14 Sep
Reasons for why Google made their Search box bigger
A few days back, Google announced that they have made their search box on the home page S-U-P-E-R sized. The official blog says:
The new, larger Google search box features larger text when you type so you can see your query more clearly. It also uses a larger text size for the suggestions below the search box, making it easier to select one of the possible refinements.
The questions that comes to mind are: Why did they do that? What’s the significance?
I tried to dig through the comments and blog posts by various sources and here are some of the reasons I find convincing:
- Drawing a user’s attention towards the most important page elements, and making them larger to improve seek time, are fundamental principles of usability. They’re designed to improve the experience a little for everyone; also consider that some people may not be as good at using a mouse or reading even reasonably-sized text as you, many of whom use Google as their search engine of choice!
- Google is just appealing to the dumber crowd (It’s main demographic) also since people are getting introduced to search earlier in their lives. It needs a more intuitive interface for the primary school kids. What better way than making the search box and the buttons bigger? And yes, the Long tail is getting used more, people are refining their searches. Almost 25% of all searches are completely new and unique.
- a change to the core Google search box size can affect: i) likelihood that someone types the correct search term, ii) visual focus on the search results page, iii) perceived ease of use and user preference for Google over an alternative engine.
What do you think?
