New Google Tips is surprisingly helpful
Google has launched Google Tips, a site which uses clickable cards to explain the features and capabilities of Google's biggest products. The cards explain concepts such as sharing photos with specific people in Google+ circles …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has a discoverability problem of its own making. Since the Stream, Hangouts and Photos overhaul of Google+ in May 2013, its flagship consumer products have accumulated features — circle-scoped photo sharing among them — that launch-day press coverage alone cannot teach. Google Tips answers that with clickable cards explaining capabilities across the company's biggest products, and the reception, per The Verge, is that it is surprisingly helpful.
It is not Google's first swing at lightweight share-and-explain surfaces — Google Shared Stuff dates to 2007, and the card-and-cluster layout Google News adopted in 2012 showed the format working for navigation. What is notable this time is distribution: the launch was picked up by The Next Web, Mashable, PC World, TechnoBuffalo, Electronista and Softpedia within a day, unusual breadth for what is essentially an help site.
First-order effects
- Users of Google+, Search and Google's other major products get a single surface for finding buried capabilities like sharing photos with specific circles, aimed directly at lifting engagement with features introduced in the May 2013 Google+ relaunch.
Second-order effects
- A dedicated tips surface shifts some of the explanatory work away from tech blogs and tutorial sites — the same outlets covering the launch — toward Google-controlled pages, keeping users inside Google's own funnel.
Third-order effects
- If the card format holds, feature education becomes a standing product function at Google rather than launch-week marketing — a recognition that a portfolio spanning search, social, photos and productivity has outgrown what any single announcement can teach.
The trend: As consumer web platforms accumulate more features than launch coverage can explain, they are building persistent, self-serve discovery surfaces to onboard users themselves.