This week's best things
Google Maps begins its death spiral, AI search could break the web, analysing the UX of Trello, defeating the Spotify algorithm, generational differences in communication preferences, chasing a Waymo taxi around San Francisco, the Jaguar rebrand, and music with buckets.
Now Google Maps begins its death spiral
A couple of weeks ago I shared a piece about the deterioration of Google's search products, and now it seems the enshittification is coming for Google Maps too.
This tweet shared a screenshot from Google Maps which features ads promoting a completely different location than the one the user searched for. How this could be considered usable is beyond me.
Find your alternative map app now.
And in other, not-great, news for Google, "The Department of Justice says that Google must divest the Chrome web browser to restore competition to the online search market, and it left the door open to requiring the company to spin out Android, too.". Casey Newton has written a bit more on this, and Google's response.
Google finally started to monetise Google Maps - which means that I will have to unlearn the “muscle memory” of tapping on the first location on a map to get the route to where I want to go.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 10, 2024
How is it helping users to suggest a location that is different to what they search for? pic.twitter.com/q0iK1YBpw3
Casey Newton
AI search could break the web
An article in MIT Technology Review looking at the potential impact of AI-powered search tools.
There has been quite a lot of discussion about the affect that AI search could have on traffic to websites, as this article says "these AI “answer engines” could replace traditional search engines as our default gateway to the internet".
Their likely aim is to answer your query 'in situ' without sending you away from their product to another website. This shift could have a devastating impact on how much of the web is currently commercialised.
"the production of content online depends on a fragile set of incentives tied to virtual foot traffic: ads, subscriptions, donations, sales, or brand exposure. By shielding the web behind an all-knowing chatbot, AI search could deprive creators of the visits and “eyeballs” they need to survive."
The article goes on to look at the current legal wranglings between News Corp and Perplexity, and the need for governments to reshape legislation in this area (quickly).
As with so much around AI, the situation is fluid and changing rapidly. But given the central importance of search traffic to so many websites, it's a situation worth keeping an eye on.
Benjamin Brooks
How to Reduce Churn by Doing Your "One Thing"
A UX essay from the always excellent Peter Ramsey which looks at the importance of simplicity and clarity of focus by analysing the collapse in usability of Trello over the last few years.
Peter has a brilliant perspective on user experience and there's lots in this piece that is useful to consider regardless of what your digital experiences are trying to achieve.
"if I was building Netflix from scratch, the most important thing would be to quickly demonstrate that you've got a large library of shows, with broad appeal.
Or, very niche appeal, if you know what they're interested in.
They shouldn't funnel you straight into watching the first show you see—you might hate it.
You're not trying to get them to watch a show (well, not right now), you're trying to convince them that you have shows that they might be interested in.
It's a much lower commitment objective."
Defeat the Spotify algorithm
Spotted via Matt Muir's extensive Web Curios newsletter, "welcome to Max Hawkins’ Daily Random Playlist, which every day will present you with 30 songs selected (apparently) at random from the Great Spotify Pile – the idea being that every day your audio stream will get queered with 30 songs which have come entirely out of leftfield, allowing you to maybe take a step or two off the well-tarmacked path The Machine has laid in front of you".
I'm a big fan of This Sort Of Thing (I think cultural orgs could/should be making more moves in this direction but noone seems to be, for whatever reason).
Forecasting content impact
Following on (ish) from the above, the latest edition of Deborah Carver's Content Technologist newsletter looks at how you can forecast the impact of your content.
There's a load of practical advice in here, and whilst none of it is rocket science it's useful to have it presented in this way, as a really practical guide.
"Let's address your company's risk tolerance here, but you can put your personal risk tolerance in parentheses. Unless you have the coolest chief creative officer imaginable, it's likely your organization's risk tolerance for content shifts is medium to low.
If you haven't already, here's where you start killing your darlings. That big idea you have that is high effort, low impact—toss it out. High effort, high impact can be worth it, but make sure it's balanced out with some of the more mundane maintenance like "build out more effective customer service materials.""
Deborah Carver
‘I got tired of so many gifs’: How digital communication can impact age-gap relationships
An interesting article in El Pais about the friction that arises in 'age-gap relationships' with different habits, norms, and expectations around digital communication.
I've shared a few things before about the increasingly noticeable generational differences in communication preferences.
It's something that is worth considering when it comes to how you approach internal comms at your organisation, and how you speak to your customers and audiences.
Because these are all likely to be 'age-gap relationships' of one form or another.
It should probably also factor into how you design your experiences, particularly around customer support.
"“My boyfriend calls me every day, but I never know what to say. Do I tell him that I went to the office, that I had a couple of horrible meetings, and that now I’m going to the supermarket? I don’t understand this mania of talking for talking’s sake,” says Clara R., 37-year-old brand manager whose partner is 49 [...] I’ll be frank, I can’t think of many things that are worse than a video call without prior warning."
Marita Alonso
Get in—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future
A (very) long read in Wired about driverless cars. The article mostly tells the story of following a Waymo car around San Francisco.
"Our idea: We’ll pile a few of us into an old-fashioned, human-piloted hired car, then follow a single Waymo robotaxi wherever it goes for a whole workday. We’ll study its movements, its relationship to life on the streets, its whole self-driving gestalt. We’ll interview as many of its passengers as will speak to us, and observe it through the eyes of the kind of human driver it’s designed to replace. We’ll chase it for no fewer than six hours, or until we get into a fiery crash. Whichever comes first."
If you thought this was something that had died after an enormous hype-cycle then this article explains in no uncertain terms how it is still very much a thing. And it is perhaps poised to achieve far wider adoption in the near future.
From an investment standpoint alone there are still vast amounts being spent on this technology, "since 2020, more than $11 billion has been committed to Alphabet subsidiary Waymo alone".
The article also highlights the number of cities that will either allow autonomous vehicles soon, or have allowed test schemes, in many countries around the world.
WIRED Staff
Jaguar mystifies with ‘reimagined’ brand identity
More on cars, Jaguar unveiled a rebrand this week, everyone seems to hate it.
I've linked to Creative Review's take on it "Guided by the ‘Copy Nothing’ ethos, the brand’s new identity promises to be ‘unique’ and ‘fearless’, which in fairness, as far as its competitors go, it has managed to achieve. However, it seems to have gone so far off piste as far as luxury car branding is concerned that it has accidentally wandered into the visual language of a 2010s high street clothing brand instead."
Whether you like the new brand or not, as someone said, if their previous 'iconic' brand had been working well then they wouldn't have been seeing the catastrophic loss of sales that they've experienced over recent years.
While I was reading about the Jaguar rebrand I came across this (long) Volvo ad which was shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, which people seem to (really) like.
Les Fo'Plafonds
An extremely enjoyable video from a French band who make music by repurposing household items. It's very silly, and very fun.