When the team went fully remote, they adapted with new ways to collaborate and gather research.ĭana: When COVID happened, our team was already remote: Matt and I are in San Francisco, and Sang is in Mountain View, and many others are in Seattle. Matt: When we previously looked at the role of contrast and accessibility on the Map, we had a spreadsheet of the top color pairings at different zoom levels, and it was still a pretty overwhelming list. It was a great chance to see: Well if we radically simplify, we can actually understand what we’re seeing, we can understand the contrast between elements, we can work on accessibility, and really comprehend everything that’s going on, even though we’re adding more detail. Michael: It wouldn’t have launched in the old color scheme.
#Google maps colorize update
The new features would not have been nearly as noticeable without the update to the colors. When we were testing the new version, I kept using it for my personal use because places were just so much more beautiful. How do we get a little bit of that intense detail to trickle up in a way that’s still easy to comprehend? The colors made these new natural features pop off the Map. Sujoy Banerjee, Product Management Lead, Core Maps: Around the same time, our Natural Features project was underway to bring more richness about the real world into the Map and show what an area actually looks like and feels like. If we could succeed at getting the number of colors down to a manageable number, it would make future releases much easier.Ī well-timed update took advantage of the color system updates, adding even more detail and granularity to the map. Hundreds of colors were all there for something. I’ve worked in this space for quite a long time and had a sense of the complexity. Michael Davidson, Engineering Lead, Core Maps: I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical, but also excited by the possibilities. Last year, we were looking at forests on the Map and had the realization that we had four different colors to represent pretty much the same thing and thought: ‘If we condense those, does the Map still work?’ It was a relatively small release, but it armed us with confidence to be able to take on the grander exercise. The Google Maps team experimented with distinguishing map details, improving accessibility, and reducing the range of colors.ĭiego Perez, UX Design Manager, Google Maps: We started with a couple baby steps. In this case, that was good because I approached it like: ‘Of course we can do this! I think? Maybe!’ Exploring a new system Because the system is easier to update, it also positions our team to keep moving the brand forward.ĭana: I had just transferred to this team from Material Design and a lot of my job there was thinking about how we improve the velocity of designers and teams: How do we make something really easy to understand and use? Fresh eyes lended themselves to being a bit naive about how complex the system was.
The new color system helps our users better understand the world around them, while aligning it to the Google palette sets us apart and builds brand equity. Sang Han, Creative Director, Google Maps: Legacy systems tend to have a lot of complexity so the team’s focus on simplification had myriad benefits. When I saw the inventory, I remember my jaw dropping because there were so many colors. The team started by attempting to fully understand the range of colors that had been implemented over the years.
#Google maps colorize code
In this case, we needed to look for color patterns in the code itself. The following are some examples of color gradients that you may find useful.The original system used one color for each detail from forest bogs to shrubs, resulting in differences so subtle that it was difficult to distinguish important elements like roads, text, and borders.ĭana Steffe, Staff Visual Designer, Google Maps: The color work started by exploring our hypothesis on whether we could reduce the palette down to a smaller number of swatches that align more closely with Material Design, while retaining all of the rich details of the Map.ĭavid Cronin, UX Director, Google Maps: One of the challenges with legacy systems is that parts of it may be undocumented. The color gradient heat map option is used to colorize the intensity of the heatmap.
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