On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:57 AM, dave malouf <[email protected]> wrote:
> Jennifer, asking me to "re-design" Google Search is an insane
> request.
Why? There are real live UXers working on that problem over here, you know.
:-)
No, it's not insane at all. This is the context of the original post: an
influential designer at Google has left, and Google's main product is
search. Let me say again that this product has lots of people and dollars
worldwide depending on it. Data helps us answer design questions over here,
because breaking the user experience even a little bit makes a HUGE
difference to those people. We innovate, try things out with real users,
and roll out designs that show *measurable* improvement.
> Validation data would only be used to measure mountains (to take the
> metaphor being passed around above). Make sure you don't break it.
> But don't be so risk averse as to LIVE by the data. Use the data to
> qualify the risk, not to quantify it. And don't quantify the
> minutiae. Don't try to quantify the subjective, or the emotional.
Why not? At this scale, minutiae are important. And the emotional is
important too -- we understand that, and as other people have pointed out,
some aspects of the Google brand actually do have "soul" and personality.
:-) We know that numbers alone don't tell the full story, but they tell a
compelling part of the story.
Saying an organization is not a Design success is not saying they are
> not a success and is not saying there aren't a ton of things to
> explore and learn from their success. Maybe, just maybe the lesson to
> be learned from Google is that Design is full of shit and those of us
> like myself who believe in design and design thinking should "close
> shop" and move on to taking up engineering thinking.
Not at all. But big-D "Design" is more effective when it (a) works very
closely with engineering thinking and people, and (b) uses its tools well.
To us, data analysis is one of those tools. In other organizations, it
isn't such a good tool, because of smaller scale, usage patterns, cost of
acquiring such data, org culture, or whatever else. But here, it's quite
useful, and I'm thankful for it.
- Jenifer
---------------------------------------
Jenifer Tidwell
[email protected]
http://designinginterfaces.com
http://jtidwell.net
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