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Goodbye Google: "Visual Design Lead" leaves Google

stopdesign.com

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

#31

Post by jwilliams »

teej wrote: post #10
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. Havi…

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.

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

#34

Post by tptacek »

cadalac wrote: post #14
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.

Congrats for passing 10K karma, tptacek.

Ew. Thanks.

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

#35

Post by teej »

jwilliams wrote: post #31
teej wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Havi…

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.

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."

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

#36

Post by ionfish »

radu_floricica wrote: post #9

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.

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.

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

#37

Post by gb »

radu_floricica wrote: post #9

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.

Clean and creative aren't mutually exclusive though. It's perhaps too obvious an example, but Apple's design is on the whole pretty clean - and to my eyes at least looks like a lot more care was given to it.

One of my main problem's with Google's design isn't how plain it is, it's just that it looks half finished at times - it doesn't need more, but it doesn't look like it was well thought out.

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

#38

Post by reconbot »

adamhowell wrote: post #16
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…

> A real shame. Google is losing some major talent - which appears to have only been squandered over the last three years. When I started at Google Nov. '06 Doug had created some awesome Gmail mockups that really took the design and functionality above and beyond and -- having heard about how ground up Goog worked -- I was thinking those designs would be acted upon and built in the coming months and I was excited abo…

Are any of those mockups public? I love seeing good design ideas.

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

#39

Post by ken »

radu_floricica wrote: post #9

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.

I like companies that work on big hard problems, not whether a border is 4 or 5 pixels wide. I like companies that encourage top minds to stick around, not with gimmicks like free snacks but by valuing their ideas.

They've got millions of clients, but they have very few designers. I'd be more worried about losing the design leads. (Unless his ideas would have cost the company millions of clients, but it doesn't sound like that's the case -- if it was, they would have just fired him.)

The question of whether it "works" isn't clear-cut to me. Not a day goes by I use a Google service that I don't curse it for something stupid it does. I'm looking forward to what Bowman does next, because if it's any of the Google services I use, I'll jump ship in a heartbeat for something with good design. A lot of their services are almost without competition, because the little guys don't have the guts to stand up to Google, and the big guys who do have even worse design.

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

#40

Post by anatoli »

jsrfded wrote: post #30
jimbokun wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him.

You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. (http://stopdesign.com/about)

Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatch for him and I can understand his "frustration", given the fact that he was supposed to be a UI Lead at Google. He wasn't hired to be some low-level pixel pusher.

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