Former Designer of Google Maps on Its Updated Design

Elizabeth Laraki, in an article-length post on Twitter/X

15 years ago, I helped design Google Maps. I still use it everyday. Last week, the team dramatically changed the map’s visual design. I don’t love it. It feels colder, less accurate and less human. But more importantly, they missed a key opportunity to simplify and scale. [...]

So much stuff has accumulated on top of the map. Currently there are ~11 different elements obscuring it:

  • Search box
  • 8 pills overlayed in 4 rows
  • A peeking card for “latest in the area”
  • A bottom nav bar

This is a very long way of saying that Google Maps’s app design should be like Apple Maps. In fact, Apple Maps has fewer UI elements obtruding actual map content than she’s proposing for Google Maps.

★ Wednesday, 22 November 2023