Data Trumps Design At Google - Good Or Bad?

On his last day at Google as the top visual designer, Douglas Bowman posted his complaints about Google on his blog about how data trumped design within the Google organization. This is very unusual and revealing for any current or former Googler.

"When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board."

"And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions," Mr. Bowman wrote.

So Google, clearly the most successful Internet company, uses data to drive design decisions. Is this bad considering the success that they have experienced? Is it frustrating for a design professional like Bowman, surely.

On March 30th, Douglas Bowman became the creative director at Twitter.

Suggested reading...

Here are some suggested books I've found very good reads:

• Designing with Web Standards
• The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
• Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies (good website here)
• Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works

So brew a cup and finish off winter with these fine pubs!

Interactive Designs to Create an Immersive Experience

Playgrounds for Data: Inspiration from NYTimes.com Interactives

Web App Summit 2008: Sneak Preview March 26-28 - Coronado Island, California

Book: The Art of Simple Web Design

E-book features 10 chapters teaching professional "pixel-saving" skills, plus 22 worked example case studies.

View part of the the first chapter; "The Art of Simple Web Design." Key concepts include; "Enough, and no more", "getability", "Design the content not the box", "noticeability".

Balancing Aesthetics, SEO in Web Site Development

This ClickZ Experts article helps to raise awareness of how to achieve harmony between SEO
experts and the web design, to develop a Web site that looks great and also stands to rank well in search engine organic results. Read the article.

Long or Short Copy on Web Sites?

Jacob Nielsen addresses whether a site’s content strategy should use longer or shorter content.

The best answer: As long as it needs to be.

Dr. Nielsen founded the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.

Look Verses Feel

This ClickZ Experts article raises awareness of the fact that "look and feel" are two different aspect of Web design. It's a pet peeve of mine that so many people use the phrase as if it means only one concept. Read the article