15 years ago, I helped design Google Maps

My biggest gripe is trying to read road names.<p>So many times I&#x27;ll see a road name, and I start to zoom in - only to have it now disappear - to then zoom out again and it doesn&#x27;t show at all - to zoom in again and then 50&#x2F;50 I can see it.<p>Drives me nuts.<p>Where I&#x27;m living (Indonesia) most people reference parts of town by the major road nearby. I try to learn where the hell I am in a certain new locale by looking at the road name (They aren&#x27;t often seen on physical signs, either) and it takes me forever to find it. Doesn&#x27;t help that it&#x27;s a regular practice that the road name changes after some time, even though it&#x27;s the same road.

This particular color change is not very popular inside Google during its dogfooding and received lots of feedback, but yet the product team decided to push this. I don&#x27;t know what happened in the team internally, but it looks like now those product people care less and less about internal feedback from arguably most enthusiastic users.

The new version doesn&#x27;t show most of the street names. Not even the major roads.<p>Screenshot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ibb.co&#x2F;qszKNSm&#x2F;google-maps-labels.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.ibb.co&#x2F;qszKNSm&#x2F;google-maps-labels.png</a><p>Example URL: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@51.5041929,-0.111821,17.46z" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@51.5041929,-0.111821,17.46z</a>

I recently had a problem with data on my phone, so part way through a long car trip I had to use OSMAnd over Android Auto. Normally I only use that when hiking.<p>It was wonderful! All the roads had high contrast with the background, so in a dense and unfamiliar city &quot;in 500m turn left onto Smith Street&quot; was so much easier! With a brief glance at the screen I could see how many streets there were, and <i>they were labelled with their names</i>. It isn&#x27;t perfect, but it showed how bad Google Maps had become.<p>I used it for the rest of the trip.<p>Google had white-on-beige for streets, so the displayed map was essentially useless. The new colours look like a small improvement.<p>Edit: I tried to find a screenshot of OSMAnd, but nothing looks like what I saw in the car. I don&#x27;t have a car to check, it was only a rental. Maybe it was like this picture in the documentation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osmand.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;user&#x2F;navigation&#x2F;auto-car&#x2F;#map-appearance" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;osmand.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;user&#x2F;navigation&#x2F;auto-car&#x2F;#map-appear...</a> but I thought I had it in light mode too.

Changing the default color to teal was a huge mistake IMHO. I have been using Google Maps since its inception (18 years!) and this was a most unwelcome change. They could have at least gave us an option on which color scheme we want. Where’s Steve Jobs when you need him?

I think the widgets are important. One of the primary ways I use Google maps is to punch in new directions quickly while at a red light or something. I want to press one button. The “home” and “gas” buttons help here. I certainly do not want features “buried” in the app where I need to tap more things frantically. I think the map is the most important thing, and the current design reflects this, but it isn’t SO important that everything else should go away.<p>I don’t really care what a designer from 15 years ago thinks. The current designers do a good job.

Something else I don’t love from looking at my neighborhood is that Aldi gets its own pin&#x2F;emphasis. Not the important municipal buildings, parks or school.<p>Her most basic point about the water and parks says it all. There’s a <i>lot</i> of existing visual language around this stuff that could be drawn from. Things going back hundreds of years. But I guess a fucking pin for Aldi speaks volumes about where the real priority is for this „product”.

The biggest new thing that I’ve noticed that I was waiting for, but they finally did, was put advertisements for places on your route as optional stops<p>To me, that’s the kind of thing that says this is no longer going to help me actually achieve my goals, and is going to start challenging my ability to make decisions unimpeded

Even before the current design change, it was almost impossible for me to navigate using Google Maps. With OpenStreetMap, it&#x27;s easy for me to extract the features of my surroundings:<p>- The shape and size of houses. Yes, you can see individual buildings in Google Maps, but they are almost indistinguishable from the background.<p>- It tells me at a glance whether some area is a forest or just a field. Everything&#x27;s just the same color in Google Maps.<p>- Streets that I should probably not set a foot on (highways) have a distinct color. This is really bad now with the redesign.<p>- No problem figuring out if an area is serviced by trams or trains, you see their tracks clearly and don&#x27;t need to zoom in looking for individual stations. Again you can extract this information from Google Maps if you squint, but tram tracks next to streets are almost invisible.<p>Especially with this update, prominent colors are given only to streets, which may make sense if you use Google Maps in your car. But as a pedestrian or cyclist, all the other information about my surroundings is much more important to me.

I don&#x27;t mind the widgets, but agree on the colors. The water being teal and non-built areas being mint looks both unnatural and has worse contrast, at least to my eye. It&#x27;s like they wanted to go for a pastel theme but didn&#x27;t dare go all the way.<p>At least there&#x27;s always the 3D globe&#x2F;satellite view, which I still think is a marvel. Especially if you&#x27;re looking up walking directions to somewhere unfamiliar, since you can rotate around and see all nearby buildings, landmarks, etc. hope they expand the coverage!

To try and remove myself from Google as much as possible I&#x27;ve been trying Apple Maps again after previous bad experiences, and much prefer it now. The only exception is place information, including opening hours etc, for which Google is much better. I&#x27;m pretty sure the difference is to do with incentives, where Apple isn&#x27;t trying to sell ads in Maps. That seems to have lead to things in Google Maps like location pins outcompeting basic information like road names, which doesn&#x27;t happen in Apple Maps. There&#x27;s clearly a trade-off there, that I think Google has started to get very wrong.<p>For what it&#x27;s worth I also don&#x27;t like the new colours. I guess people will get used to it after a while, but I question the wisdom of a change like that in a situation where colours have meaning - there should be a <i>very</i> good reason for that kind of change, and I haven&#x27;t seen anything to back that up. If anything the opposite where, for example, route information is harder to see in dark mode.

Yes, it&#x27;s bad, and yet another example of a very public, beloved and well used service by Google being &quot;improved&quot; away by some PM to get that promotion, thereby making it worse, with no option for a user to even revert back to the old design (lest they challenge the SV-career man&#x27;s assumptions that &#x27;It&#x27;s better this way!&#x27;)<p>Google is by and far the bigget culprit at this tactic, and it&#x27;s getting very, very tired. I hope the team responsible for this change reads this: You made one of your best products harder and more inefficient to use.

I suggest it is wrong or even dangerous to plot unauthenticated sites.<p>For example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@50.9465831,-2.6376033,18.96z?entry=ttu" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@50.9465831,-2.6376033,18.96z?...</a> shows &quot;Crafting by Steph&quot; in the middle of a road that sees at least 30,000 cars per day. Steph will be hit at 20-50 mph.<p>Here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@50.9461045,-2.6390567,42m&#x2F;data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@50.9461045,-2.6390567,42m&#x2F;dat...</a> There is a business called &quot;Napoca Taxi&quot; listed.<p>That area is actually a grave yard.<p>I agree with Elizabeth Laraki - the colours are wrong on G maps

Are we using different apps?<p>I have no trouble distinguishing between land and water, including greenspace. Train lines are much easier to see. Roads have been better broken down and are easier to understand for a pedestrian. The lessened contrast between different types of terrain makes it easier to tell how to get to locations and where locations are. They pop out more. The functional requirements for maps are discovery and navigation, both of which seem improved in this ui update.

I like the new update and I think author needs to let her cynicism aside and focus on the fact that a product revitalization is almost always due.

Anyone else notice how Google Maps has indexed everyone&#x27;s covid cottage industry LLC registration? It&#x27;s like I can&#x27;t view any neighborhood around me now without people&#x27;s random consultancy, auto repair hobby, travel agent gig, Etsy store, etc. cluttering up the map! Super annoying!

Meanwhile, bugs galore.<p>Since last month, any time I am looking at Google Maps, the podcast or music playing in the background will stop every few seconds. Not with navigation directions or review open, simply looking at the map it just grabs exclusive control of iOS audio for some unfathomable reason and plays nothing.<p>Add to this the years old issue with inability to remove hundreds of old starred places. You can remove them using the app, you can go to starred list in web GUI and do it from there, but they all come back.<p>But yeah, someone decided it was worthwhile to spend the time on the damned color change.<p>GMaps still have strong points, like all the integrations that result in mostly correct regarding public transportation routes around the world or the review system which I am sure is a pain to keep up with the amount of UGC they&#x27;re getting.

People don&#x27;t use Maps for navigation alone as of now. I use those overlays a lot on a day to day basis and burying them under some gesture is a terrible suggestion. The product has evolved a lot since 2007 because user needs have changed towards discovery. Also as an outsider we do not have all the UX research that goes into a product and this is reflected in design suggestion changes made related to a lot of products.

When I read comments to posts like this, what amazes me is the level of denial people have about huge corporations. It&#x27;s just not possible to do a rework like that, there is no one who can decide on that, no one who knows exactly what strings have to be pushed (all the platforms, all the teams, all the application layers, all the documentation&#x2F;PR&#x2F;support layers), no one who has time in daily work to see it all through, no one who can take responsibility if revenue slightly dips, no one who can approve this and take responsibility if the guy who has the plan in mind quits, etc. Sure, some high-level manager has formal power to force this, but how will he or she make sure it happens exactly?

Now would be a good moment for OpenStreetMap to make the Tracestrack Topo layer their default view — it&#x27;s much clearer than their current default; even more so when compared to Google&#x27;s attempt.<p>=&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;?layers=P" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openstreetmap.org&#x2F;?layers=P</a>

The google maps visual design always lacked contrast to me. I don&#x27;t feel anything for the new design, but I will definitely not miss the old visual. Weird they waited 15 years before trying to better it.

A bit off topic but I didn&#x27;t know that on X people can post this long form texts with images in between (it seems that lacks headings). Is nice! A blogging experience added to a popular platform. I guess is a paid feature, fair to me. Also I don&#x27;t have an account and I&#x27;m able to read it.<p>Some years ago I appreciated the character limit of Twitter because people have to be creative and to the point to express themselves, but with the years I start to thinking that this limitation was also a curse for communication overall on the platform.

Ugh, I hate those overlays. I remember when user testing was going on. My comments were ignored. Make the map a totally separate element that can be primary. Everything else is slow nonsense.

In 2009 I had extensive conversations with the design team. The scale device is a critical feature for people who want to use the maps app as a map. Google&#x27;s response to it&#x27;s removal then was they expected people only use the maps app as a &quot;background upon to place directions.&quot; That&#x27;s why they only display major street names, only display ranges in the context of directions and keep removing the scale device.<p>It&#x27;s not a map application, it&#x27;s a wayfinder.

Is it a competition at Google on who can come up with the brightest and lowest contrast map colors? Maybe it’s like a rite of passage…<p>This is also how a map could look:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postimg.cc&#x2F;fVZvw8qJ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postimg.cc&#x2F;fVZvw8qJ</a>

Google maps have been terrible for years. (The actual map part and UX interactions.) Lack of detail is astonishing. At this point it&#x27;s just a glorified car navigation, where the road is everything, and anything else is just for show&#x2F;illustration&#x2F;gray&#x2F;green blur, I suppose. (I don&#x27;t drive.) Green color means absolutely nothing useful. It can be a forrest, field, or a pretty much anything.<p>UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu&#x2F;UI navigation. I often just want to exit a search context, but not change the map zoom position, and select something else on the map. I constantly struggle to keep context, when this auto-zoom&#x2F;sift happens. I mean if there was some checkbox to decouple menu navigation from map control, that would improve the experience 7fold. Show me a fucking arrow on the screen edge if the POI is out of the viewport, but don&#x27;t shift the map to a supposed &quot;better view&quot;.<p>I have quite a bit of pent up rage towards this stupid app, that I sometimes have to use because local public transport relies on it. UX right out of hell.<p>These changes don&#x27;t even register for me as significant degradation of UX.

In every discussion about Google Maps, I feel obliged to mention that it does not show speed limits in Switzerland, despite the official support page[0] saying otherwise! Isn&#x27;t this insanely beautiful&#x2F;ridiculous that nobody seems to care?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;coverage" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;coverage</a>

I wonder if having even the lesser used stuff like restaurants, gas stations etc. on the main screen has to do with people using the maps app directly while driving instead of android auto. Burying those in the app might not be wise.

The parks, forests, fields, and woodlands around me now are all the same colour. At least to my eyes it&#x27;s just a sea of mint-coloured blobs with no distinction whatsoever...<p>I don&#x27;t see a single improvement with the new colour scheme, the lack of contrast also makes the built area around me almost fade into the mint-coloured blobs.

I like the old color tone better - but Google Maps has been going downhill since 2014-15

I haven’t used Google Maps in probably four or five years. Apple Maps doesn’t track me, Google does. And if I can navigate the maze of obscure privacy settings across my Google account, I still don’t trust myself to have done it correctly or Google to respect setting. Apple Maps is sufficient for my driving needs, and is more accurate and provides better routes than Tesla’s infotainment option.<p>On a side note, I haven’t found an easy way to use Google search logged out, but have a Gmail tab open. After months of irritation, I signed up for Kagi once they lowered the price for unlimited searches, and haven’t looked back. My personal and business Gmail accounts are my only Google ties (plus YouTube for the kids), and honestly I feel more secure this way.

In Switzerland with have the swisstopo map which is really good in term of readability. I often refer to it to explain what a good map is.

&quot;&quot;&quot; Here’s how it could look: - Keep the search box - Keep the bottom bar - Remove everything else from the map &quot;&quot;&quot;<p>If you followed these suggestions you would end up with something that looks very much like Apple Maps

Am I the only one who is upset about this ”replace every button with obscure icon without label” trend? Seems that Google and Facebook are the main culprits of this. Every year it gets more disgusting when I unwillingly have to use their services.

At night the design choices are really bad. The active route and the alternate routes look so close in hex color, it&#x27;s made me drive through the wrong wrong twice in the last few days.<p>Example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;chinmaymaps&#x2F;status&#x2F;1725752799944663443&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;chinmaymaps&#x2F;status&#x2F;1725752799944663443&#x2F;p...</a><p>You may think it&#x27;s easy to differentiate in the screenshot, but look at it on a small phone screen at night while driving.<p>I hope Google changes this

OK, I wasn&#x27;t going crazy then. I had recently used Google Maps for a road trip that I was planning and I asked my GF if it looks weird. My initial thought was if someone changed my monitor settings. (I use different one for just gaming) . The design and graphics reminds me of Apple Maps a lot(the mac version). The look and feel was slightly off and it felt dullish. Not sure how I can explain it.<p>The suggestions are definitely good in the post. I like to have a clean maps panel and rest can be hidden away.

It&#x27;s only after reading the post do i realize how shitty and cluttered the UI has become.

&gt; The map should be sacred real estate. Only things that are highly useful to many people should obscure it.<p>This got me thinking. It would be neat if apps could adapt their UI to the features I use the most. Not what most people use. What I use. Rather than finding the UI that pleases the largest number of people somewhat, create adaptive UIs that fit my usage patterns at a highly granular level.

Yikes, I did not realize how bad it’s gotten. You would think someone would have decided against the pallete change, but I guess not. Looks like they’re being beat by apple ux wise for maps right now.<p>Nitter: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;elizlaraki&#x2F;status&#x2F;1727351922254852182" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;elizlaraki&#x2F;status&#x2F;1727351922254852182</a>

I love the update, love the widgets on the screen and love the new colors.

Remember how Maps marks walkable centric areas of interest in yellow? It&#x27;s now almost indistinguishable from the normal building colors, in the sun on your phone you definitely can&#x27;t make out the difference.<p>I was in a new city last week where this feature would have been useful to explore the city center but I just wasn&#x27;t able to see it.

I see lots of complaints about street names not rendering, and that has been a problem for me as well. The tweet author has a separate thread about how India doesn&#x27;t routinely have street names, and how that lead to a design change for maps. It&#x27;s super interesting!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elizlaraki&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719379064564166772" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elizlaraki&#x2F;status&#x2F;1719379064564166772</a><p>EDIT: The following link is among the replies in that Twitter thread.<p>Anatomy of an Indian Address [50th Edition] [AUG 7, 2023] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsletter.theindianotes.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;anatomy-of-an-indian-address" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsletter.theindianotes.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;anatomy-of-an-indian-...</a>

As I wrote on the other discussion for this same tweet:<p>I don&#x27;t see how the color scheme change helps with accessibility and readability. Okay, maybe the contrast with road names was bad before, but the major point was that important roads (like avenues) were highlighted in YELLOW.<p>Now every road is the same color and you can&#x27;t distinguish between important and secondary roads.<p>They sacrificed usability for &quot;readability&quot;. They could&#x27;ve achieved a mix of both (maybe change&#x2F;increase street name?), change the font color, but the issues still remain. You must zoom in to see a road name and it doesn&#x27;t work most of the times.

Don&#x27;t remove the text from the icons. I have no idea what the proposed buttons do, and since the icons changed i can&#x27;t even reference the bad design.<p>But i agree on the colors. It is just not nice to look at.

If you don&#x27;t rely heavily on car navigation (sorry, no live traffic) then give Organic Maps (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;organicmaps.app" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;organicmaps.app</a>) a try.<p>I think Google Maps mess is partially due to PMs beholden to some OKRs.<p>Stepping back a bit I wonder how much inconvenience do these people inflict upon us. Think about it. You rolled out a mobile app for a business&#x2F;device&#x2F;whatever. Best way to boost installs and impress your manager? Artificially gate features behind it.

Stupid question: but how do you search for something along a specific route? The search nearby thing never quite works for me, it keeps zooming out &#x2F; clearing, I never got the hang of it.

The huge missing part is customization : give users easy as stable way to clean up your garbage, and you wouldn&#x27;t need to wait 15 years to complaint about obvious UI design fails

It seems that every element is now pill shaped. What went wrong with rectangles with slightly rounded corners?<p>Are they going to get the top and bottom curved out as well and give us oval next?

I wish open street maps had vectorized maps instead of the tiled images.<p>Google maps is in need of real competition. It feels stagnant and regressing over time.

Does he have any pull with the current team? Because God damn, the new color scheme is hard to read. It&#x27;s so low-contrast all the roads and grass and water look like one big aqua smear.<p>For me Google Maps has sucked ever since they merged Maps and Navigate into a single app, preventing you from using many Maps functions while navigating somewhere.

Yesterday Jonathan Blow was complaining about some Maps app on his Twitter feed, but not sure if it was Google Maps or another product.<p>I do agree Google Maps can be annoying to use. But other Google products get more annoying to use as time goes on as well. I have huge annoyances with Gmail and Google Calendar. This in context of my iPhone SE (which, I guess, has a &quot;small&quot; screen size, so perhaps related to my issues).<p>- Every single time I visit the Gmail login page, it always tries to upsell me to use the freaking app, that I don&#x27;t want to use.<p>- At least on my phone screen, the button to dismiss the upsell page is covered by other UI elements. Only way to get rid of it, is to refresh the page. Not sure if this is a dark pattern to nudge people towards the app.<p>- I have multiple Gmail accounts (2 company accounts from different companies, my own company account, a private account and a spam mail account). Sometimes I am logged into one Gmail account and want to see the calendar for another account. It&#x27;s very hard to use the top right button to switch accounts. Inside web-based calendar app almost impossible.<p>And an annoyance I have in general these days, with many web-based apps, is the constant security crap to deal with (2FA stuff mainly).<p><i>... I long for a simpler web like we had 10-15 years ago ...</i>

Recommend justinobeirne.com if you are interested in this kind of stuff.

Seems like the Maps team want us to know that they still exist?

I love the ideas but when did Xs&#x2F;tweets become so long?

The latest update to Google Maps hasn&#x27;t been too bad but a previous update (I can&#x27;t remember when exactly - a good few years ago) made it much worse

I quite like the new colors. Not the ones for the roads, but the softer greens etc are just much easier on the eyes

I am happy it&#x27;s not just grumpy man sindrom for me regarding this change.<p>I do find the new map colors distracting for no reason

Is the teal maybe some kind of color blindness friendly feature? Or just 90’s nostalgia

Thank you for the greate product design.

What do you think about MagicEarth?

Less a criticism of the map itself and more of the product, Google Maps overall keeps getting less and less usable.<p>On iOS it’s possible to tap down into several layers of menus and options to where it becomes impossible to get back out. (For example restaurant -&gt; suggested places -&gt; restaurant -&gt; review) From the lack of well designed navigation it’s clear that the app is a messy collection of UXs thrown on top of each other.<p>Don’t even get me started on the desktop browser UI where there seem to be competing google place and google map place products.

The author wants to make google maps pretty and less usable. Minimalist software looks nice, but it is always at the cost of usability and especially discoverability. I don’t actually want to see a map when I open a maps app, I want to know where I can get coffee. The pills are amazing for that.<p>Make the software you get paid for functional, and try to win awards with side projects nobody but the committee cares about.

Well, star me a flag, and export me a geolayer! Want to go here! Search this area! And by &quot;layers&quot;, I mean satellite! Everyone: rush, to the beige! Contrast is too PC! An Apple a day! Let&#x27;s speak in tones!