I was born in ’77.
Today, I am in the longest-standing 7% of employees at Google.
7 years, 7 months and 7 days after starting, this Monday is my last day at Google.
We leave the 7x7 city of San Francisco on Tuesday to return home to London.
Thank you to everyone for such a wonderful journey :-)
Annette and I gave a talk yesterday at Google I/O about 3 lessons that can be learned for building an app for a billion people, based on our experience redesigning Google Maps. Anyone designing or redesigning a product should hopefully find these useful, and anyone interested in design or Google Maps should find the behind the scenes design explorations interesting. Enjoy!
We've had some press coverage on the session too:
"Redesigning Google Maps - Google Details The App's Evolution" -- AJ Dellinger, DigitalTrends
Design is a big focus for Google. In preparation for a design-focused Google I/O event, we've kicked off a new "Google Design Minutes" series. Sian and I talk about designing and researching Google Maps.
Some nice press coverage:
"Google I/O To Elevate Focus On Design ... [to] inspire more developers to treat their users as humans, rather than just growth metrics" -- Josh Constine, TechCrunch
"For those who haven’t been paying attention, Google has prioritized design across their products, unifying its interface and winning two of our Innovation By Design Awards in the process." -- Mark Wilson, Fast Company
"The interesting aspect that the designer Jonah Jones and researcher Sian Townsend talk about is how Google was inspired by the simplistic design principles of people’s habit of drawing line maps on napkins enabled a redesign of Google Maps interface to enable ease of use." -- Syed Sofian Rabbani, Android Headlines
Read all about it in the Google Developers blog.
Starting today we're rolling out the new Google Maps to users throughout the world!
Some nice press coverage:
"The look is both beautiful and unfamiliar, but don’t worry. Over months of use, we’ve found that the new Maps is just as easy to use as the old version, if not easier. In nearly every way, the new Maps is a better experience once you get the hang of it." -- Nathan Olivarez-Giles, The Wall St Journal
"Google Maps' intuitive new design ... is a radical overhaul of the service that most of us have grown familiar with over the years. Featuring a minimalist UI based off Chrome, it's faster, more responsive, more personalized, and more integrated with related Maps services like Google Earth than ever before." -- John Brownlee, Fast Co Design
"According to Jones, the main idea behind the redesign was to make the experience as immersive as possible and to remove clutter by only giving users the information they need ... New web technologies like WebGL now also make the Google Earth-like 3D mode possible and ensure that even an app as complex as Google Maps works as smoothly as it does." -- Frederic Lardinois, Techcrunch
"It's the most powerful Maps ever ... and it's to the design team's credit that most of the features stay in the background until you summon them from the ether." -- Casey Newton, The Verge
"Elegant and modern ... The new Google Maps is intuitive to use and has become much faster. In addition there's the cleaned-up design and useful features like restaurant and flight search as well as the possibility to create your own maps and share them with friends." -- Rainer Schuldt & Virginia Kirst, Die Welt
Read all about it in the Google LatLong blog.
Today is a very flattering day: I made it into the Fast Company list of most creative people in business!!
This morning, Eric Gundersen and I had an interesting chat on NPR radio. Thanks to The Kojo Nnamdi Show and everyone that phoned in to ask live questions!
Listen to it here: The Next Generation Of Online Maps
We just launched some cool features in the new Google Maps: Waze traffic integration, helicopter tours, step-by-step previews of directions, and the return of Pegman!
Some nice press coverage:
"The new Google Maps continues to undergo incremental changes that promise to make it an indispensable interactive mapping solution" -- Adario Strange, Mashable
"Slowly but surely the new Google Maps is reaching feature parity with it's predecessor, thanks to constant updates like these. Maps isn't just about navigation, however. Google also sees it as a tool for exploration and education." -- Terrence O’Brien, Engadget
"If you’re not using IE11, Firefox 25, or Chrome 30, you’ll want to upgrade just for this [Earth Tours]" -- Emil Protalinski, The Next Web
Read all about them in the Google LatLong blog.
Bernhard Seefeld and I just came off stage from a great chat about online mapping with Om Malik at the GigaOm Roadmap 2013 in San Francisco. See below for a link to the article and the full video!
Read all about it at GigaOm.
In May, we unveiled a preview of the new Google Maps for the web, and today we're making it even easier to try it out. You no longer have to request and wait for an email invite – just sign up and get access instantly: maps.google.com/preview
For those who have already taken the new maps for a test drive, thanks for all your support and feedback. We're listening and continuing to make the experience even better. And for those who haven't tried it yet, here's a video tour about what makes the new Google Maps great:
Yatin & I gave a talk at Google I/O after the launch of the new Google Maps, where we covered technical and design considerations around a couple of key features. If you're interested in how we built some of the cool features we just launched, check it out!
We've had some nice press coverage on the session:
"Behind The Scenes Of The Big Google Maps Redesign And Its Technical Challenges" -- Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch
"How Google, with your help, is overhauling its maps" -- Stephen Shankland, CNET
"Google Lifts the Hood on New Maps Features" -- Damon Poeter, PC Mag
Watch the talk on the Google I/O 2013 site...
