Recently, Google announced a significant update to its Search function: the Options panel. Although - for the most part - it's only a different way to display some old features, changes such as this one can have a profound impact on the most important service on the web today.

Design-wise, though, it doesn't look like much. The new pane on the left side looks simple and logical; almost as if its design wasn't even a problem that needed addressing, and they just went with the first thing they came up with. After all, it's only blue, plain letters on a white background, right?

In fact, although most of its menus and interfaces are extremely simple and plain looking, a lot of thought goes into their design, and you can see that in a fascinating insight into how the Options panel was created on the official Google blog. In the images below you can see several concepts and iterations of the design, which show that Google takes great care that every pixel is positioned exactly where it should be, and that the final design is absolutely perfect. As it turns out, simple is not that simple to make.

[Images courtesy of the Official Google Blog]