10 ms·

Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

188 points by mrkurt 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago
Reading this makes me think of all the adwords-driven "brochure" sites with centered text and a 50 foot ribbon of testimonials, all designed that way because the data show that the work. I'm sure they do.
- axod 18y ago
  They're pretty different. Adwords-driven brochure sites usually have measurable conversions. You can immediately measure the ROI for left aligned text, and centered text. If the centered text gets a higher ROI, it'd be pretty weird to go with the left aligned instead. Design on something like Google isn't quite as easy to measure. A brochure site is designed to lead to a conversion, and likely to be only used by the user once. Whereas a site like Google may be used day in day out.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    You're right, of course, I'm just commenting that result-oriented design and graphic design may not be compatible worldviews.
- cadalac 18y ago
  Congrats for passing 10K karma, tptacek.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Ew. Thanks.
wensing 18y ago
I wonder: are Apple's designs just as data-driven?
- paulhart 18y ago
  My understanding (as an outsider who has heard some UI-related people from Apple talk) is that they iterate on their designs, but it's all in-house. There's no A/B testing going on, they make a decision based on experience and give that decision to the end-user.
  - brandonkm 18y ago
    This is exactly the reason Apple's products have been so successful throughout the years. Not only that, but they are masters of creating a 'design ecosystem'. Browse apple.com, then head to the apple store, its a seamless experience. This is arguably one of the competitive advantages that has helped Apple maintain it's position in the market and with consumers everywhere.
    - nostrademons 18y ago
      Microsoft products have also been successful through the years, as have Google's. And neither of them has a keen sense of design. The reason Apple's been successful is that they occupy a small but passionate niche of customers that are completely underserved by Microsoft. Most users don't care about design - but the ones that do care a lot, and will pay a premium for something that pays attention to their needs. There's probably room for a similar competitor to Google, but nobody's found it yet.
      - brandonkm 18y ago
        I agree with some of what you're saying. However, I don't think Apple is playing the position of scooping up customers who are 'underserved by Microsoft'. They are playing the position of making intuitive, well designed products that anyone can use while locking you into their ecosystem. Most users don't care about design? I think the number of the different Apple products sold say otherwise. A phone that anyone can pick up and use many of the features without reading a manual, thats a byproduct of brilliant design on many levels. Whether people care or not, they connect with it and are put in a position where they now have feelings for a piece of technology. When they then decide to make that purchase they very much care about design. Microsoft products have indeed been successful, but other than the xbox (and we're talking consumer electronics here not OS's) what has been the other runaway hit they've made? The zune is a great media player, but came about after msft assembled a team and put them in a room with an ipod and told them to make something better. The growth in sales from Apples products combined with their increasing marketshare in the desktop and mobile spaces are very indicative of consumers demanding better designed stuff. Apple's in-house iterative process is best positioned and most efficient at making products that are in line with that.
jeresig 18y ago
> "Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle." That's pretty damning. Google has always had a very developer-centric environment - and backing up design decisions with data definitely seems like a logical extension of that. > "I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong." It's probably a big reason why Google hasn't had a truly innovative design in a long time. It seems like it's far too safe for them to go with what they know and what's been tested rather than something new and challenging. A real shame. Google is losing some major talent - which appears to have only been squandered over the last three years.
- dejb 18y ago
  > "Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. " Actually the evolutionist in me thinks this is pretty cool but I can still understand why a designer would want to quit.
  - axod 18y ago
    I guess it depends on if you trust the majority making the right decision. I think often that just leads to mediocracy. 41 shades does seem a bit of a gimmick. I doubt it really matters that much, or that most people can even tell the difference.
    - teej 18y ago
      It's impractical for most businesses, but when you're at Google scale, a 0.1% difference in conversion can be huge.
    - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
idont 18y ago
That's what happens when a company has more assets to protect than to conquer...
- johnrob 18y ago
  Success can be a big burden. The biggest advantage a startup has is no legacy.
  - plinkplonk 18y ago
    "The biggest advantage a startup has is no legacy" very very insightful. In my last job the charter of the group of which I was a part was to "break the mould" and come up with "radical innovations" but every idea we came up with was shot down with "we've never done anything like that before".
  - nikils 18y ago
    Is it Innovator's Dilemma ?
radu_floricica 18y ago
It's easy to criticize a policy like this, but they do have millions of clients and it does work. I'd rather have a clean interface for my google then a creative one. Actually, i'd like more clean interfaces all around. There's no shortage of creativity in web design, but large applications/sites with so many users are not the place to test it.
- plinkplonk 18y ago
  " but large applications/sites with so many users are not the place to test it." I am not so sure. Why not just A/B test anyway. You just might get stunning non incremental progress. Or if that is too radical, just focus test. Or something other than just rejecting non incremental designs.
  - cdibona 18y ago
    We actually do a/b testing. I don't work with the ui folks much, but we're always running tests like this. It's why you sometimes see some design/functionality feature appear for like one search and then poof you don't see for a while if at all.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
- ionfish 18y ago
  What makes you think that clean and creative are design attributes in opposition to one another? I've seen a number of comments like yours on this thread, and to be honest I'm quite dubious about this attitude. It smacks of the whole "designers are just here to add visual pizzazz" school of thought, which while true of many bad designers, is not true of good ones like Doug Bowman. If you have a lot of information to present to a user, then good design is about presenting that information in a comprehensible way, which often involves creating a pretty spartan interface. Doing this is not easy, and requires plenty of creativity.
  - 18y ago
beaker 18y ago
This made me think of a blog post I read a few weeks back by an ex-googler predicting some high profile departures from the UI team - http://tr.im/hBkC http://tr.im/hBkC
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
jsrfded 18y ago
It may be entertaining to read internal laundry gripes about a company. But trashing your employer on the way out the door is bad form.
- TJensen 18y ago
  I didn't get "trashing". I got frustration and cultural mis-match. If I were looking to hire the guy, I'd appreciate the insight into the culture he would fit in. If I were at Google, I would know that there is no way he should come back. In major culture mis-matches, both parties know there is no returning anyway. I've had that experience, and I know I can never return.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  This doesn't seem so much a trashing to me, as pointing out a poor fit. In other words, if other companies with an approach to design similar to Google's don't want to hire him in the future, that's probably fine with him.
  - jsrfded 18y ago
    Trashing may be too strong a word, granted. But it's making public unflattering internal details about a company that employed him. I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager. Coming across material like that when researching someone for a job would probably be a no-hire flag for me - and many others. I'm sure he's a great designer, but does a post like that expand or limit the number of future gigs he might get? You could say "he wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway", but I'd rather have that decision left to me rather than a lack of response when I'm looking for work. Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.
    - anatoli 18y ago
      This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him. You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. (http://stopdesign.com/about http://stopdesign.com/about) Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatch for him and I can understand his "frustration", given the fact that he was supposed to be a UI Lead at Google. He wasn't hired to be some low-level pixel pusher.
tdonia 18y ago
Design, for me, is about evoking interesting stories. Data is an excellent tool for honing those stories but data alone isn't that compelling. Much of Google's success has been reliant on utilitarian pages that are designed to redirect users to other places - functionality which often calls for very subtle design treatments. The frustrations i've felt with their user experience is that frequently the details are smart but they miss the big elements connecting their tools into a coherent story. Ever use gmail with igoogle? or attempt to share your google reader with a friend who isn't already in your addressbook? these disconnects eventually add up & it sounds like they lack a system for coherently addressing the gestalt of their overall user experience. A visual designer friend pointed me to an Einstein quote that i think sums up the frustration of collaboration that occurs with a purely data based approach quite well: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination." They've got the fast, accurate & stupid down very well. There's a lot to be said for some well thought through inaccurate & slow brilliance though too.
jimbokun 18y ago
Where do you see yourself in this dichotomy of "measure everything" versus "subjective considerations are important, too"? As pointed out elsewhere in these comments, Apple represents something like the opposite prioritization of Google. The argument for "subjective" design is that it is impossible to build up a good, coherent design by testing out each aspect empirically then putting all those things together. Consider the classic Slashdot review of iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." The consideration of each aspect in isolation missed the design trade offs that made the iPod great overall. I suppose Google misses out on that, but it's not clear that they or their users care. I do think, though, that Google has a unique approach to usability. Which is "Here's a box. Type some stuff in, and we'll figure out what to do with it." Google "search" is actually several different applications, and Google routes to the ones it thinks best suit what you typed. Chrome's single address/search bar follows this philosophy. It's interesting to think that what distinguishes Apple and Google, more so than the product spaces they operate in, are the balance of empirical and subjective factors in their engineering cultures.
- jfarmer 18y ago
  It's not that Apple is subjective. Design isn't and shouldn't be objective. I see it like this: design-thinking tends to be top-down and borrows from fields like psychology and anthropology, while data-driven-thinking borrows from the harder empirical sciences and is based on continuous measurement. Neither is "correct" and both can be executed to produce a great company. Apple, as you say, is on one end of the spectrum. Companies like Amazon and Google are on the other end. It's important to understand how you're making decisions and why you've chosen that process as opposed to some other one. It sounds like neither Google nor Doug have done that.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
blhack 18y ago
He got sick of people asking him if he could make the buttons cornflower blue.
mattmaroon 18y ago
He got the lead job at Twitter. Don't ask how I know.
- adamhowell 18y ago
  From this, posted over a week ago? http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poaching-googles-top-designer http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poa... ;)
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Ha, no, but I guess I wasn't breaking any story then.
mcslee 18y ago
One issue with data-driven design is that it can be incredibly inefficient for developing new behaviors. If you're changing hues, sure, it works. When it comes to building a novel interaction that might really push the needle, users typically won't learn it overnight. You can't test even two or three significant UI changes without incredible patience and inefficiency, because the data effects might not materialize for weeks, and the user re-education costs at each step are very high. This effect is multiplied when you're trying to test design changes in products where users need to interact with one another (makes testing new design on only a subset of users incredibly difficult). Data-driven design in these contexts will likely just tell you to stick with what already seems to work. At the moment, it's unclear if Google's really in the business of developing new user behaviors. They're operating a cash machine with reasonably well-understood dynamics, and will probably do pretty well just tuning it. I think this may turn out to be a strategic issue for them in the long run, but for now it seems like the answer is simple: if you're a talented visual or interaction designer, don't expect to have much fun working at Google.
Keyframe 18y ago
>"Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better." compare that quote with the one from here: http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-failure http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-fail... >"In dictating the appearance of Google's Web pages, Mayer freely admits she makes subjective decisions. In more than a decade on the job, she has not yet codified her design instinct into a written style guide. Instead, Mayer's whims, which managers under her must make a study of, are what rule."
- zandorg 18y ago
  Eek a Valleywag link! It shouldn't really be blocked if it has relevant or original articles...
cpr 18y ago
Google clearly has a visual design lead. Her name has always been Marissa Miller. That's her quite distinctive style stamped across all those Google properties, and she makes no bones about it.
webwright 18y ago
If you've got a great designer, you need to let him try what he believes in for an extended period of time. The problem with A/B testing is that they tend to have a short horizon. Facebook's famous newsfeed change pissed off/confused a bunch of people-- but in the long term it was a good thing for Facebook. I wonder if they'd done a 1-2 day A/B test how it would've performed? And, clearly-- on tiny things like shades of blue and pixel widths, just launch something. With infinite resources it'd be great to test all permutations-- but surely they have more inspiring things to try/test that might move the needle.
vladocar 18y ago
10 days ago I suggested Google in a Grid re-design. I suggested one optional button to switch from normal to grid mode. I realized that the people are very very protective about Google. 70% without any particular reason hated the idea of any kind of Google redesign. Even do my arguments were stable "The Grid can hold much more information, more photos and videos and can contribute for better visible experience" almost nobody bother to discus with real arguments. My post (http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/03/google-redesign-google-in-grid.html http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/03/google-redesign-google-in-gri...) I'm first developer then designer and I do believe that one product should constantly be developed in bought direction. In the case of Google they have excellent query search result but can do much much better visual experience. I'm not talking about rebuilding everything but sometimes one pixel can make great difference.
10ren 18y ago
If Google applied this to PageRank, they wouldn't have started. In the beginning, Google was Ark A. Then it was Ark C. Now it's Ark B (tRatEotU - DNA) But I have to admit, being able to precisely exactly quantify the beauty and usability of a design is irresistibly compelling to me. Especially when billions of dollars hinge on it (and you can measure them).

188 points by mrkurt 18y ago

Reading this makes me think of all the adwords-driven "brochure" sites with centered text and a 50 foot ribbon of testimonials, all designed that way because the data show that the work. I'm sure they do.

axod 18y ago
They're pretty different. Adwords-driven brochure sites usually have measurable conversions. You can immediately measure the ROI for left aligned text, and centered text. If the centered text gets a higher ROI, it'd be pretty weird to go with the left aligned instead. Design on something like Google isn't quite as easy to measure. A brochure site is designed to lead to a conversion, and likely to be only used by the user once. Whereas a site like Google may be used day in day out.
- tptacek 18y ago
  You're right, of course, I'm just commenting that result-oriented design and graphic design may not be compatible worldviews.
cadalac 18y ago
Congrats for passing 10K karma, tptacek.
- tptacek 18y ago
  Ew. Thanks.

wensing 18y ago

I wonder: are Apple's designs just as data-driven?

paulhart 18y ago
My understanding (as an outsider who has heard some UI-related people from Apple talk) is that they iterate on their designs, but it's all in-house. There's no A/B testing going on, they make a decision based on experience and give that decision to the end-user.
- brandonkm 18y ago
  This is exactly the reason Apple's products have been so successful throughout the years. Not only that, but they are masters of creating a 'design ecosystem'. Browse apple.com, then head to the apple store, its a seamless experience. This is arguably one of the competitive advantages that has helped Apple maintain it's position in the market and with consumers everywhere.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    Microsoft products have also been successful through the years, as have Google's. And neither of them has a keen sense of design. The reason Apple's been successful is that they occupy a small but passionate niche of customers that are completely underserved by Microsoft. Most users don't care about design - but the ones that do care a lot, and will pay a premium for something that pays attention to their needs. There's probably room for a similar competitor to Google, but nobody's found it yet.
    - brandonkm 18y ago
      I agree with some of what you're saying. However, I don't think Apple is playing the position of scooping up customers who are 'underserved by Microsoft'. They are playing the position of making intuitive, well designed products that anyone can use while locking you into their ecosystem. Most users don't care about design? I think the number of the different Apple products sold say otherwise. A phone that anyone can pick up and use many of the features without reading a manual, thats a byproduct of brilliant design on many levels. Whether people care or not, they connect with it and are put in a position where they now have feelings for a piece of technology. When they then decide to make that purchase they very much care about design. Microsoft products have indeed been successful, but other than the xbox (and we're talking consumer electronics here not OS's) what has been the other runaway hit they've made? The zune is a great media player, but came about after msft assembled a team and put them in a room with an ipod and told them to make something better. The growth in sales from Apples products combined with their increasing marketshare in the desktop and mobile spaces are very indicative of consumers demanding better designed stuff. Apple's in-house iterative process is best positioned and most efficient at making products that are in line with that.

jeresig 18y ago

> "Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle." That's pretty damning. Google has always had a very developer-centric environment - and backing up design decisions with data definitely seems like a logical extension of that. > "I can’t fault Google for this reliance on data. And I can’t exactly point to financial failure or a shrinking number of users to prove it has done anything wrong." It's probably a big reason why Google hasn't had a truly innovative design in a long time. It seems like it's far too safe for them to go with what they know and what's been tested rather than something new and challenging. A real shame. Google is losing some major talent - which appears to have only been squandered over the last three years.

dejb 18y ago
> "Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. " Actually the evolutionist in me thinks this is pretty cool but I can still understand why a designer would want to quit.
- axod 18y ago
  I guess it depends on if you trust the majority making the right decision. I think often that just leads to mediocracy. 41 shades does seem a bit of a gimmick. I doubt it really matters that much, or that most people can even tell the difference.
  - teej 18y ago
    It's impractical for most businesses, but when you're at Google scale, a 0.1% difference in conversion can be huge.
  - ryanwaggoner 18y ago

idont 18y ago

That's what happens when a company has more assets to protect than to conquer...

johnrob 18y ago
Success can be a big burden. The biggest advantage a startup has is no legacy.
- plinkplonk 18y ago
  "The biggest advantage a startup has is no legacy" very very insightful. In my last job the charter of the group of which I was a part was to "break the mould" and come up with "radical innovations" but every idea we came up with was shot down with "we've never done anything like that before".
- nikils 18y ago
  Is it Innovator's Dilemma ?

radu_floricica 18y ago

It's easy to criticize a policy like this, but they do have millions of clients and it does work. I'd rather have a clean interface for my google then a creative one. Actually, i'd like more clean interfaces all around. There's no shortage of creativity in web design, but large applications/sites with so many users are not the place to test it.

plinkplonk 18y ago
" but large applications/sites with so many users are not the place to test it." I am not so sure. Why not just A/B test anyway. You just might get stunning non incremental progress. Or if that is too radical, just focus test. Or something other than just rejecting non incremental designs.
- cdibona 18y ago
  We actually do a/b testing. I don't work with the ui folks much, but we're always running tests like this. It's why you sometimes see some design/functionality feature appear for like one search and then poof you don't see for a while if at all.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
ionfish 18y ago
What makes you think that clean and creative are design attributes in opposition to one another? I've seen a number of comments like yours on this thread, and to be honest I'm quite dubious about this attitude. It smacks of the whole "designers are just here to add visual pizzazz" school of thought, which while true of many bad designers, is not true of good ones like Doug Bowman. If you have a lot of information to present to a user, then good design is about presenting that information in a comprehensible way, which often involves creating a pretty spartan interface. Doing this is not easy, and requires plenty of creativity.
- 18y ago

beaker 18y ago

This made me think of a blog post I read a few weeks back by an ex-googler predicting some high profile departures from the UI team - http://tr.im/hBkC http://tr.im/hBkC

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

jsrfded 18y ago

It may be entertaining to read internal laundry gripes about a company. But trashing your employer on the way out the door is bad form.

TJensen 18y ago
I didn't get "trashing". I got frustration and cultural mis-match. If I were looking to hire the guy, I'd appreciate the insight into the culture he would fit in. If I were at Google, I would know that there is no way he should come back. In major culture mis-matches, both parties know there is no returning anyway. I've had that experience, and I know I can never return.
jimbokun 18y ago
This doesn't seem so much a trashing to me, as pointing out a poor fit. In other words, if other companies with an approach to design similar to Google's don't want to hire him in the future, that's probably fine with him.
- jsrfded 18y ago
  Trashing may be too strong a word, granted. But it's making public unflattering internal details about a company that employed him. I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager. Coming across material like that when researching someone for a job would probably be a no-hire flag for me - and many others. I'm sure he's a great designer, but does a post like that expand or limit the number of future gigs he might get? You could say "he wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway", but I'd rather have that decision left to me rather than a lack of response when I'm looking for work. Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.
  - anatoli 18y ago
    This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him. You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. (http://stopdesign.com/about http://stopdesign.com/about) Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatch for him and I can understand his "frustration", given the fact that he was supposed to be a UI Lead at Google. He wasn't hired to be some low-level pixel pusher.

tdonia 18y ago

Design, for me, is about evoking interesting stories. Data is an excellent tool for honing those stories but data alone isn't that compelling. Much of Google's success has been reliant on utilitarian pages that are designed to redirect users to other places - functionality which often calls for very subtle design treatments. The frustrations i've felt with their user experience is that frequently the details are smart but they miss the big elements connecting their tools into a coherent story. Ever use gmail with igoogle? or attempt to share your google reader with a friend who isn't already in your addressbook? these disconnects eventually add up & it sounds like they lack a system for coherently addressing the gestalt of their overall user experience. A visual designer friend pointed me to an Einstein quote that i think sums up the frustration of collaboration that occurs with a purely data based approach quite well: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination." They've got the fast, accurate & stupid down very well. There's a lot to be said for some well thought through inaccurate & slow brilliance though too.

jimbokun 18y ago

Where do you see yourself in this dichotomy of "measure everything" versus "subjective considerations are important, too"? As pointed out elsewhere in these comments, Apple represents something like the opposite prioritization of Google. The argument for "subjective" design is that it is impossible to build up a good, coherent design by testing out each aspect empirically then putting all those things together. Consider the classic Slashdot review of iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." The consideration of each aspect in isolation missed the design trade offs that made the iPod great overall. I suppose Google misses out on that, but it's not clear that they or their users care. I do think, though, that Google has a unique approach to usability. Which is "Here's a box. Type some stuff in, and we'll figure out what to do with it." Google "search" is actually several different applications, and Google routes to the ones it thinks best suit what you typed. Chrome's single address/search bar follows this philosophy. It's interesting to think that what distinguishes Apple and Google, more so than the product spaces they operate in, are the balance of empirical and subjective factors in their engineering cultures.

jfarmer 18y ago
It's not that Apple is subjective. Design isn't and shouldn't be objective. I see it like this: design-thinking tends to be top-down and borrows from fields like psychology and anthropology, while data-driven-thinking borrows from the harder empirical sciences and is based on continuous measurement. Neither is "correct" and both can be executed to produce a great company. Apple, as you say, is on one end of the spectrum. Companies like Amazon and Google are on the other end. It's important to understand how you're making decisions and why you've chosen that process as opposed to some other one. It sounds like neither Google nor Doug have done that.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

blhack 18y ago

He got sick of people asking him if he could make the buttons cornflower blue.

mattmaroon 18y ago

He got the lead job at Twitter. Don't ask how I know.

adamhowell 18y ago
From this, posted over a week ago? http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poaching-googles-top-designer http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poa... ;)
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Ha, no, but I guess I wasn't breaking any story then.

mcslee 18y ago

One issue with data-driven design is that it can be incredibly inefficient for developing new behaviors. If you're changing hues, sure, it works. When it comes to building a novel interaction that might really push the needle, users typically won't learn it overnight. You can't test even two or three significant UI changes without incredible patience and inefficiency, because the data effects might not materialize for weeks, and the user re-education costs at each step are very high. This effect is multiplied when you're trying to test design changes in products where users need to interact with one another (makes testing new design on only a subset of users incredibly difficult). Data-driven design in these contexts will likely just tell you to stick with what already seems to work. At the moment, it's unclear if Google's really in the business of developing new user behaviors. They're operating a cash machine with reasonably well-understood dynamics, and will probably do pretty well just tuning it. I think this may turn out to be a strategic issue for them in the long run, but for now it seems like the answer is simple: if you're a talented visual or interaction designer, don't expect to have much fun working at Google.

Keyframe 18y ago

>"Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better." compare that quote with the one from here: http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-failure http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-googles-biggest-fail... >"In dictating the appearance of Google's Web pages, Mayer freely admits she makes subjective decisions. In more than a decade on the job, she has not yet codified her design instinct into a written style guide. Instead, Mayer's whims, which managers under her must make a study of, are what rule."

zandorg 18y ago
Eek a Valleywag link! It shouldn't really be blocked if it has relevant or original articles...

cpr 18y ago

Google clearly has a visual design lead. Her name has always been Marissa Miller. That's her quite distinctive style stamped across all those Google properties, and she makes no bones about it.

webwright 18y ago

If you've got a great designer, you need to let him try what he believes in for an extended period of time. The problem with A/B testing is that they tend to have a short horizon. Facebook's famous newsfeed change pissed off/confused a bunch of people-- but in the long term it was a good thing for Facebook. I wonder if they'd done a 1-2 day A/B test how it would've performed? And, clearly-- on tiny things like shades of blue and pixel widths, just launch something. With infinite resources it'd be great to test all permutations-- but surely they have more inspiring things to try/test that might move the needle.

vladocar 18y ago

10 days ago I suggested Google in a Grid re-design. I suggested one optional button to switch from normal to grid mode. I realized that the people are very very protective about Google. 70% without any particular reason hated the idea of any kind of Google redesign. Even do my arguments were stable "The Grid can hold much more information, more photos and videos and can contribute for better visible experience" almost nobody bother to discus with real arguments. My post (http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/03/google-redesign-google-in-grid.html http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/03/google-redesign-google-in-gri...) I'm first developer then designer and I do believe that one product should constantly be developed in bought direction. In the case of Google they have excellent query search result but can do much much better visual experience. I'm not talking about rebuilding everything but sometimes one pixel can make great difference.

10ren 18y ago

If Google applied this to PageRank, they wouldn't have started. In the beginning, Google was Ark A. Then it was Ark C. Now it's Ark B (tRatEotU - DNA) But I have to admit, being able to precisely exactly quantify the beauty and usability of a design is irresistibly compelling to me. Especially when billions of dollars hinge on it (and you can measure them).