When Interface Gadgets Work: Google Finance

Posted by Josh on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006.

I admit it: I’m Google fan. One really big reason is Google Maps, which rewrote the book on mapping (although ironically it’s now falling a little behind competitors on the feature front). Similarly Google Finance demonstrates how to combine DHTML and fabulous interface design to create a very powerful yet easy-to-use visualization and analysis tool.

Let’s look at IBM. Move your mouse over the graph without pressing any buttons, and it will show you the date and time under your pointer as well as the volume and share price. Slick. Now drag the chart with your mouse. Cool. Want to view a longer period of time? You can click on the standard 1d, 5d, 1m, etc. links, or you can use the graphic timeline above the main ticker. Drag the bars at either end of the range to adjust how much time is shown in the main chart. Want to move your arbitrary time slice back or foward in time? Use the scroll bar between the timeline and stock chart. It updates dynamically. Very cool. As you scroll, you might notice the list of news on the right scrolls up or down to keep the items matching the visible portion of the stock chart plainly in view. See the letters next to each event? They’re in the chart as well at the corresponding date. Click the letter in the chart to highlight the news item in the list, or vice-versa. One more little detail: scroll down the page until you see the Management section. Now hover your mouse over an officer’s name and you will see more details, links, and a picture (if available).

I like some razzle-dazzle and novel techniques, but extra features need to be more than fluff. In other words, fancy “gadgets” are only justified if they make a site significantly more useful than it would be without them. Google has consistently excercised good design judgement on the tools it makes public. I suspect that the gatekeepers that control what gets out of the labs and into beta employ significant restraint over numerous less successful features that we don’t get to see. Tools like this take a lot inspiration, and perspiration; they must go through many design and usability test iterations before they work so well.

Don’t fall in love with features that add few new capabilities or that compromise ease of use. Most of us don’t have the resources of Google to exhaustively test new ideas. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but recognize the effort it takes to get it right, and test ideas before committing to them.