HI Jennifer, I think you mis-understand me when I say "is an insane request". I mean that to even begin to do that job requires intimacy with the product that as an outsider, I can at best pretend to understand. You've demonstrated some issues below. that doesn't negate my point, but underscores the intricasies of the Google system and how important using various paths is.
Regarding the minutiae question, I see your point about how a fraction of a penny per view at your level of scale can make huge differences. I still challenge as other people have the notion that ONLY working at that level is required. You need to zoom in and out and allow for the absurd to take hold, reflect, zoom in, allow for the inane to break free, and then zoom out again. I think in the end we are probably both speaking about a balanced perspective, but from different sides of the see-saw. It happens a lot! -- dave On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Jenifer Tidwell <[email protected]>wrote: > 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 > -- Dave Malouf http://davemalouf.com/ http://twitter.com/daveixd http://scad.edu/industrialdesign http://ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ 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
