think of Ben as our diplomat," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of the search products and user experience. "It's Google; it's search. There's a lot of big personalities; there's a lot of opinions, and Ben is the reasonable one that can help build the bridges. When we look back, there was a point where Larry and Sergey really felt like we needed to name a search czar. And there was only one natural choice -- this was back in 2002 -- and that was Ben." According to Mercury News, "Gomes is responsible for shaping the automatic suggestions users get as they begin typing a query, and the few lines of text and links they get back, which Google calls [snippets]".

Did you know that Google still has more engineers working on the search than any other product? Johanna Wright says that "other initiatives, such as Google TV and Android, help move search beyond the desktop and laptop paradigm on to other hardware." Johanna Wright is the "Director of Product Management responsible for the Web Search. She oversees the development of the Google's search user interface and features and was the initial product lead on Universal Search."

Did you know that Google's first female engineer was Marissa Mayer? She's now Vice President for the Search Products and User Experience.

Marissa Mayer, Johanna Wright, Ben Gomes and Othar Hansson will speak next Wednesday at a special event about the evolution of the Google search. Most likely, Google will also launch some new features and a new interface.

Google has recently started to test an interface that shows the results as you type the query. The new interface could be launched next week. Shark SEO says that the new UI is especially useful for the long-tail searches. "From finding out the best way to deal with MySQL/PHP queries and finding the right Excel formulas, it was just astonishingly, brilliantly useful – it saved me time and led to me finding the right results much faster."

Google Tests a New Navigation Bar

Google tests a tweaked user interface for the navigation bar. The experiment removes the link underlining, changes the background color when you mouse over a link from the navigation bar and adds an icon for the settings menu.

Google Tests Centered Layout

Some users report that Google started to test a centered layout for the search results pages. It looks almost like the Yahoo Search, except that the navigation bar isn't properly aligned.

The experiment could be related to the "live search" interface that adjusts the results as you type a query. Google's search results could become an extension of the homepage, which already has a centered layout.

On Gmail's Widget for Selecting Messages

Gmail updated the interface last week and many people have complained about the changes. Some didn't like Gmail's new hybrid button for selecting the messages. To select unread messages or starred messages, you need an extra click. Apparently, many Google employees hated this change, as well.

Michael Leggett, Gmail's lead the user interface designer, explains how he came up with this widget:

It IS odd. And yet, both the checkbox and the menu part tested very well in the lab. The people who hated the widget outside the lab also understood how to use it but promised others wouldn't b/c it was so "weird."

We tried a few things (like putting the select actions under "More actions") but I didn't have high hopes for any of them except the widget that have been launched. It tested better than I had hoped (all of the participants in the usability study were able to select all, unread, and none). We launched it to all Googlers months ago and listened to feedback (everyone was able to figure it out... some just hated the change).

More about why the change: The "Select all" link is used by <1% style="font-weight:bold;">I wanted to simplify the interface and give back that space to users.

Since features like "select unread" or "select starred" were used by a lot less than 1% of the users, it made sense to hide them. Power users can always learn how to use keyboard shortcuts and an extra click doesn't mean too much for a feature that's rarely used.

Michael Leggett also says that the link to Buzz will be added at the top of the page, next to Contacts and Tasks, and users will be able to hide the links to service they don't use