Google updates Buzz UI. A little.

June 18, 2010

I’m not a huge fan of Google Buzz – that’s not to say there isn’t a ton of interesting, amusing and useful content being shared which, like any social network, is down to the people you follow – it’s just that Buzz suffers from the same thing that blights many Google products – UI.

For an organisation that prides itself on the crisp, uncluttered design of it’s homepage, the rest of Google’s offerings look almost thrown together. Buzz is no exception; compared to Friendfeed or Amplify, Buzz looks raw and unstructured, and I find myself shying away from using it because it’s not easy to look at.

Today, I noticed a little bit of a change – multiple items shared by the same person used to be stacked, slighty askew, on top of each other like a deck of cards; now they’re simply listed underneath the most recent item in the batch:

It’s a small change, but anything that tidies the presentation up and makes the feed easier to scan is a step in the right direction.

Am I being overly critical?  Does Google have a long way to go in the “beautiful software” race, or does function beat form every time? Let me know in the comments!

Posted in Google