21–30 of 38 posts
She talked at Stanford and her genius was evident.
She is intimidatingly smart and has business sense most people can only dream of.
The fact that she has been doing it for 11 years for virtually all of Google's products only further proves her prowess.
I'm not entirely sure how she is able to stay involved with as many different products and services as she does. It's a remarkable ability.
It's why when she switched over to managing the Local team, we all knew that Google was finally getting serious about this category.
I'm not entirely convinced "Google" and "design" belong in the same sentence, unless we're talking about their original no-frills homepage and search results, before adwords and instant and live preview.
The "design" of the original Google search page was not so much in the aesthetics as the loading time. Every other search engine piled on decoration and most users had 56K connections. She was the one who convinced the founders not to imitate the other search engines, not to be portals, just let people search as quickly as possible. That might have been more important than their search results in many cases. Design d…
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... Marissa actually proved to be good at it. Except that, as far as I can tell from the vast majority of Google's products, Google (perhaps not Marissa?) has a design sense that ranges from "poor" to "incredibly poor". Chrome, perhaps, being a singularly notable exception.
They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history. ^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response:
- I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library).
- I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast).
- I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yahoo, but before that, I used people's random collections of favorite links that you found on their home pages.
I don't lack perspective on history, but I don't equate Google's technological improvements in "advancing the state of the art" with overall quality UX design. The minimalist home page was brilliant in comparison to Yahoo at the time, but it's not an aesthetic they've been able to continue to apply successfully.
Google consistently produces fantastic technology, lackluster design, and then rarely, a design outliers that is actually good.
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They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history. ^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
These are technological advances, not design advances. As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response: - I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library). - I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast). - I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yah…
I got the same feeling when I saw google maps - it was so far ahead of everyone, and not just technically but design-wise too. The same thing happened with mail. So on one hand you could say that their maps and mail are sort of standard, and that other companies have similar offerings.
But on the other hand, who set the standard in the first place?
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These are technological advances, not design advances. As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response: - I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library). - I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast). - I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yah…
Every once in a while some company comes out with a really great solution to a problem. The most recent was with hipmunk and flights. When I used hipmunk for the first time, I had that feeling that after them, the whole landscape had changed. I got the same feeling when I saw google maps - it was so far ahead of everyone, and not just technically but design-wise too. The same thing happened with mail. So on one hand…
I don't think that is in conflict with my original statement, and the remainder of the Maps API is truly bad. I regularly make the mistake of using the scroll wheel, get stuck trying to figure out how to show (or hide) street view, etc.
Regarding GMail -- it's a poor approximation of an existing, very basic desktop experience. There's not a lot of design innovation there, if you look beyond webmail.
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The "design" of the original Google search page was not so much in the aesthetics as the loading time. Every other search engine piled on decoration and most users had 56K connections. She was the one who convinced the founders not to imitate the other search engines, not to be portals, just let people search as quickly as possible. That might have been more important than their search results in many cases. Design d…
It's often hard to look back and attribute success to the things that one did not do. I think this more than anything is Marissa Mayer's problem here on HN - it's tough to publicly point to anything she did , except play the totally critical role of saying no a million times over. Few people can do that, fewer still are right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've been pretty key in advancing the state of the art^, so I don't know how you can say that. Maybe you don't have a sense of history. ^: I'm talking about search, mail, and maps specifically.
These are technological advances, not design advances. As for "not having a sense of history", that's a strange ad hominem, but I'll lend it a response: - I was on the internet when there was only gopher (from terminals at the library). - I was also on the internet when Netscape 1.0 was the shiny new thing (and the 56k frame relay I used to download it was considered quite fast). - I used Mapquest, Altavista, and Yah…
Apple, for example, is usually held up as an example of awesome design. But behind Apple's design is some pretty impressive technology. Why is this different than Maps or GMail or Websearch? Is it solely due to reputation, because Apple hides many of the technical details of its products behind this cloud of secrecy, while Google is openly proud of having advanced technology?
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It's often hard to look back and attribute success to the things that one did not do. I think this more than anything is Marissa Mayer's problem here on HN - it's tough to publicly point to anything she did , except play the totally critical role of saying no a million times over. Few people can do that, fewer still are right.
It seems that people who say no for a living—designers, directors, critics, even big-league VCs—all fare poorly on HN. I wonder why that is?
Startups would never get off the ground if their founders said "No" to everything. The next great idea would be killed long before it could be developed enough to prove its worth.
The critical piece is being able to say "Yes" to everything early on, and then critically look at everything you've said "Yes" to once they're on the table and say "No, no, and no" to the vast majority of them.