Read here, Google’s Designer Drain, and here, Goodbye Google before continuing on.
These are only two former employees leaving Google and I don’t blame them one bit. Have you seen Google’s “designs” since the inception of the company?! Not exactly earth shattering, ground-breaking or innovative. Except for their use of two step gradients. Now THAT is cool, saves bandwidth and still looks elegant. But guess what, probably not designed by a designer but by a developer.
More here: New Gmail Buttons and Usability Issues
Unfortunately I can’t say Google is the only company struggling to “design and define” itself. I know of many companies staffed primarily by developers with little emphasis on design. In fact, there’s a general misunderstanding about the value of design because it’s difficult to quantify.
Even though developers fully support design efforts (makes their jobs easier and frees them to develop!) what ends up happening is design “costs too much” and the “let’s just do something cool right now” inevitably happens. I call it “design by accident”.
Design doesn’t just happen; it is researched and carefully thought about. However, like Marketing in the late 90s and early 2000s, any other department that can’t track its effectiveness in dollars, as sales can very easily, is bound for the dustbin; its initiatives ignored.
God, I love technology as much as anyone but will it end up killing our user interactions because it appears to “cost too much”? I hope not. We’ll miss the creative genius of the two designers mentioned above as well as any new thought that struggles to reach the light of day that might be the next iPod or sweet, bagless vacuum cleaner.
Alan Cooper, creator of Goal-Directed Design at Cooper is admirably attempting to meld his practices with those of Agile development even while they are diametrically opposed, and it’s a worthwhile task because the flood of intention appears to be tipped squarely in the corner of “let’s just engineer our way out of this because it’s cheaper”.
This leaves the user behind!
I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how to monetize design in a way that isn’t just the same look at the iPod. I’m becoming a broken record mentioning Apple at every opportunity. They ROCK at design, but can’t possibly be the only example out there (besides the two I’ve already mentioned). How should an Interaction Designer prove that usability increases sales?
Maybe it’s a matter of talking about an entirely different industry: Public transportation? I’m biased because I write another blog called Auckland Bus Stories. If the bus were designed poorly, would ridership decline? I think so. And that is definitely trackable.
Let’s not forget a good application is only as good as the happy users who use it.
Tech writers have a similar problem. Their focus is also the user, and their input can help to improve the product, reduce support costs, and more, but so many companies just see them as a cash drain and demand “fast stuff right now” instead of letting the tech writers get to know the user base and find out what the users actually need.
Education departments have the same problem too. All in all, a lot of software companies just don’t seem to get that the programs don’t just run in a vacuum.
It’s a constant battle, I feel, to prove the value of anything that isn’t directly tied to revenue.
The iPhone and iPod are great examples. So are websites like http://www.xero.com that keep a user focus while delivering a very efficient online product.
Google might be too inbred to expand its vision, since its roots are based on an algorithm.
You've reached a turning point here. As a designer you are not (no, really not) interested in statistics. Yet that is about the only way to convince dicisionmakers and planners to concern with design and make it possible to do your job as you would like to.
As a designer you are unlike to set up the research and administration necessary. So who is? In my experience nobody is. The others don't care and the designers can't do it. As I said: a turning point. We go no further. Everything stays the way it is.
Should we hire people who like statistics as a part of our design team?
When did I say I wasn't interested in statistics? It's part of Interacton Design itself.
My point with this post was to say that Google's main focus is data, not good design. And no, centering content does not count as good design.