this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025

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Google Maps for Android redesign goes all in on sheets (9to5google.com)

submitted 1 week ago by GreenEngineering3475 to c/android

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Last year, Google Maps on Android was revamped so that the main view displayed info using sheets, and the full app is getting this redesign.

top 23 comments

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I have to say that the UI designers at Google are smoking crack and their designs are becoming less usable by the day.

Here's some, on standard Android:

Icons are now all the same shape, using similar colours, causing you to tap the wrong one more often.
Google Home is now a confusing mixture of pop-ups, tabs, drop-downs and general weirdness, making something I use a hundred times a day (to control my house) a bad experience.
Tap holding a message in Gmail to select it now moves the list to make space, but only in "All" view.
Maps are taking up less and less space on the screen, making it harder and harder to see context and relationships between locations.
Maps are now unusable in broad daylight because colour contrasts are now almost non-existent.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's an abomination and getting worse.

[–] extremeboredom 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Abandon Google. I've been slowly extricating myself and it feels wonderful. Soon I will have an entirely degoogled phone.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

We probably would if Google wasn't so deeply embedded in everyone's lives. I'd have to quit my job (they use Workspace) and become a software engineer so I can get notifications for my text messages.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I hear you, but so far the integration of Google Workspace is compelling. That said, being unable to disable Gemini is fast adversely affecting the experience.

[–] Carighan 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Icons are now all the same shape, using similar colours, causing you to tap the wrong one more often.

This is really the wildest thing to me, as its the equivalent of gaming graphics being optimized for screenshots to active gameplay before Youtube-videos for ~everything became too normal to keep that up.

Yeah sure auto-recoloring icons with all the same background look neat. In screenshots!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

As a software developer I've been dealing with UX design since the Apple Human Interface Guidelines hit the technical bookstores in the 1980's and it's staggering just how little any of this seems to matter today.

Most of the UX designers I've met are consummate graphic artists and designers, very few have any clue about what makes a user interface or understand that you can by definition not make the web pixel perfect or understand the nature of information absorption and screen clutter.

Right now on the screen I'm tapping this I can see 10 lines of text, and that's counting paragraph breaks as a line. It's ridiculous.

Screenshot of the mobile phone display I'm typing this on.

[–] noughtnaut 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Wow, you are the first person I've "met" who even knows about that book. Fistbump. I have a copy (since my dad used to work as an Apple distributor back then, this was way before they had retail stores like they do now).

While I can see that a good bit of that relatively slim book is (now) less than ideal, it still hurts to see how much UI and UX across all platforms is going downhill. I don't even recognise a "for the sake of X" because there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it (other than "it's different and therefore more better. Also, I made this").

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure where my copy of the book is, but "bump" right back at you.

The "I made this" factor is in my experience the primary driver, properly "justified" to management who also wants ownership.

I'm unsure what a fix looks like, given the preoccupation of HR departments hiring process with "young" and "innovative" - that HR speak for "cheap", vs. "experienced" and "considered" - HR speak for you're too old and expensive, but mostly too old.

[–] mrfriki 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

See, Google UX designers are doing a great job, only their job is not aimed at Maps users but at stakeholders.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What are they optimising for, user frustration?

[–] mrfriki 3 points 1 week ago

Business visibility, promoted locations/links… anything that will or lead to increased profit, no matter how slim the chance is and how much the user experience suffers along the way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Material you is dog shit too

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For anyone else who didn't know, sheets are those screens that slide up and down and always seem to be getting in the way. Like for fuck's sake I'm trying to look at the map, get out of the way! I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally closed the app entirely because I hit the back button to close one and go back to the full map.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

I agree. Terrible design.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Makes sense, Google's designers are consistently terrible.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

But is there an alternative that isn't dog shit?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

There is not a single one that is better than Google Maps. There are ones that are usable, like Magic Earth, Tomtom and Osmand (and Waze, but that's technically just Google maps), but the aren't good

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Organic maps is good except the search function.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OsmAnd is pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Unfortunately it's quite unpolished. It works in certain areas for certain things but it's by now means a decent replacement for what someone expects from Google maps.

It's great for being free and for what it is but it doesn't compare yet. Maybe one day.

[–] daddy32 4 points 1 week ago

Ah, so "sheets (by google)" are different than "google sheets". Right.

[–] cashsky 1 points 1 week ago

Let the enshittification continue. God damn I hate this shit.

[–] mlg 0 points 1 week ago

Google maps couldn't navigate its way out of a straight road with the shit tier routing algorithm they haven't updated for a decade.

I've seen GPS devices from as far back as 2005 that can run circles around this absolute junk software, including the touchscreen UX,

I hate this thing so much that I would pay to have Tesla to release their map system for any device just so we can experience Valhalla outside of OSMAnd and OrganicMaps which both lack the modern rendering flare.

Seriously the only thing they change every update is a new design made up their yearly hired college interns, and another removed feature to reduce their cloud running cost.