I noticed a nice UI improvement for Google Maps / Google Local today. I looked up a restaurant and was presented with the usual maps / results page:
I noticed the little ‘+’ link in the upper right-hand corner of the pop-up (something that I haven’t noticed before). That click resulted in a much larger pop-up:
The pop-up provides much more detail such as open / close times, major credit cards accepted, reviews, etc. and most importantly, presents that information in the context of the task that I am doing. Instead of taking me to a different screen or requiring me to do a separate search, everything is in one place with a clean tabbed interface. A good example of some data cleansing and structuring, combined with an understanding of the user task, delivered using new web technology.
Information delivery in the context of a task, with a more structured user interface, is a significant step forward from traditional keyword search for many common information tasks. Hopefully, Google will choose to apply these ideas to additional types of searches.
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