Focussed, Effortless, Elastic the 3 pillars of Google UI

Just watched a great video of Jon Wiley, Google's lead designer for search on Google Operating System.

+++++ As an aside Google Operating System is a fantastic blog if you are interested in modern web products/ ui design .Their coverage of Google products is top notch.

At XO we work on innovating the Google search experience, everyday, for the past year. So it was very interesting to finally find out who was leading the charge of the new Google redesign, and tackling some of the the same challenges we have to deal with.

Jon has a great presentation, click through for the video, that covered the story of the new redesign:

That the project was initiated on the same day that Larry Page became CEO, the initial resistance to change from users, How designers at Google finally got let out of the cage, and lastly how it now adds up into a cohesive new look for Googles product line that users are loving.

Some of the most interesting details for me where that the 3 pillars of the new redesign are :

• Focussed , Effortless , Elastic
• explanation of the color coding of the buttons.

Red = Main action (e.g. Compose button in Gmail)
Blue = Common "just do it actions" (e.g. Search button)
Green = actions that have to do with sharing or an audience.

Check out the original post and watch the presentation. There is also this post with screenshots as well.