On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 7:10 AM, Jenifer Tidwell <[email protected]>wrote:
> I am a UX designer for Google. > > ... > > * 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. > > Can you be more specific here, or are you talking about designs that have not shipped publicly? If the latter, will they ever ship? And if not, that's quite interesting and worth exploring. FWIW, I had job offers from Google and Yahoo at the beginning of 2005. I chose Yahoo because I thought that Yahoo had a better design organization which was more integral to the product development process. Douglas Bowman's post does a lot to confirm my suspicions. Plus I know a designer a Google who recently moved over to product management in order to have more influence into the product design. To me, that's sad. Irene Au built up a successful and effective design organization at Yahoo, and who knows? Maybe she can do it again at Google. But I believe that the core values of any organization are a really strong undercurrent and tough to overcome. Google's engineering-driven culture is a lot different than Yahoo's product-driven culture. One more point worth making. Google got it right when they emphasized performance as a key part of the user experience. I only wish more companies would follow suit. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
