Google's Fade-In Homepage
Tomi H�s�
December 3, 2009
"This might surprise you, but Google has made their "fade-in" homepage
variant - or more precisely, one of the several prototypes they were
testing - their official homepage design now, as they announce at their
blog. This is a major redesign for Google.com: at first when you see the
page, you'll only be looking at the Google logo, the search box, and the
search and feeling lucky buttons. Only after you've moved your mouse will
other bits of the page appear, too, letting you jump over to apps like
Gmail or Google Maps."
"I can't see this redesign at the moment but that might be due to the fact
I'm sitting on an Internet Explorer 6 here in an internet cafe, and who
knows, older browser might not be supported for the fade in dynamics. When
Google launched the fade-in design as prototype I did join it though
because I liked. Who'd have thought that minimal Google would be getting
even more minimal over the years? In terms of web design laws of physics,
especially as the company gets bigger, the natural gravity pull is always
towards clutter... from what I saw, it takes extra efforts to go the
opposite direction. I've seen company homepages turn into a blinking
collage because every department of that company wanted to get their thing
in, nevermind what statistical significance their use case had for the
audience. For Google.com, I'd guess the overwhelmingly most significant
use case remains to be search."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-12-03-n67.html
Google's Homepage Goes Back to Basics
December 2, 2009
"Google has been testing a new version of its homepage that hides the
navigational elements until you use the mouse. Most people visit Google's
homepage to search the Web, so the links to other Google services are
distracting. After testing 10 variants of the new homepage, including an
interface that removed the buttons, Google decided to keep the search
buttons and to use a subtle fade-in effect before displaying the links."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/12/googles-homepage-goes-back-to-basics.html
Now you see it, now you don't
December 2, 2009
"You may have noticed that our homepage is sporting a new look. Today
we're excited to be releasing a new version of our classic homepage. The
main feature of the new homepage is that it "fades in" - when the page
first loads, it shows only our logo, the search box and the buttons. For
the vast majority of people who come to the Google homepage, they are
coming in order to search, and this clean, minimalist approach gives them
just what they are looking for first and foremost. For those users who are
interested in using a different application like Gmail, Google Image
Search or our advertising programs, the additional links on the homepage
only reveal themselves when the user moves the mouse. Since most users who
are interested in clicking over to a different application generally do
move the mouse when they arrive, the "fade in" is an elegant solution that
provides options to those who want them, but removes distractions for the
user intent on searching."
"For the past few months, we've been experimenting with homepage designs
like this and have run several live tests on the site. We do these live
tests when we are making a change that we think may fundamentally affect
how people use the site. Initially, some of the experiment findings had us
concerned, but one thing we have learned through our tests is not to judge
the outcome too quickly."
"All in all, we ran approximately 10 variants of the fade-in. Some of the
experiments hindered the user experience: for example, the variants of the
homepage that hid the search buttons until after the fade performed the
worst in terms of user happiness metrics. Other variants of the experiment
produced humorous outcomes when combined with our doodles - the barcode
doodle combined with the fade was particularly ironic in its overstated
minimalism. However, in the end, the variant of the homepage we are
launching today was positive or neutral on all key metrics, except one:
time to first action. At first, this worried us a bit: Google is all about
getting you where you are going faster - how could we launch something
that potentially slowed users down? Then, we realized: we want users to
notice this change... and it does take time to notice something (though in
this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether
or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently
than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont.html