In the last few weeks though, it started feeling very heavy and ugly. I am not sure why?
I think a lot more areas are now shaded in various grays instead of plain white, which adds to feeling of heaviness and mental distraction of colours... Meanwhile roads have moved from bright, easily seen high-contrast yellow with thin outline, to blah-gray, which blends with new shadings, so they've thickened the outline to try to compensate.
It feels significantly worse, to me at least, and I'm not sure why/when changes were made (note: Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10 and 11. My iOS app seems to still be OK, Android app seems to slowly be switching over).
The PMs/designers and everyone involved need a big project for all of them to get to the next level.
Otherwise what else would they do if there just isn't a big impact project available to work on? There would be no way to advance in their careers.
The incentive of any individual in an organization is not to please the users of the product, its to make the manager happy and meet the job matrix of the next level.
Those incentives drive the product outcomes and the product mirrors the organization
Would you mind elaborating, since we're here already? :)
In particular, what makes the gray roads superior to yellow ones? I find it significantly harder to quickly figure out the layout / roadmap - this is what my neighbourhood looks like now - everything looks like it's been hit with "desaturate/decontrast" filter :|
https://ibb.co/wJkw84t
It’s just harder for me to get significantly worked up over small changes that cause no major inconvenience than most people on HN. I can’t control it so why complain about it or even think about it?
Funny how that works. My experience is similar to OP's that the dark grey roads feel very "heavy" and visually overwhelming. I guess for me the light yellow roads faded into the light colored background a bit more.
It's especially better in the car when using Auto, where seeing the lay of the streets is faster with darker contrast. The new fonts with outlines are much more readable for me as well.
(Disclaimer: Work at Google, but not on Maps.)
A screen is not 'real life', abstractions exist, like street lights and road signs being an example, ordinance survey maps, etc.
Idle thumbs burn Rome.
Now roads are gray in slightly lighter gray and I struggle mightily to get the feel of the road grid!
Do you mind sharing where do you use it? I find on my iOS app it's not too bad yet, especially if I have traffic layer on which overrides some of the colour changes. But on my pc, it's just drab low contrast and hard to parse.
Thx! :)
Although my background is either green or tan depending on the tree coverage maybe? I'm not exactly sure what the green means since they have no legend
I do see one small section with a dark gray background, and that is very hard to read.
And without traffic, it is terrible if I turn on the terrain shading. They really need to change the overlay color scheme when they start shading the background like that...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38398751
Not sure about the reasoning... probably not accessibility though, as the land/sea seems much less contrasting than it was before...
Simple answer - because nobody really cares.