Why I design at Google | Hacker News Reader

Why I design at Google

ryskamp.org

66 pointsjamesjyu23 comments

Long-term, I want my design work to influence the direction of large groups and societies, and to do that I need to learn how to work with and persuade people who aren’t inclined or required to listen to professional designers.

I think that this is the most important bit.

Are there any examples of amazing (Apple-quality) design coming out of Google?

Are you asking about Apple "quality" aesthetics?

Graphic design is about solving problems; aesthetics are secondary. Google's designs solve its problems--satisfying search results, simple access to email, etc--very effectively.

Apple solves problems without sacrificing aesthetics. Very rare to find companies who can achieve that level of quality.

Yes, the mice that ship with the iMacs are the best examples of solving problems without sacrificing aesthetics.

That's rather silly and outdated snipe. Have you used the new magic pad? I'd rather have that than anything else.

This is a silly issue of semantics, but the trackpad isn't exactly a mouse; still a pointing device though.

Anyways, his snipe is hardly outdated. Apple's most succesful products manage to balance form and function beautifully, but their mice are a pretty big hole where function has clearly been sacrificed for form.

aesthetics are not secondary in graphic design.

> satisfying search results, simple access to email, etc--very effectively.

I won't call Jazz UI, or SearchWiki, or +1 as "solving problem design".

Aesthetics is a core problem if you need people to pay a considerable amount of money before they can start using your product.

This is what makes design at Google fundamentally different from design at Apple.

Apple's designs aren't all that impressive to me. They aren't the epitome of design.

Google Profiles (https://profiles.google.com/) has better usability and a cleaner design than Apple's homepage (http://www.apple.com/).

well, there's no accounting for taste...

Or lack thereof.

I think you'll find that Apple has done more than anyone else with regard to raising the importance of design in product.

In the last 6 months there has been a real shift towards the importance of design. I'd say thanks to iPhone mostly for spreading the message. I doubt Google has inspired many designers although they are starting to change... and no, profiles is not one of those.

> Google Profiles (https://profiles.google.com/) has better usability and a cleaner design than Apple's homepage (http://www.apple.com/).

It's only a matter of taste. For me that page is ugly as hell. I haven't activated my profile yet, and maybe because of this that page looks empty, no content on it, no reasons given to me for why I should ever activate my profile.

On top of that, I also managed to break their JS on the first couple of minutes of browsing it. I clicked on the "PicassaWeb" tab link and strange layover window reluctantly showed up (after 2 or 3 seconds on the first try). When I try to close that by clicking the "No thanks" link nothing happens, apart from FF reporting a JavaScript error:

> Error: h is undefined Source File: https://profiles.google.com/c/ui/js/122008102-PwaLinkMain.js Line: 39

I'm on FF 3.6.13, Windows 7. Here's a quick screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/f67Nj.png

I don't think they're going to catch Facebook with that ugly page design and beginners' mistakes.

www.google.com

The design of the map for Google Maps is pretty nice.

http://www.41latitude.com/post/557224600/map-comparison

This is an even better example: http://www.41latitude.com/post/2072504768/google-maps-label-...

Well done - the discussion is now sucked into the Apple void.

You're missing 0. make great products, which at the big table are the only stakes that count.

This is too much me/my/I. It's a nice insight into why folks might think about design at Google, but a sharper insight into why design at Google has a ways to go.

The post is about why he designs at Google, not how he designs at Google. That'll necessarily be quite personal in nature. If you ask how, that's much more focused on the end user, but also far more confidential. Get a job there if you're interested.

Larry Page, take a note: your employees may be more motivated by free food than by using geek gadgets or by the company mission

Google needs designers? Wow.

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