Google Search May Get Material Design UI

It appears that changes are inbound for the user interface of Google’s most lucrative product: Google Search. The company has started testing a new Material Design UI for search results on the desktop. Material Design was announced back at I/O 2014 and since then it has spread from Android to apps, Chrome OS, and even the web. YouTube and Search haven’t been updated as yet on the web but it looks like this might happen soon enough.

Google started testing an updated user interface for YouTube just last month, so it’s unsurprising to see Search get similar treatment. It was only a matter of time before this happened.

From the looks of it, the basic layout remains unchanged, but visual changes are immediately noticeable. The background color moves from white to light gray, with white floating cards housing individual search results.

Another visual change is the placement of information cards that are currently displayed on the right-hand side of the results page. In the test, this card is being shown inline above the search results. Other small tweaks have been made to include new iconography.

Google is testing these changes on a very limited scale at this point in time, so it goes without saying that some of this might be changed when it decides to roll out the biggest UI change for Search in years to hundreds of millions of users across the globe. When that will happen is anybody’s guess right now.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Google, google search