14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Google's management has announced plans to give the aging Google AdWords dashboard a much-needed facelift, updating its looks with a new user interface (UI) powered by the company's self-created Material Design visual language.
The process had already started a few months back, when the company started meeting with some of its advertisers and ask for opinions and suggestions.
Google has provided a rough preview of the new dashboard, which will be finalized in the upcoming two years. Company officials say that, as the new UI becomes more stable and covers more functions, a small number of advertisers will be invited to preview it and help the company test it out.
AdWords launched in 2001, and at the venerable age of 15, the dashboard looks very much as it did when it launched. Of course, the service received small tweaks here and there, but never anything major. The last change made to the AdWords dashboard was in 2008.
The current Google AdWords dashboard is a hot mess
Most new UI changes had something to do with a new feature being launched, and Google making room for it in what turned out over the years to be one extremely cluttered dashboard.
"This rise in complexity has created the need to reimagine AdWords, and over the past year, our product teams have been thinking hard about how we can make AdWords as relevant for the next 15 years as the first 15," said Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management for AdWords. "While this AdWords may look and feel different, your campaigns will run the same as they run today - with no upgrades or migrations."
The new UI will be based on Google's Material Design language, already in use for other products such as Gmail, Maps, Search, and for Android, the last one being the reason Google created Material Design in the first place, to rival Microsoft's Metro (Modern) UI and Apple's iconic iPhone interface.