81–90 of 103 posts
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Why is that silly? For Google it takes no time to implement and, because of their traffic, no time to test. What's the downside?
You just spent three days of a teams time over what the designer already knew.
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This lack of consistent colour presentation is actually an advantage for Google's approach over the designed based one. Their approach is optimising across the population of 'end colour presentations'. Even if 50% of users happened to see it shades of aqua then the best 'aqua' presentation would also be incorporated into the result with a 50% weighting. A designer would find it very difficult to weight all the of pre…
You make good points that I partially agree with, however I still don't believe this is optimal for a few reasons. End-user design is about creating a usable experience and often deriving an emotion to make them want to do it again, a process that relies on color combinations , layout, typography, etc. -- the complete package. I'm less attached to GOOG webapps because they lack subtle things such as sound feedback. I…
Very little is worse than web pages that use sound. It's no accident that most sites don't use sound, your tastes are just way outside the mainstream on this.
> Interjecting them in the design process too soon and giving their opinion overriding power is a mistake.
The success of Google clearly shows it's not a mistake, numbers don't lie, but designers are full of bullshit they can't justify.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This lack of consistent colour presentation is actually an advantage for Google's approach over the designed based one. Their approach is optimising across the population of 'end colour presentations'. Even if 50% of users happened to see it shades of aqua then the best 'aqua' presentation would also be incorporated into the result with a 50% weighting. A designer would find it very difficult to weight all the of pre…
You make good points that I partially agree with, however I still don't believe this is optimal for a few reasons. End-user design is about creating a usable experience and often deriving an emotion to make them want to do it again, a process that relies on color combinations , layout, typography, etc. -- the complete package. I'm less attached to GOOG webapps because they lack subtle things such as sound feedback. I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make good points that I partially agree with, however I still don't believe this is optimal for a few reasons. End-user design is about creating a usable experience and often deriving an emotion to make them want to do it again, a process that relies on color combinations , layout, typography, etc. -- the complete package. I'm less attached to GOOG webapps because they lack subtle things such as sound feedback. I…
> I've found sound to be critical in software usability Very little is worse than web pages that use sound. It's no accident that most sites don't use sound, your tastes are just way outside the mainstream on this. > Interjecting them in the design process too soon and giving their opinion overriding power is a mistake. The success of Google clearly shows it's not a mistake, numbers don't lie, but designers are full…
Agree or Disagree: Twitter clients are an example of sound feedback hooking users attention (among other things), where the web was failing to do so.
Success of Google and 'design sensibilities' is not really an argument worth correlating; there are companies like Apple that master both engineering and design... tremendously successful. Furthermore, one could argue that Google Calendar is a near exact rip off of iCal, no credit to Google except putting it on the cloud and syncing it with their own software suite. I think influence is great, but goog engineers are not necessarily to credit for design and usability in this and other products.
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Why is that silly? For Google it takes no time to implement and, because of their traffic, no time to test. What's the downside?
You just spent three days of a teams time over what the designer already knew.
The best thing about a data-driven approach is that it gives room to be wrong. And we're proven wrong all the time: basically every meeting, there's some measured data where we go "that can't be right" - and then we either discuss ways in which we might've misinterpreted it or say "Okay, assuming this is right, then what do we do?" It sounds idiotic, but really we're (humanity in general) the idiots.
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Why is that silly? For Google it takes no time to implement and, because of their traffic, no time to test. What's the downside?
You just spent three days of a teams time over what the designer already knew.
So, it looks like the designer didn't know.
I'd contend that's because most designers don't optimize for performance, they optimize for aesthetic. When those two are in conflict which should win?
It sounds like Bowman thinks the latter, while Google thinks the former. As a stockholder I'm thankful that's the company's attitude.
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Nowhere does his post imply that the reason he's leaving is because his design aesthetic clashes with Google's desire for "clean, spartan, and utilitarian." It's perfectly possible to meet those goals and not be ugly, like, e.g., iGoogle and Gmail are. I consider most of Apple's designs to be "clean, spartan, and utilitarian". Requiring user testing for shades of blue and thicknesses of border is the height of sillin…
> Requiring user testing for shades of blue and thicknesses of border is the height of silliness. No it isn't, if a designers ideas cannot withstand a little objective scientific testing, they aren't worth using. > Moreover, users often don't know they want something until a designer shows them they do. You can never get to those designs by testing blues and borders. Which is the whole point of objective testing, do…
Say, which do you think is better, emacs or vim?
Even in a data-driven environment oftentimes the argument gets pushed back from "what to do" to "what to measure."
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I guess it depends on if you trust the majority making the right decision. I think often that just leads to mediocracy. 41 shades does seem a bit of a gimmick. I doubt it really matters that much, or that most people can even tell the difference.
I think the point he's making isn't about the correct way to choose a shade of blue, it's that real design work encompasses far more than picking colors.
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. Consi…
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.
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> I've found sound to be critical in software usability Very little is worse than web pages that use sound. It's no accident that most sites don't use sound, your tastes are just way outside the mainstream on this. > Interjecting them in the design process too soon and giving their opinion overriding power is a mistake. The success of Google clearly shows it's not a mistake, numbers don't lie, but designers are full…
Desktop apps are used by more people on a more regular basis than any web app to date. Web apps are getting there, but there not there yet. Sound, when used appropriately, is a very critical component to user experience and more importantly, usability — hence why most operating systems use sound feedback. Apple's new Nano uses sound to extend its usability tremendously, and other examples are endless. (By no means do…