Ask HN: Why did Google Maps turn ugly? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why did Google Maps turn ugly?

39 pointsNikolaNovak24 comments

I've always enjoyed Google Maps having a light-feeling interface.

In the last few weeks though, it started feeling very heavy and ugly. I am not sure why?

I think a lot more areas are now shaded in various grays instead of plain white, which adds to feeling of heaviness and mental distraction of colours... Meanwhile roads have moved from bright, easily seen high-contrast yellow with thin outline, to blah-gray, which blends with new shadings, so they've thickened the outline to try to compensate.

It feels significantly worse, to me at least, and I'm not sure why/when changes were made (note: Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10 and 11. My iOS app seems to still be OK, Android app seems to slowly be switching over).

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Its really simple:

The PMs/designers and everyone involved need a big project for all of them to get to the next level.

Otherwise what else would they do if there just isn't a big impact project available to work on? There would be no way to advance in their careers.

The incentive of any individual in an organization is not to please the users of the product, its to make the manager happy and meet the job matrix of the next level.

Those incentives drive the product outcomes and the product mirrors the organization

someone's read their James Burnham!

I find it harder to read the traffic overlay with the very reduced contrast of the new styling. There is a road that I drive on every commute that is right next to a much larger highway that renders 3 times as wide. The two blend together and it is illegible unless I zoom in much more than I used to.

Different strokes for different folks. I think it looks much better.

That is fascinating but true! :)

Would you mind elaborating, since we're here already? :)

In particular, what makes the gray roads superior to yellow ones? I find it significantly harder to quickly figure out the layout / roadmap - this is what my neighbourhood looks like now - everything looks like it's been hit with "desaturate/decontrast" filter :|

https://ibb.co/wJkw84t

The yellow roads were a little visually overwhelming for me. They made it hard for me to focus on the map as they would tend to draw my attention away. The grey roads actually stand out better for me because I'm not visually distracted.

> The yellow roads were a little visually overwhelming for me.

Funny how that works. My experience is similar to OP's that the dark grey roads feel very "heavy" and visually overwhelming. I guess for me the light yellow roads faded into the light colored background a bit more.

I find improved contrast and addition of more colors significantly more readable and glanceable - easier to immediately see what's where.

It's especially better in the car when using Auto, where seeing the lay of the streets is faster with darker contrast. The new fonts with outlines are much more readable for me as well.

For me personally, I think the update is fine and the old version was fine.

It’s just harder for me to get significantly worked up over small changes that cause no major inconvenience than most people on HN. I can’t control it so why complain about it or even think about it?

You might be seeing the updated color scheme (https://blog.google/products/maps/google-maps-october-2023-u...). My understanding is that the new scheme is intended to better match the real world: roads are grey (!), water is a different shade of blue, parks are a different shade of green, that sort of thing. If you're not seeing it yet on iOS yet you should expect it there too (eventually).

(Disclaimer: Work at Google, but not on Maps.)

If i want real world i have a whole windscreen to look through. Maps is for making information i need accessible at a glance. Ive started missing turn offs because its hard to orientate where things are at a glance without reading road names etc if everything is part of the same visual soup.

Did someone get an invite to the metaverse five years too late?

A screen is not 'real life', abstractions exist, like street lights and road signs being an example, ordinance survey maps, etc.

Idle thumbs burn Rome.

It's interesting, I guess it could be considered more ugly, but it's also much easier to read now. I can near-instantly locate roads and stuff around me from a glance, whereas before it took a lot of hunting around.

That is fascinating! Previously roads were yellow on almost white and I could find them instantly.

Now roads are gray in slightly lighter gray and I struggle mightily to get the feel of the road grid!

Do you mind sharing where do you use it? I find on my iOS app it's not too bad yet, especially if I have traffic layer on which overrides some of the colour changes. But on my pc, it's just drab low contrast and hard to parse.

Thx! :)

I'm on PC as well.

Although my background is either green or tan depending on the tree coverage maybe? I'm not exactly sure what the green means since they have no legend

I do see one small section with a dark gray background, and that is very hard to read.

For me it feels harder to notice the traffic "green" is really an indicator and not just the road.

And without traffic, it is terrible if I turn on the terrain shading. They really need to change the overlay color scheme when they start shading the background like that...

I use Google Earth in VR, and it seems to improve by leaps and bounds every year. I'm not sure if or how this intersects with Maps, exactly, but the experience from Earth view to Street view has greatly improved roughly lining up with the Maps changes.

There was a submission related to that here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38398751

Not sure about the reasoning... probably not accessibility though, as the land/sea seems much less contrasting than it was before...

I wouldn't accept that since they made the main route and the alternative route two slightly different shades of blue. It's hard to tell them apart at night.

Because Google and Googlers are a culture of shipping things to ship things, and the idea of maintenance and long term customer support does not exist at Google or in Googler's minds.

I think it's much better. I can actually read the map now when it's giving me directions.

I found changing my phone display from Vivid colors to Flat helped.

This is how big companies decline.

Simple answer - because nobody really cares.

winter blues

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