
Measuring the Design Process - MaysonL
http://theocacao.com/document.page/600
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dsil
I think Google is getting a raw deal in this argument. This author and Doug
Bowman talk about human designers being needed to make decisions about shades
of blue and number of pixels for dividing lines. In most cases thats fine, but
if you have the number of users google does you might as well let an algorithm
figure it out, rather than have a team of designers argue back and forth about
whose gut decision is correct.

On the other hand, there is TONS of great human-driven design going on at
google. No algorithm came up with emails organized as conversations, or
draggable, fast maps, or clean stock-quote pages with huge interactive charts,
etc etc.

Fine, have an algorithm do some a/b testing to figure out how many pixels
various lines on those pages should be, and which shade of colors to use. Of
course designers arguing for their gut instincts on those decisions are going
to be frustrated. They should have just let the data make the decisions its
good at, and stick to doing the design that computers can't.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I’m not an artist. But I’ve worked with my fair share of really great artists
and the impression I’ve always been given is that great art comes from
consistency of vision. In other words it matters a great deal to them what
shade of blue they use or how thick a line is.

This isn’t a mindset I, as a programmer, understand. But I’ve seen great art
come of it and the people making that great art have told me it’s important.

(I've also seen lousy art generated by committee which just backs up that
claim)

I think that is the root of this conversation. What Doug Bowman et. al are
saying is there are different ways of doing things and Google doesn’t realize
that. They think everything can be done from an engineering standpoint and
that’s a philosophy that kills the drive of most creative people.

So when you say "why not let an algorithm figure it out" you’re missing the
creative person’s point.

(You said there "is TONS of great human-driven design" inside Google but I
don’t know where you get that information from. That’s not the way I’d always
heard it)

~~~
boucher
You have glanced the side of an interesting point: what comes out of data
driven design is not art. Great design, the kind of work that people obsess
over Apple for (at its best), cannot be made that way. Great design is art; it
is expression; it is fundamentally opinionated.

It's not the only way to design a user interface, to be certain. But Doug
isn't interested in working in that environment, because he thinks of himself
as an artist, not a statistician.

