
How Google Got Design - sethbannon
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046512/how-google-finally-got-design
======
currysausage
_> This all changed, of course. Computing power eventually became a secondary
draw to user experience. That's partly because broadband exploded, making
sheer speed less of a selling point._

So here I am, with my beefy SSD machine, a 50 Mbit/s connection, a JS engine
that is orders of magnitude faster than anything we had a few years ago, HTML5
offline storage, HTTP/2, still waiting >5sec for several Google properties to
load, waiting >15sec for CEF-based Spotify to load, knowing that with today's
tech, these things could fire up within <100ms.

It's no disaster if I have to wait for a few seconds, but especially for
secondary tasks (like looking up an address on Maps or playing a song) which I
do en passant while focusing on something else, I find that waiting for only a
few seconds can already steal my focus. When I fire up a music app (be it non-
Google Spotify, Google Play Music or whatever), it would be great if at least
the search form was available immediately. Knowing that it won't, that instead
my expensive PC will go sluggish for a few moments, I find myself just
avoiding these things increasingly often.

And it's sad to know that Google once _was_ pretty obsessed about reducing
these little latencies wherever possible. Today, they develop SPDY and QUIC to
save a few ms, then throw web frameworks at me that take whole seconds to
load.

It's not that I didn't appreciate beautiful interface design. It's nice to
have a mobile OS that arguably looks better than iOS. But it also was pretty
awesome to have an almost latency-free experience (and good information
design, making efficient use of my screen), even with an old netbook and shaky
GPRS internet on the train.

~~~
nchlswu
> But it also was pretty awesome to have an almost latency-free experience
> (and good information design, making efficient use of my screen).

It's funny. I think most people would agree that the experience you described
isn't diametrically opposed to 'good design,' and in fact have the same goals.

But, it seems like the modern conception of 'good design' has effectively been
reduced to pretty things and interface design. Even if designers wouldn't say
that if you asked.

~~~
currysausage
_> that the experience you described isn't diametrically opposed to 'good
design,'_

Yup. The more obsessed we get about "pixel-perfect" interactions, the more
insufficient native browser behavior becomes, to the point where e.g.
Flipboard just throws it all away and creates a new UI layer using <canvas>.
But that's probably not what either of us would call "good design."

------
meesterdude
I don't think google gets design. Everything google that I've interfaced with
has been met with some level of cursing and frustration. The other day I was
trying to use google maps and almost had a breakdown out of frustration. It
wasn't ALWAYS like this, mind you.

I will agree that their stuff is certainly prettier now, but I've found the
usability has tanked across the board. I'd rather have something I can use
than something that just looks nice.

~~~
mkohlmyr
I don't think _designers_ get design.

In the same way that engineers over-engineer, designers over-design. The
difference is when you over-design a user interface the end-user actually
notices.

In the same way that developers jump on the next new language and framework,
the designer jumps on the next trend. But when you change the interaction
pattern the end-user has to re-learn.

Those clever lines of code you love so much in your last project? That's the
50ms animation that really ties together the page - but creates that
noticeable (and endlessly anoying) lag where after you click you have to wait
to start entering data but you always start to soon and it misses the first
letter or the keystroke does something else because the page focus is wrong.

Sometimes design isn't about pretty, it's about not annoying the office worker
who uses your product several hours per day.

~~~
currysausage
_> Those clever lines of code you love so much in your last project? That's
the 50ms animation that really ties together the page - but creates that
noticeable (and endlessly anoying) lag where after you click you have to wait
to start entering data but you always start to soon and it misses the first
letter or the keystroke does something else because the page focus is wrong._

This. Could someone at Google (and every other hip software company) please
print this 2000x with a wide-format printer and plaster the walls of the
designers' offices with it? Thanks.

~~~
reagency
You mean like this?

[http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy](http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy)

~~~
currysausage
There was a more radical version on a long-gone page called ux.html [1]:

 _Every millisecond counts.

Nothing is more valuable than people's time. Google pages load quickly, thanks
to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential features
and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Unnecessary clicks,
typing, steps, and other actions are eliminated. Google products ask for
information only once and include smart defaults. Tasks are streamlined.

Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google
doesn't sacrifice without good reason._

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080719213524/http://www.google....](http://web.archive.org/web/20080719213524/http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html)

------
smhg
Do I dare to say this somehow shows the _relative_ unimportance of design?

Google is/was quite successful before they _got design_ (let's say success in
this context means something like: a large audience).

And even when they decided to get design: it took them a relatively short
amount of time to get things "right".

I agree Material Design looks very nice. But I think functional value (just
picking a term here) is so much more important, by an order of magnitude.

~~~
jfoster
Or perhaps Google "got" design before, but didn't realize it.

Speed, functional value (as you said), simplicity, and such really ought to be
considered part of design just as much as a visually appealing set of colors
on an interface is.

------
uzero
To me Material has always felt like it was designed by an algorithm. There's
just no trace of any "soul", playfulness or overall "artistry". I know this
isn't true and there's many talented artists and designers working in Google
but that's just the way I've perceived everything done with Material so far.
It doesn't feel like fun, it feels like something that just had to be done to
stay with the times.

Another issue is Material's animations. I literally cringe every time I have
to use Google Translate on my phone. I can't imagine how annoying it would be
to have full OS on your phone done with Material. Those whole element
animations are so distracting and they actually make the app feel slower. I
know iOS has also a lot of animation but the difference is where it is being
applied. Material design applies it to interactions with elements while iOS
applies it to transitions. If I have to wait and see how the element I just
interacted with animates, it seems unimportant but if animation is used to
mask loading time like for example when transferring between app and
homescreen on iOS, then it feels natural. If you want to animate interaction
elements, it needs to be really, really fast animation just to let you know
that yes, I got your tap/click.

~~~
nobleach
Were there studies done to show that material design was "the way"? Or for
that matter, was there any research done proving that it would be more useful
at all? The designers at my company tout it as "the right way". I'm trying to
be accommodating, but I'm starting to suspect that this is just one company's
word over another's.

~~~
uzero
Oh I'm sure there's plenty of studies that were used to design Material and
that's probably exactly why it feels like it was designed by an algorithm.
Like the article says that it's very comprehensive guide/framework to get a
cohesive result but that doesn't mean it has the magical "it" what makes
design truly remarkable. One reason I think that might be factor is that
Google has never been innovator when it comes to user experience. They're more
about iteration and testing. The problem is that it leads to local maxima and
rarely something unique and something that takes the whole industry forward.

But also keep in mind that designing a framework that works for small screens
and big screens is truly a hard task. Microsoft tried and failed with "Metro"
and now Google is trying to pull it off. In my opinion Apple has been a bit
smarter about this and kept iOS and OSX mainly separate while integrating some
elements here and there.

------
allendoerfer
Material Design needs to evolve on the desktop side. I like it on mobile and I
think to focus on interaction minimizing everything else is great, but on
desktop with navigation implemented according to it, Material Design is just a
huge waste of space and very unintuitive.

I would like to have an even broader meta framework than Material Design that
makes it possible to use different colors and fonts and maybe even different
features to distinguish hierarchy. That way you could implement your own
version of Material Design, that does not look googly.

~~~
diminish
I second this. Just yesterday We were fighting to find some functionality in
vast non-intuitive Google Apps screens with huge wasted space designed for
swiping.

Finally a junior developer said, what was wrong with a simple table?

~~~
sanatgersappa
you mean like this? - [https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/data-
tables.ht...](https://www.google.com/design/spec/components/data-tables.html)

------
kh_hk
It's clear Google has undertaken a massive task on defining a cohesive image
and set of guidelines for the design of their products. In that sense it's
probably better to have a flawed plan than no plan at all. However I would not
be so fast on calling Material good design.

I might be alone on this but there's something on material design that irks
me. I find it objectively pretty: colors, typography, everything with a
defining image, related or just a fancy cartoon. That being said, every time I
am faced with this kind of UI, my brain disconnects, I feel bored and
unproductive, play a bit with the buttons never to touch it again. I do not
need smiley faces and happy tones to keep me hooked to something. I just want
a productive interface that gets my job done.

It is quite similar to these old children books we used to have with levers
and unfolding parts inside the pages to discover more (let's say, the human
body and the internal organs, or a lever that makes a bird wiggle). These were
fun, sure, but a raw book with no illustrations at all ends up being the most
efficient method to transfer information.

One day Google will have to figure out that their userbase are no longer kids
amused by a square, a circle and a triangle.

------
jevgeni
Saying that Google gets design is a bit of a stretch. The new Inbox product is
a case in point: it just looks so busy and "over-designed" for what
essentially should be a list of messages and a few controls to manage them.

~~~
russ5russ
Agreed, but some of their other products are very well designed IMO. It
usually takes a while for them to get to that point though, so Inbox may be
headed there soon.

~~~
jfoster
Did it really take a while for their other products to get to that point?

I recall Gmail being something so immediately appealing and better than the
status quo that people ditched their existing email services and applications
overnight to start using it.

------
raverbashing
How do you get design?

1 - You respect designers

2 - You let them do their thing

3 - You guide them and is welcoming of (backend) changes that are pro-
usability

4 - You avoid "thinking like an engineer" or "users are stupid" mentality

5 - You don't alienate them by A/B testing between 50 shades of blue

~~~
ed_blackburn
Seems reasonable. Reminds me of the culture change required when engineers
would say we'd like to do agile? Or can we make our own technical decisions
with our interference? Or why do we have Business Analyst, Developers and
Tester silos, sat in different offices with different managers etc.

Whilst still common those ideas are known anti-patterns. Let us hope UX and
solid design is absorbed into the mainstream in time.

~~~
raverbashing
I agree, there are going to still be some separation because your UX designer
is not going to know how to shard a database, or your developer still won't
know what kind of palette to apply given a certain circumstance (or use
Photoshop), but it's essentially they talk and are not separated into silos.

------
isaacg
So this is why all of google's pages are suddenly much harder to navigate/use.

------
ooOOoo
Material design is great but I am still wondering how google could release the
new Chrome bookmark manager which is a usability nightmare. It requires you to
click many times to set a bookmark directory instead of just typing some tag.
Basic usability testing would have shown this.

~~~
signal11
As a non-designer, the new Chrome bookmark manager feels very "heavy", UI-
wise, compared to the previous version. I also believe Material's color scheme
will feel as dated as Aero in a few years.

------
peter303
Ironically Fast Company doesnt seem to get design with some of the gaudy and
irrelevant figures in their article.

------
aug-riedinger
This must be a sponsored post!

Not only are Google interfaces ugly - I agree this is personal - but they
remain unusable.

Indeed, they picked up good ideas from others (mobile interfaces from iOS,
flat-ish design from Microsoft), but everything is cheap, in a lesser good
quality, and particularly not user-friendly.

I'm thinking of:

\- the new google maps \- the new google drive \- the new inbox \- their
google contact app \- google play music \- android interfaces as a whole

Please google, keep on being a data-gatherer, data-distributor instead of an
app creator, and outsource this to other people who tackle this issue
decently.

------
dharma1
They are definitely a lot better now than a few years ago. I think the design
guidelines are actually better than almost any other OS/app guidelines I've
seen so far. The design itself is subjective but I think it's very good.

Material Design is getting a lot of developer traction even outside Android,
surely that is a sign of some success?

I find the design language great on mobile but a bit hard to get used to on
desktop (still prefer Gmail to Inbox on desktop for instance)

------
btbuildem
I think Google's design is still in early stages. It seems like they're taking
a bit of a wrong turn in the direction of busy, cluttered UIs - their original
approach of simplicity was successful because it didn't get in the way.

Making it look pretty while keeping it simple is challenging. I expect it will
take them a long time, and we'll have to grumble through it.

------
M8
Would've been much more impressive had it been released before Metro GUI.

------
nchlswu
So much FastCo Google coverage feels like astroturfing.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Is that because it gives them less time for their Apple astroturfing?

------
neotek
Very much looking forward to reading about this on Daring Fireball.

------
ignoramous
I wonder how much this has to do with Larry Page's meeting with Steve Jobs in
2010-11.

[http://googlesystem.blogspot.ie/2011/10/how-steve-jobs-
influ...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.ie/2011/10/how-steve-jobs-influenced-
googles.html)

[http://www.androidauthority.com/larry-page-and-steve-jobs-
ad...](http://www.androidauthority.com/larry-page-and-steve-jobs-advice-given-
lessons-learned-221476/)

