

Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google - mrkurt
http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

======
jeresig
> "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.

~~~
teej
> It's probably a big reason why Google hasn't had a truly innovative design
> in a long time.

I would argue that they do have a truly innovative design. The fact that it
doesn't look new and challenging doesn't preclude that. They have a design
that's nuanced in thousands of ways to improve their business. Their design is
reminiscient of Victorian architecture, every last detail polished off until
it was perfect. Having your business fine tuned to that amount of detail is
not something most companies can claim.

"Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. With
split-testing, it tends to get more effective." - Eric Ries

~~~
jwilliams
True -- but design isn't a science... Or it's only part-science anyway...

You might as well say you can take code and with minor increments make it
perfect over time.... Sounds logical, but we all know it doesn't work like
that.

Sure, tuning will take you a long, long way -- but occasionally you need to
break the rules to leap forward.

~~~
teej
I don't disagree that sometimes you need to make radical changes to make true
progress. But I think those radical changes need to be put through the same
testing that small changes are put through.

I would much rather say "We are sacrificing 1% conversion to take a bold new
direction with our design" than to say "We are redesigning beacuse our old
site looks old and that's bad."

------
jimbokun
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
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.

------
tdonia
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.

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

~~~
johnrob
Success can be a big burden. The biggest advantage a startup has is no legacy.

~~~
plinkplonk
"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".

------
Keyframe
>"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-fail...](http://gawker.com/5162532/marissa-mayer-
googles-biggest-failure)

>"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
Eek a Valleywag link! It shouldn't really be blocked if it has relevant or
original articles...

------
webwright
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.

------
radu_floricica
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.

~~~
ionfish
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.

~~~
tvon
John Gruber touched on a similar point today, quoting from a NY Times article
from 2003 (<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/30IPOD.html>):

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People
think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told,
‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it
looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” - Steve Jobs

[edited formatting (thanks unalone)]

~~~
unalone
Your line stretches out this page ridiculously.

EDIT: That's one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes. When I was younger and
making my first web sites, I thought design was all about making things
pretty. Turns out, pretty has almost nothing to do with design (and, in fact
most of the design I like the most is aggressively minimal and stripped away).
Design's about how things flow.

(I'd also say, speaking as somebody who takes a lot of interest in design,
that this makes design _incredibly fun_ once you figure this out. It means
that _every page you make_ , even sign-up pages, are wildly different and
interesting. I've made something like 6 iterations of my site's log in page,
simplifying and condensing it each time, and I get a thrill out of that
similar to the one that comes from making code better and more elegant. Not to
speak of the notadouche sign up page, which was very very fun to design.)

------
tptacek
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
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
You're right, of course, I'm just commenting that result-oriented design and
graphic design may not be compatible worldviews.

------
mcslee
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.

------
beaker
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>

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

~~~
paulhart
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
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
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
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.

------
10ren
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).

------
cpr
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.

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

~~~
adamhowell
From this, posted over a week ago?

[http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-
poa...](http://gawker.com/5169099/twitter-claims-valley-crown-by-poaching-
googles-top-designer)

;)

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, no, but I guess I wasn't breaking any story then.

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

------
jsrfded
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.

~~~
jimbokun
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
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.

~~~
jrockway
_I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager._

Who cares about some middle manager's opinion?

 _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._

It sounds like you are looking for people who will shut up and churn out
mediocre code for 8 hours a day. There's certainly a market for that, but I
doubt the author of this article is interested.

If I write a blog post about how much I hate cleaning up toxic waste, that
will limit my opportunities for employment cleaning up toxic waste. But who
cares, I would never do that anyway.

~~~
jsrfded
It's bad form to diss your employer, current or former, in public.

Even more so for a senior guy like that. He's leaving one hot company to go
work at another - he can talk about the great opportunity at Twitter. He
doesn't need to gripe about the job he's leaving.

His post spawned a bunch of mildly unfavorable press, which is currently #1 on
Techmeme. Bad form.

~~~
jrockway
_Bad form._

You keep saying this. Perhaps you'd like to explain why.

~~~
raganwald
Paul Graham once wrote that "unprofessional" was the null criticism. It says
nothing other than expresses your distaste. I wonder if "bad form" is the same
thing, spoken with a slightly English Public School accent?

------
vladocar
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-
gri...](http://www.vcarrer.com/2009/03/google-redesign-google-in-grid.html))

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.

