I think the time has come where Google has lost its shine. No longer are the products and services that Google launch breath-taking or really newsworthy in my opinion because they all seem to follow Yahoo’s path. Gmail and Google Maps were a step above and beyond what was currently available, but besides that what else has there been?

Yesterday saw the launch of Finance Google and instead of taking strides in the design department they fall a bit short from Yahoo’s offering I believe when it comes to homepage design, but knock a homerun with the internal pages.

Homepage

I don’t know if there is a term for this in the design world, so I am simply going to say that the page has no “balance”. From the beginning you get a page where the leftside is overloaded, while the right is exposed with a huge gap and all of this occurs above the fold. I understand that recent quotes would allow for the space to become filled if the user chose to do so, but that much white space becomes a distraction for me.

You are given the ability to add stocks to your portfolio, but you are only aware of that if you take the time to look at the upper-right portion of the page and for some reason the stocks in your portfolio aren’t shown on the homepage. Google definitely has the knowledge to give users the option of showing either recent quotes or portfolio quotes so it is kind of confusing why this option is not available from the start.

Looking at the Market Summary box, the graph changes when you hover over the different markets. The problem with this though is that this feature is not readily apparent to the user. I just happened to move my mouse over that way and discovered that there was a hover effect. Why is this kept a secret and how can Google let the users know that hovering changes the graphs?

Company Pages

This is where Google Finance gives the competition a run for the money. The first thing you may notice is the difference between a fixed width design for the homepage versus a liquid design for the internal pages. I suppose the reason for this is to allow for the graphs to become as wide as the user wants since that is the main focus of the page. Like Google Maps there is a lot of cool AJAX (using Macromedia’s Flash/JavaScript Intergration Kit) action going on and I really like how points are marked on the graph signifying a news event that is linked to the right of the chart.

Google makes the same mistake it made on the homepage with regards to hovering in the Management box. Hovering over the names brings up more information and the only way to know this is to either understand what the tiny blue arrow means or to accidently hover over the names. There definitely has to be a better way to handle this, possibly with a better icon.

As for the rest of the page it is what you would expect from Google, simple and bland (almost like this site). Not really a bad thing, but on a page with so much information a little more flair would make it easier to read and use I believe.

Design and the Future

Design doesn’t make or break a company when the product already is a failure, but as more and more companies being to offer more of the same products and services or their competition is able to quickly match their offerings, design can easily become the determining factor for a user. That is why I am very surprised not to see more emphasis placed on design by Google to really entice people away from Yahoo or any other financial website. I am sure there is a gameplan in there somewhere that I just don’t know of, but you have to wonder how long can you wait before it takes effect?

Originally posted on March 22, 2006 @ 9:13 am

Yesterday we launched with a new homepage and Mike offered his thoughts with regards to why the changes were made. I have spent the last 2.5 years on this site critiquing and bashing a lot of other sites on the web and I only thought it would be fair to have a go at our own site for once.

What?! Why would someone in the company critique their own site? Wouldn’t it just be better to wait till everything is done perfectly before launching it? In our case Mike and I are two creative types (and I use “creative” loosely here) that differ on certain aspects of design. However, he is good at what he does and I have learned to trust him with certain issues when we can’t agree on them.

Take a look at my favorite version in comparison to the current version:

The old version had more visual pop to it. The color combinations that Rundle was able to pull off were something I had never seen before on the web. With the current version I feel that the gray background is just too bland for what many people might have loved about previous versions. The gray carries over to the navigation at the top and this is something that Mike and I disagree with on a daily basis. I personally can’t stand seeing a gray background and then the same gray used for the navigation. He likes it.

The gray makes an appearance again behind the ads. To nobody’s surprise I hate it there as well. I believe the ads can stand on their own without a background and if a gray background must appear somewhere in there to breakup the content then maybe it would best be served with information on how you can advertise on the 9rules homepage.

My final gripe (I just had to use the word gripe because I don’t think I ever had before) is the “From Our Featured Blogs” section. I think the green background is too light and the entries seems to run into each other. This is actually something Mike agrees with me on and we are thinking of simply placing a small border underneath each entry to break it up visually a bit better.

So Why Launch?

Again, I think a good question to ask is why launch if I have these issues. Well for one the site desperately need the new functionality displayed currently to drive more traffic internally towards our communities. Also when dealing with your own site I knew I had to watch out for being overly critical to the point of nothing ever launching. The problems I have with the site are aesthetic and shouldn’t effect the performance or usability of the site and therefore I felt it was okay to launch with these “issues”.

What are your thoughts? Am I insane or being too picky?

Originally posted on February 2, 2006 @ 2:06 pm

Pete Davis, the Chief Marketing Officer of ClickCaster, Inc., wrote to me last week asking if I could evaluate their site which is a competitor of Odeo (my take on Odeo). While my schedule doesn’t allow me to go as indepth as I would like with an evaluation (money talks ;-), I thought it would be a great exercise to point out some issues I have with the site and then open it up to everyone so hopefully they could walk away with some new ideas and improve the site.

Navigation

Without a doubt if they only fix one thing on the site it has to be the navigation. There are a ton of places where you can get cute with things and the navigation isn’t one of them. Lose the waves and figure out how many levels of navigation you really need.

The waves are too confusing to understand where you are on the site and if they are even clickable or not. Navigation should blend with the site in my opinion and not dominate or confuse.

Copy

The copy on the site needs to be improved as well. Looking at the homepage I see two paragraphs and both of them start off with “Imagine…”. I don’t want to imagine, I want to “do”. Figure out what the purpose of the site is and what you want your users to do and help them do it quickly and easily. Avoid the marketing fluff.

Login Form

The ability to login takes up 80% of the top part of the site. What happened to a simple user/pass form?

ClickCasts vs. Podcasts

On the homepage I have Featured ClickCasts and Featured Podcasts. What this leads to is total confusion because the difference between the two is not readily apparent. Basically there are just too many elements on this page fighting for attention. Nothing dominates the page and lets the user know what your intentions are.

Overall

The site just lacks that crispness displayed from professional sites. I’m sure someone else can elaborate a bit better on this, but from a professional web user’s perspective it’s hard to trust a site that isn’t professionally designed (of course that could just be me).

Your thoughts?

Originally posted on January 27, 2006 @ 12:31 pm

Today Scott Kidder informed me that Gawker released a new redesign of their tabloid site Sploid. I always like hearing about redesigns, especially when they concern major properties so I was very excited.

However, nothing could’ve prepared me for this one.

Now I love innovation and trying new things on boring old blog designs. The original Sploid was a step in a different direction and this one takes about five more steps out there. For the better though? I’m not quite sure.

For me it’s really, really confusing. What do I click? What do I read? Is this Sploid or Oddjack? When did these stories happen? Is the text under the picture part of the picture or a different story completely?

I don’t think you should be asking so many questions when presented with a site. Again though, I do like the risk taking of the designers. Would you attempt something like this?

Originally posted on September 8, 2005 @ 2:56 pm