March 2010
33 posts
I don’t know if any of the folks who read this are interested in a job with an AMAZING company, but Photojojo is hiring. If I were you, I’d look into it.
Andrew Parker:
Back in mid-2009, Douglas Bowman left Google for Twitter, and in the process a small meme developed about his exit blog post. He semi-famously wrote:
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 minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
Now, I understand how someone who is passionate about design aesthetics would have a problem with that kind of culture, but when you operate at the scale that Google does, the difference between two shades of blue can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Bing just proved exactly that in their redesign. The salient point for the Bing redesign was:
Microsoft also tested multiple versions of blue for links in their search results. A specific color of blue (#0044CC) drove $80-$100 million dollars a year increase over the light blue the design team tried first.
So, while I sympathize with Douglas Bowman’s pain, Google is making the right choice by being so metric-driven in their design decisions. Not only is it the right financial decision, but additionally, Google is a *utility.* It’s a means to an end, not an end itself. It should be optimized for usability (think: efficiency) over user experience (think: fun).
Charlie says: I agree with all of Andrew’s thesis here, except that last sentence. User Experience is inextricably linked with usability. Bowman wasn’t optimizing for user experience, he was optimizing for aesthetics. And, as a designer, that’s what he should do. The failure in the Google/Bowman situation was that the process of selecting that blue wasn’t a cleaner, more automated A/B process. (And maybe it was, but that aspect of it hasn’t surfaced.)
So, I’d recast Andrew’s last sentence as this: “It should be optimized for usability (think: efficiency) over design (think: prettiness).” (And, even then, I’m not totally happy with it, as that sets up design and usability as contradictory forces, when I don’t believe that at all. But in the sense of Google-as-utility, it’s appropriate — usability takes precedence over aesthetics.)
(Charlie notes: This is not a commentary {from me} on healthcare, education, jobs bills, or any specific public policy initiative. It’s more a commentary on how, as Americans, we’ve moved in two directions — inward {claiming rights as individuals} and national {assigning responsibilities to the national government} — and how we need to reverse those, assuming more responsibility at a community level. There are some things that we absolutely need to handle at a national level. But not everything. Strangely, I’m finding some analogies to this in The Nanny Diaries, but I need to think through those a bit more before I post them. The tl;dr: affluence allows for outsourcing of important duties; we’re treating governing as an outsourced service to a “class” of worker, freeing us to live our lives, but sacrificing a lot of what allowed us to get to where we are in the process. Again, that idea’s half-baked.)
- Charlie: I'm surprised that Trader Joe's packages its tea bags in individual plastic wrappers.
- Sarah: Yeah. Tea's the one area where I feel like Trader Joe's is kind of weird.
- Lucy (5): I think the bathroom is the area where Trader Joe's is kind of weird.
Kind of wish Simple Mom were on Tumblr, so I could just reblog this whole post.
- Charlie: "[joke style I overuse] ... is that a 'thing', or did I make it up?"
- Sarah: "I ... think you made that up."
- Charlie: "Are you saying it isn't funny?"
- Sarah: "Maybe!"
