Google designer leaves, blaming data-centrism
Douglas Bowman, Google's visual design leader, is leaving the company after finding the company's reliance on detailed Web page performance data too confining.
Bowman clearly had mixed feelings about departing, but he wasn't shy with his opinion about what he didn't like. From Bowman's blog post Friday on the matter:
When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data...that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions...
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 minuscule design decisions...
I'll miss working with the incredibly smart and talented people I got to know there. But I won't miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.
Bowman also gripes that Google's designers came from a background of computer science and human-computer interaction rather than classical design, and that none of them rank high in the pecking order.
Google's vice president of search and user experience, Marissa Mayer, is pretty high-ranking and cares a lot about design. But it's not hard to see how her philosophy might rankle. Here's one thing she said about design in a 2008 speech: "On the Web in general, (creating sites) is much more a design than an art...You can find small differences and mathematically learn which is right."
I can't speak for Bowman's experience, though I can see how a classical designer might feel stifled by code monkeys. There are plenty of considerations that go into design in general, and pragmatism can be at odds sometimes with passion, boldness, and innovation. And Bowman earlier was a designer at Wired, which is definitely at the bold end of the spectrum.
Overall, however, I find Google's approach to design refreshing and radical in its own way. Choosing color shades and pixel widths on the basis of the behavior of millions of Web page users is a fascinating development to the form-follows-function school of design.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
Bowman wanted subjectivity in google's subjectivity in their designs, but he doesn't realize that the problem with that is then it becomes a question of whose subjectivity. He decried the lack of debate, but how do you debate subjective taste?
The most efficiently loaded web page is a page of all black text on a white background in a single column with no other visual elements and all navigation as linked text. Try looking at that for a while and see how long it takes before your eyes feel like they're going to bleed and your brain starts to wander off to decide what it wants to put in your stomach for lunch tomorrow, or to find anything else it can to avoid seizing up from boredom. Of course design will influence code and vice versa to some degree. It's best to let each side do what it knows best and leave the other alone or the result will be web pages that don't load at all because no one will care to waste their time looking at them in the first place.
(aside from the overall aesthetics) is understanding to what extent users really care and for how long
an immediate response might not have value for the longer term direction
what if Google tested gogle or goggle and found people clicked to the latter choices
would it change?
I think there needs to be wisdom applied to any data - lest we experience a derivative moment
cheers'
Miro
http://miroslodki.wordpress.com
There's a proper balance between aesthetics and engineering. Based on their product, the only component I see missing is adequate customer service.
That said, I do enjoy Google's choice in blue for Chrome's active window, which happens to be #589CEE. Much better than if they had gone with #589CEF.
Then I'm guessing you don't understand how evolution works either.
My question: how many Google engineers commented on this thread. ;)
Camel = Horse race designed by committee
or
http://www.despair.com/meetings.html
nothing unusual, part of the experience of working for somebody else... :-)...
A good leader would recognize this shortcoming and effectively guide valuable manpower into a direction that tackles more difficult problems, such as accuracy of the search, speed of the search, & costs.
This pixel/color fixation reads like Google employees are a bunch of children who have just discover that they have a new toy.
- by sanjayb March 20, 2009 1:21 PM PDT
- I few years ago I may have been in the who cares what it looks like department. But seeing what products are successful like Apple for example shows that people do care about how things look. Look at Cnet's prize fights and reviews. They do put some criteria on the sexiness of a product cuz people do care. If you can design a good looking product that works great then more than likely that product will sell well.
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