Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#1

Post by mrkurt » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 2:47 PM UTC

Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google
stopdesign.com

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#2

Post by tptacek » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:05 PM UTC

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.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#3

Post by wensing » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:05 PM UTC

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

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#4

Post by jeresig » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:06 PM UTC

> "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.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#5

Post by paulhart » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:12 PM UTC

wensing wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#6

Post by idont » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:19 PM UTC

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

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#7

Post by axod » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#8

Post by dejb » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:34 PM UTC

jeresig wrote: post #4

> "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…

> "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. "

Actually the evolutionist in me thinks this is pretty cool but I can still understand why a designer would want to quit.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#9

Post by radu_floricica » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:36 PM UTC

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.

Re: Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

#10

Post by teej » Fri, Mar 20, 2009, 3:38 PM UTC

jeresig wrote: post #4

> "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…

> 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