Don't look for a UX guy, be a UX guy

"To build a great UX, one has to step back and think about what’s most important, try to come up with the most simple and shortest path to get there, build, analyze what works and why(not), measure, test, rinse, and repeat."

This is the "left-brained" part of UX, while there is the forgotten "right-brained" portion, which is typically based on the psychological impact of copy, typography, and visual polish.

For example, I worked for a company that wanted to remove all "distracting copy" from the form page so that the submit button was above the fold (and fewer distractions, etc.). We ran multivariate tests swapping copy, removing copy, rephrasing copy, you name it, to figure out what our visitors were actually responding to.

Our original "assurance copy" (letting the user know what the information is for, what's going to happen next, etc.) more than doubled our average time-on-page metric. However, our conversion took a ~27% drop when we removed it entirely, and incrementally better the more copy we had.

The users that did convert spent half the amount of time on the page (they were already committed to purchase by that point), but the rest of the users obviously needed assurance in the process, not necessarily the cheapest process.

Seeing Google try different shades of blue automatically, just goes to show that they don't know what they are doing

"To build a great UX, one has to step back and think about what’s most important, try to come up with the most simple and shortest path to get there, build, analyze what works and why(not), measure, test, rinse, and repeat."

This is very important. But get this: measuring and refining won't fix big errors.

So work with a designer and don't BS him trying to do "live genetic programming" your site with your A/B tool.

Why does that show that "they don't know what they are doing"?

This is true, but in my experience, the best UX people are even more excellent at figuring out what is NOT important and getting rid of it (or not investing any time in those things at all).

Also, just as the "learn to program" meme does not, and can not, apply to everyone, "be a UX person" does not apply to everyone. A significant part of what makes great UX comes from the right-brain and some of us simply are physiologically weaker there.

When I shifted my customer focus from developers to consumers in 1999, after 10+ years of building products, I made a conscious decision to become a "UX guy". I spent YEARS working on that skillset. I even had some pretty strong successes.

But I still suck, compared to my UX idols. I like to think I know good UX when I see it, and I can guide others to do it, but when I'm on my own I struggle.

(2) This is where it becomes tricky. You have to understand that these decisions are made at a very local level by small teams with specific goals(for example, "bump revenue from sidebar links by x%"). Also, it is unrealistic to suggest that a company the size of google can only work on super big items when at Google's volume, small improvements can add up and result in hundreds of millions in additional revenue.

(3) Not a fan of the new gmail but using their blue shade experiment as supporting evidence for why their design sucks isn't very powerful.