Good Morning All, And many thanks for this thoughtful response Jennifer. As with many, I've worked for a large conglomerate with a powerful legal department and appreciate non-disclosures. I am fascinated by your comment below "Rhetorical question: how much design risk SHOULD such a company take with a product that still works so well?" as it seems so counter-intuitive from a company whose success in search came from doing that very thing in the late 1990's. At that point, folks thought that Northern Lights and Copernicus worked well from design and function perspectives; that is, until Google came along with its radicalized interaction approach.
In my view, the sophistication of search functionality today is not complimented by an equivalent sophistication in interaction design. This is something that I have been circling professionally for some time and hope to have something worthwhile to contribute someday. Side note, do you think that your presentation from the Interaction Design 09 conference might be available some day. My notes are best described as hieroglyphics and border on incomprehensible. marianne mswe...@speakeasy.net -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Jenifer Tidwell Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 7:10 AM To: David Malouf Cc: disc...@ixda.org Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bowman leaves Google I am a UX designer for Google. I wish I could dig deep into this discussion with you all, because it's very relevant to some of the work going on there. Sadly, there are many things about my employer that I'm not at liberty to talk about -- I'm sure many of you can understand that. I'll make a few points, and then make a graceful exit to my usual lurking state. :-) * Different product teams at Google have very different approaches to design, data, research, and "soul" in design. Some product designs I've seen there are truly amazing and beautiful, and some designers do indeed take risks. The cultural fit between a UX designer and a product team depends very much on where in the organization they are. I'm confident that that's true in most large technology companies. * The main search properties, especially Google's main page and search results page, are managed extremely carefully. I've seen some of the A/B experiments run on those pages, and while I can't share much, I will say that the results are fascinating -- you would be amazed at the usage variations that arise from tiny design changes. And no, those variations are not always predictable from first principles. This convinces me that we collectively have a lot yet to learn about design. * Yes, Google is successful at search. Very. Rhetorical question: how much design risk SHOULD such a company take with a product that still works so well? In that context, I think we designers would actually be irresponsible to not test our designs with good experiments -- countless people depend on Google's main properties, and there are lots of ad dollars (much of which go to actual advertisers, not us) and shareholder value at stake. It's not just about designers and our good ideas. The point about hill-climbing with data-driven incremental changes is well taken, but honestly, don't you think that It Would Be Bad to accidentally send Google Web Search into a design valley while you blundered about looking for a higher hill? * I never had the chance to meet Doug Bowman while he was at Google, though I regret not having had a chance to work with him. I have no reason to think of him with anything but deep respect, and I wish him well. - Jenifer On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 2:38 PM, David Malouf <d...@ixda.org> wrote: > Jarod, I don't like it. I find it to be .. > 1) reminiscent of MS > 2) too brash and distracting > > More importantly it has in no way shape or form improved my > relationship with Google (or diminished it). > > I think people have missed my point. > I think design is not for or against data, but design should always be > for imbuing human expressionism beyond the measurable. A designer of > worth, merit, etc. should always be encouraged to express themselves > in any way that does not break Raskin's 1st law of interaction design > (don't fuck w/ the content, purpose or utility of what you are > designing [paraphrasing]). > > When I look at a site like google, I see a souless design. Now, I use > google over Yahoo & Adobe for most things but that has nothing to do > with aesthetics. But Google would never take a risk like adding a > "Liam" (mail spelled backwards) character to their software. They > would never use the iconographic vivid imagery of a Buzzword interface > (Adobe). Because of this, these applications at least attempt to have > soul--connectedness to human expression to the world around them. > > I think people need to stop lauding Google as a design success story. > I think it hurts us b/c it is clear that it is an engineering success > story. Does that mean that engineering is better than design. I think > looking at Apple, answers that question. It doesn't. There are SOOOO > many ingredients that go into success and we would be fooling ourselve > as designers or engineers to think that any one of us controls all of > them. > > BTW, the one place funny enough that Google DOES allow for a taste of > humanity is on their most precious search home page (Google.com). > Their use of holiday and historic event treatments is beautiful!!! > > However, I can count on 1 hand how many times I go to Google.com (home > page) any more. Its in the chrome of my browser or in my browser's > home page, etc. > > Soul!!! Time to swing the pedullum back from the austere periods > towards the more expressionist. I think we can do that and still > maintain simplicity, clarity, usability, findability, and overall > effectiveness. In fact, I'd like to challenge us to do it! > > -- dave > > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40237 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe > ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines > ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help > .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- --------------------------------------- Jenifer Tidwell jenifer.tidw...@gmail.com http://designinginterfaces.com http://jtidwell.net ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
