Marissa Mayer on Google user experience

Marissa Mayer of Google spoke at PARC on Tuesday night. Marissa is product manager for Google.com and formerly the technical lead for the user-interface team. Alan Williamson provides a good summary of the event.

Some interesting bits of information:

• The Google copyright statement was added to the bottom of the home page as an end of page marker after users expected more page content to load.

• If at least 20% of people use a feature Google will include it in the full site. At least 5% of users need to use an advanced feature before it is included in Google’s advanced search page.

• “I’m Feeling Lucky” is hardly ever used, but users view the button as a comfort and a part of the Google experience so it has not been removed.

• Gmail designers discovered there were approximately six types of e-mail users. Google was designed around these six usage cases and used within Google for two years prior to public announcement.