Designer's Mandate

Googling the Google! 

Google was founded in 1988 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google is the beating heart of the digital age. The grandeur and geekiness of the kingdom of bits become manifest at Google   Google is described as perfect search engine which understands what user means and gives back exactly what user needs. Google tries to make it as easy as possible for user to fine the information needed and get things needed to be done.

Need of Interaction Design 

Interaction design ensures that the interaction between humans and search engine is meaningful. We need to understand the human engagement and communication and use that knowledge to design the interface.

Search has to be made smarter and faster. Google should understand that when we type “jaguar” we are looking for car and not photos of animal. It should show information that is valuable to us. It means that the products should work intuitively so that people can spend time on the stuff they are good at. The power of search should be brought to previously unexplored areas and help people access and use this ever expanding information in their lives.

Google constantly does search. It is world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems. They try to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people.  

Google products aim to make the web a better experience. Interaction design is required to make the web experience simpler and faster for people to do what they want to do online. Developers should be able to contribute and move the web forward. Though web has evolved enormously, there are endless possibilities of the internet itself.

Placement in the search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting.

Google has always focused on providing the best user experience. All the tools and applications should work so well that users don't have to consider how they might have been designed differently.

Lightning Speed 

Everybody's time is valuable so when user is seeking answer on the web, they want it right away. Google average response time on the search result is a fraction of a second. Interaction design is required to ensure making it all go even faster.

The interaction of Google can be still improved and made cleaner to make it interesting. Google provides you multiple points to start a search from, we can search for different content like video, news, information, images etc.

 Either we can write the proper noun or description of the object to begin searching. It’s like a conversational search where in initially we provide a few details and search engine provides auto suggestions and other options based on which we can refine our search.

Taking the example of birds, there are so many illustrative books on birds, yet we prefer to use Google because of the speed and ease. There are thousands of birds, the search engine should be such that user enjoys identifying the bird quickly and then find out about the bird. Google search should understand the description provided by the users within minimum time. 

Principles Applied

Google being a search engine wants people to spend minimum time on their website so they have to make sure that users make the choices quickly.

According to Hick- Hyman's law, user takes for time to make decisions if they have more number of possible choices. Google provides many different ways to search but it has made sure that the format of choices is such that users get the choices simultaneously instead of in hierarchical groups and drop down menus.

According to Fitts' law, based on the distance and size of the target time taken to reach final destination is determined. Google has ensured that the icons are properly highlighted and not over sized. They have made efforts to minimize the travel time by keeping the icons near to the search bar. It is a designer's job to decrease the complexity. The more simple search is made, more users will be attracted towards using the search engine.

A good design should be smart. It should prevent users from making mistakes. Google provides auto suggestion and auto correction feature to fulfill needs of users.


Core Principle
Focus on users and all else will follow.
Google search should be intuitive, simple and beautiful design that delights the users each they visit regardless of whether they use a desktop computer, mobile device or any other hardware.

It doesn't show things we don't need. There is depth in design, but it isn't shiny or blingy. There are design choices shifting the focus towards the search results.There is much more to design than aesthetic appeal for an interaction designer. Besides creating a great design that works, on has to fulfill users' needs and collaborate cross functionally to make the work better, all with impeccable taste and cooperation.

Constraint
The google design shouldn't be changed entirely because people have been using this design since years, are familiar with the interaction, it would be hard to get accustomed to an entirely new design. 

Google has always focused on providing a clean interface and great speed so it is hard to provide a good design.

Target Audience
Google is today used world wide by people of all age groups. The word "Google" has now become a synonym of the word "search". 

Available Materials
History of Google search can be studied, and how it has improved over the time. Proper analysis of all the features of Google search can help us improve it and users can be interviewed for getting the basic idea of what users want. 

Information Gathering
Google search should be accessible and usable by the millions of users.  Google search should be simple but great for the user, main focus has to be on the interaction design. Experiments must be conducted with real users so that improvements must be based on real user behavior.

As a start I interviewed three googlers, one of them says Google is ultimate and he doesn't want a slightest change in the interface because then it takes time to get accustomed to the change. A second lazy user wanted the autosuggestion go one bit further and he wants Google to understand whatever he is thinking so as to he is saved for having to type his search query. The third person I interviewed wanted the option to search by categories like science, arts, design etc.

Deliverables
The google search experience is improving over the years. Efforts can be put in to improve it further. One has to ensure that design is appropriate for objectives and audience. 

There isn't actually a need on entirely new design but the current interaction design can be improved and suggestions can be given as to where to make improvements so as to improve the interaction between the search engine and the users.

The final outcome of the project will be wire frames and custom created screen shots of the improved design and the different suggestions so as to where improvement can be done.