Doug Bowman, Goodbye Google:

“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 world to tackle.”

(via tlvx.)

I love the insight in Doug Bowman’s “Goodbye Google,” his departure post on leaving Google after having worked there for many years as a Visual Designer.

Like most, I too have throughout the years suspected them of having a “let’s see if that pixel is in the right place by user testing” design philosophy, but there has been no direct evidence of that until now.

User testing and data-driven decisions are great, but I think they only work in the re-iteration process — that is, the time after a pause in the development of a product where the situation is, “we’ve built this, and we need someone to test and tell us where we screwed up so we can fix it and have it tested again.”

Where they don’t work is directly within the design process, where the situation 99% of the time is, “we can’t agree on where the logout button should be placed so we need to let someone decide.” In these cases, the designers and/or developers need to think it out, add a rational perspective, wrap it with a touch of good human taste, and come to a conclusion where the solution singularly fulfills the problem like no other alternative could. Even if this is all done, decided, and supported fully by just one person in the team (for example, I’d assume Steve Jobs did it a number of times with the iPhone), it is much better than a half-agreed upon solution by the team where nobody fully supports it but it seems to be the “only” thing to do to move forward with the next thing.

In the long-term, this is why I think Google is doomed in terms of design if they don’t bring in a key figure who can aggregate design decisions and see the product from a user’s perspective as opposed to a user testing group’s. Apple, on the other hand, has mastered this over the years, so even while Steve’s away, I can bet you someone is taking his place and cracking the whips when it comes to “should the textbox be 2 pixels down?”.