A Google Background Image Anecdote

Google just introduced customizable background images on their site.
Here’s what happened:
“I need to search for someth…. wait, huh? What is Google celebrating today, the guy who invented transparency? A background image, oh weird, it’s like a mountain view. Oh I get it… Mountain View! I wonder who that woman on the dock is? Not a huge fan of big, busy images… too distracting. What other pictures are there? Yuck. Yuck. Nice for a photo album, but too busy for this page. Meh, the colored background is ok, red… no, gray, yeah, gray. Actually, maybe I want—Wait, I was supposed to be searching, how do I turn this off? Wait, why does clicking remove background image just return the original picture of the woman on the dock, I just want nothing to be there. Argh!”
Here’s what should have happened:
“I need to search for something. Ah… results!”
A feature that distracts from a tool’s primary goal is a bad feature in my book.
Updates:
- Bing is flattered. (Thanks Chris)
- “Remove Google Background” is trending. (Thanks Jason)
- full article »
- posted on 10 June 2010
- by Jesse
- comments (2)
- in the chapter, "Reviews"
- tagged with google, UI

Jesse Gardner is the grand poobah of Plasticmind Design. This blog is where he comes to write about design, technology and the general state of the Internet. read more...
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