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I can picture it, Marissa as employee nr. 20. "I really want to try this design thing". "Okay, you can do the page layout, while we code". Then, with Google's s

I can picture it, Marissa as employee nr. 20. "I really want to try this design thing". "Okay, you can do the page layout, while we code". Then, with Google's success, the design became a success, which in turn lead Marissa to a star designer - without much other merits. No?

nostrademons 16y ago
Marissa did plenty of coding, enough that ten years later, we're still finding bugs in her code. ;-) I think it was more that in a fledgling startup filled with smart, opinionated people, everyone wanted to do design, and Marissa actually proved to be good at it.
- moopark 16y ago
  ... Marissa actually proved to be good at it. Except that, as far as I can tell from the vast majority of Google's products, Google (perhaps not Marissa?) has a design sense that ranges from "poor" to "incredibly poor". Chrome, perhaps, being a singularly notable exception.
  - idoh 16y ago
    They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history. ^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
    - leoc 16y ago
      But Maps' UI is atrocious for anything beyond the most basic tasks.
    - moopark 16y ago
      These are technological advances, not design advances. As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response: - I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library). - I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast). - I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yahoo, but before that, I used people's random collections of favorite links that you found on their home pages. I don't lack perspective on history, but I don't equate Google's technological improvements in "advancing the state of the art" with overall quality UX design. The minimalist home page was brilliant in comparison to Yahoo at the time, but it's not an aesthetic they've been able to continue to apply successfully. Google consistently produces fantastic technology, lackluster design, and then rarely, a design outliers that is actually good.
      - idoh 16y ago
        Every once in a while some company comes out with a really great solution to a problem. The most recent was with hipmunk and flights. When I used hipmunk for the first time, I had that feeling that after them, the whole landscape had changed. I got the same feeling when I saw google maps - it was so far ahead of everyone, and not just technically but design-wise too. The same thing happened with mail. So on one hand you could say that their maps and mail are sort of standard, and that other companies have similar offerings. But on the other hand, who set the standard in the first place?
        moopark 16y ago
        Slippy maps are great. The UX was a great idea, but it was almost entirely dependent on having the technology and infrastructure to implement them, including asynchronous map tiling client side. I don't think that is in conflict with my original statement, and the remainder of the Maps API is truly bad. I regularly make the mistake of using the scroll wheel, get stuck trying to figure out how to show (or hide) street view, etc. Regarding GMail -- it's a poor approximation of an existing, very basic desktop experience. There's not a lot of design innovation there, if you look beyond webmail.
      - nostrademons 16y ago
        I'm curious - where do you draw the line between a technological advance and a design advance? Apple, for example, is usually held up as an example of awesome design. But behind Apple's design is some pretty impressive technology. Why is this different than Maps or GMail or Websearch? Is it solely due to reputation, because Apple hides many of the technical details of its products behind this cloud of secrecy, while Google is openly proud of having advanced technology?
        moopark 16y ago
        Actually, (and as a former Apple engineer) I'd say Apple is barely acceptable with most technology but absolutely fantastic leveraging that technology to produce amazing product designs. What Apple technology in specific do you think is so advanced?
jswinghammer 16y ago
Or perhaps her skills and sense of design were what was needed at the time and things went well. If she was useless apart from one good decision there's very little chance they'd give her anything meaningful to do. She's been working on the products that seem most important there so I sorta doubt your theory.
wvoq 16y ago
I can't help but notice that, with nothing in the way of demonstrable evidence, you are _presuming_ a female engineer to be incompetent and referring to her by her first name to boot. You're further implying that design is trivial work ("Okay, you can do the page layout, while we code"), subordinate to the real labor of coding. The general consensus I've surmised on HN is that design and UI are crucial for adoption; do you believe that Google's success was independent of the way that users used their product? And if the public face of the world's most powerful search company has your imprint, isn't that _ipso facto_ evidence of merit? If design was in fact irrelevant, how could _any_ number of successful designs ever constitute evidence for the skill of the designer?
- haploid 16y ago
  I don't see anything in the OP's comment that suggested a presumption of automatic female incompetence. Design in many realms is not trivial work. At Google, at present, it is by no means trivial work. But one should bear in mind that consensus converges on Google's initial success as being predicated almost exclusively on relevance of results far more than any other factor. Google destroyed Inktomi and AltaVista with a better search engine, not with a better interface.
  - ajg1977 16y ago
    His comment is written in a quite snide and belittling way. It's hard to avoid feeling that he either has a low opinion of Marissa Mayer personally, or female engineers in general. Also, I would argue that while Google was indeed a better search engine, its clean minimalist design and fast loading times also did a lot to differentiate it from Altavista and Yahoo.
  - dhs 16y ago
    Wait, what? I used to shave - twice! - while waiting for AltaVista to load its homepage full of crappy colorful ads. Then I switched to a plain white Google page that took like a second to come up. And you're telling me that I wasn't using a better interface?
  - wvoq 16y ago
neurotech1 16y ago
She has engineering background. I met her recently and asked her a question about the using the search API. In the same conversation she mentioned that UX is just as important in startups, but often overlooked.

nostrademons 16y ago

Marissa did plenty of coding, enough that ten years later, we're still finding bugs in her code. ;-) I think it was more that in a fledgling startup filled with smart, opinionated people, everyone wanted to do design, and Marissa actually proved to be good at it.

moopark 16y ago
... Marissa actually proved to be good at it. Except that, as far as I can tell from the vast majority of Google's products, Google (perhaps not Marissa?) has a design sense that ranges from "poor" to "incredibly poor". Chrome, perhaps, being a singularly notable exception.
- idoh 16y ago
  They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history. ^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
  - leoc 16y ago
    But Maps' UI is atrocious for anything beyond the most basic tasks.
  - moopark 16y ago
    These are technological advances, not design advances. As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response: - I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library). - I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast). - I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yahoo, but before that, I used people's random collections of favorite links that you found on their home pages. I don't lack perspective on history, but I don't equate Google's technological improvements in "advancing the state of the art" with overall quality UX design. The minimalist home page was brilliant in comparison to Yahoo at the time, but it's not an aesthetic they've been able to continue to apply successfully. Google consistently produces fantastic technology, lackluster design, and then rarely, a design outliers that is actually good.
    - idoh 16y ago
      Every once in a while some company comes out with a really great solution to a problem. The most recent was with hipmunk and flights. When I used hipmunk for the first time, I had that feeling that after them, the whole landscape had changed. I got the same feeling when I saw google maps - it was so far ahead of everyone, and not just technically but design-wise too. The same thing happened with mail. So on one hand you could say that their maps and mail are sort of standard, and that other companies have similar offerings. But on the other hand, who set the standard in the first place?
      - moopark 16y ago
        Slippy maps are great. The UX was a great idea, but it was almost entirely dependent on having the technology and infrastructure to implement them, including asynchronous map tiling client side. I don't think that is in conflict with my original statement, and the remainder of the Maps API is truly bad. I regularly make the mistake of using the scroll wheel, get stuck trying to figure out how to show (or hide) street view, etc. Regarding GMail -- it's a poor approximation of an existing, very basic desktop experience. There's not a lot of design innovation there, if you look beyond webmail.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      I'm curious - where do you draw the line between a technological advance and a design advance? Apple, for example, is usually held up as an example of awesome design. But behind Apple's design is some pretty impressive technology. Why is this different than Maps or GMail or Websearch? Is it solely due to reputation, because Apple hides many of the technical details of its products behind this cloud of secrecy, while Google is openly proud of having advanced technology?
      - moopark 16y ago
        Actually, (and as a former Apple engineer) I'd say Apple is barely acceptable with most technology but absolutely fantastic leveraging that technology to produce amazing product designs. What Apple technology in specific do you think is so advanced?

jswinghammer 16y ago

Or perhaps her skills and sense of design were what was needed at the time and things went well. If she was useless apart from one good decision there's very little chance they'd give her anything meaningful to do. She's been working on the products that seem most important there so I sorta doubt your theory.

wvoq 16y ago

I can't help but notice that, with nothing in the way of demonstrable evidence, you are _presuming_ a female engineer to be incompetent and referring to her by her first name to boot. You're further implying that design is trivial work ("Okay, you can do the page layout, while we code"), subordinate to the real labor of coding. The general consensus I've surmised on HN is that design and UI are crucial for adoption; do you believe that Google's success was independent of the way that users used their product? And if the public face of the world's most powerful search company has your imprint, isn't that _ipso facto_ evidence of merit? If design was in fact irrelevant, how could _any_ number of successful designs ever constitute evidence for the skill of the designer?

haploid 16y ago
I don't see anything in the OP's comment that suggested a presumption of automatic female incompetence. Design in many realms is not trivial work. At Google, at present, it is by no means trivial work. But one should bear in mind that consensus converges on Google's initial success as being predicated almost exclusively on relevance of results far more than any other factor. Google destroyed Inktomi and AltaVista with a better search engine, not with a better interface.
- ajg1977 16y ago
  His comment is written in a quite snide and belittling way. It's hard to avoid feeling that he either has a low opinion of Marissa Mayer personally, or female engineers in general. Also, I would argue that while Google was indeed a better search engine, its clean minimalist design and fast loading times also did a lot to differentiate it from Altavista and Yahoo.
- dhs 16y ago
  Wait, what? I used to shave - twice! - while waiting for AltaVista to load its homepage full of crappy colorful ads. Then I switched to a plain white Google page that took like a second to come up. And you're telling me that I wasn't using a better interface?
- wvoq 16y ago

neurotech1 16y ago

She has engineering background. I met her recently and asked her a question about the using the search API. In the same conversation she mentioned that UX is just as important in startups, but often overlooked.