[planetguy]

Dunno, a message? A notification?

"Card" isn't intuitive because this isn't the way people use cards in real life. The only analogy for using cards as a notification I can think of is in an old novel where a visitor comes to your door, your butler shows them into the parlour, and brings you their calling card so you can decide whether you want to see 'em. This nowadays lies outside most folks' field of experience.

[tripzilch]

I agree. These "Google Now Cards" hardly share any connotations I have with the word "card", except for being rectangular and containing a small amount of information.

To the other person calling them "atomic" bits of information, neither the information on "Google Now Cards", business cards, or index cards is "atomic". You can easily split the information and the bits still make sense. You probably meant to say "chunk" or "unit" or perhaps "self-contained"--though external links make them not very self-contained either.

I kind of get the idea they picked the word "card" because it's such a mundane, every-day word. And they want their product to appear like that. It's just a card! Must be easy to use!

Calling it a "message" or "notification" would also make it sound intrusive, like it interrupts your activity whenever it activates. A "card" has a very passive connotation, and that's the idea they want to give: It doesn't interrupt you, only when you look at your phone, it's right there presenting you with the info you need right now.

The problem I think is, we don't really have a every-day metaphor for such a thing. Maybe a "personal assistent", but I don't think they wanted to use a metaphor of something that is "alive", because it brings connotations of inaccuracy and doing all sorts of stuff with it, while they want just this thing that, when you look at it always happens to show exactly what you want to see.

They should've called it "psychic paper" :-) (Dr. Who)

Personally I feel a bit of annoyance at calling it "card" because if this thing really takes off they've claimed a mundane every-day use word with a rather inaccurate extra meaning. And if it doesn't, it's just a program that uses weird words for simple notifications.

I do like how they actually look like cards, rectangular with a subtle drop shadow, it looks good. I wonder what the three vertical dots are for? Some UI element or branding to make it look like a sort of sprocket perforations?

[brittohalloran]

The three dots look to me like an action overflow button (now standard on Android ICS). It's typical "right click menu" type stuff.

[polynomial]

What are the odds Google did user testing on this before launching? On one hand, cards seems like a strightforward label for an atomic collection of data on a digital device. On the other hand users may bring with them all sorts of connotative baggage, or it just might not resonate with them.

In any case it's likely whether or not it will catch on as a term-of-art will heavily depend on whether people want to use the service.

Google doesn't have a great track record when it comes to designing new products / interfaces so will be interesting to see whether this takes off or not.