What’s Common Between an iPod and Google

06 aug 2009

Wondering what's common between the design of an iPod and Google ?

What’s common between an iPod and Google ? Simplicity.

google and apple design

Marissa Mayer has this to say on the simple yet intuitive user interface of Google (and these words apply to the iPod as well).

Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our way of approaching it closed. It’s simple, it’s elegant, you can slip it in your pocket, but it’s got the great doodad when you need it. A lot of our competitors are like a Swiss Army knife open–and that can be intimidating and occasionally harmful.

Illustration credit: Eric Burke

http://msftandthefuture.spaces.live.com/ Quikboy

I’d have to disagree with these comparisons. Google has pretty much always had it’s homepage having a search box right in the center and a search button.

iPods have NOT always had touch features, and I still think the UI of the iPod Classics is no more simpler than a Zune or any other regular PMP.

The 3rd comparison of “Your Company’s App” is ridiculuous. It looks like a data form for entering in employees or whatever. Of course it would not be just “simple” because more information is required.

Anyway, I’m not quite sure everyone is always into simplistic. Sometimes it can get annoying when you want a certain feature, but you have to dig through many menus or pages to find it, which then becomes the antithesis of “simple”. Like if I wanted to know upcoming games of my favorite MLB team, I could Google “Astros” and have a bunch of links, or I could search “Astros” in Bing, and I can get the information right there.

I’m just saying that “simplicity” should get in the way of “functionality”. I’d rather have a great mixture of both.
Anurag

@Quikboy, you missed the sarcasm about the way different companies make apps.
kmf

I work for a company that tracks customer data and rewards. And that last application is dead on, and looks like the app we sell, blocky and clunked up to run on hated-Oracle.
Neville Chesan

i agree with the author of this article… the catch here, lies in the fact both these products offer a simple interface increasing user friendliness… but at the same time offer stong and solid features..

Technology, Software and Internet

What’s Common Between an iPod and Google

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