Google continue to push updates to all of their services, this time Google Contacts is getting a Material Design makeover.
In their blog post, Google paint the picture that contacts is central to keeping you in contact with friends, family and your colleagues. Contacts is making it easier to find the contact you want, and keep their information up to date. The new interface will pull together all your contacts, Google+ circles, ‘and the people you talk to most in Gmail’.
It’s a great looking change to contacts with some really easy on the eye changes that have been made. The first time you log into contacts you’ll be prompted to review duplicates which (unlike the older version) is very simple, all visible on one screen which displays name, number and email addresses. You can one-click merge any duplicate contacts here and move on with your day.
We all live very busy lives these days which makes it very easy to forget something you’ve said in an email a few weeks ago, or even forget that you’ve had contact with a person at all recently. So much like a number of other contact managers, the new Google Contacts will list recent interactions you’ve had with an individual like emails and Hangouts.
Perhaps it’s due to our digital social lives these days, perhaps its because some of our friends and associates change jobs or locations too often. Regardless of the ultimate reasoning for it, Google have automated (rather than opt in via G+ only) the contact updating by merging your contacts Google Profile information into your contact list and merging the new detail with what you already have entered in to the system.
Having had a good look at the preview, it’s clean, easy to navigate, works predictably and fits in well (As you would expect) with the other material design web interfaces such as Inbox. A word to the wise; if you’re a Google Apps customer you are not yet able to utilise this update (similar to the Inbox rollout) to Contacts but Google are working on it. If this is something that interest you and has yet to appear on your Google Contacts page, check out the preview by visiting http://contacts.google.com/preview
Is the material design working well for you in your Google interactions?
Now it just needs to link into Hangouts without Google+