Goodbye, Google An Article by Douglas Bowman stopdesign.com Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” 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. 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. designdecisionsdata
An index of the shifting patterns "Because this is a garden where things can be left out at night without being stolen, we're going to 'furnish' the garden with French café chairs that won't be secured in the ground, so people can move them to wherever they want to sit...It's like with the chairs being totally casual and relaxed and comfortable. They set a tone. There's things that you have to do to get the right feel, where it's all already there, but then, you know, 'Bing!' – there's a moment of recognition." The patterning of chairs pulled together in different ways by successive waves of visitors over the course of the day becomes an index of the shifting patterns of people that sit in a variety of arrangements to facilitate conversations and other intersubjective alignments, or simply to allow for a moment of private contemplation free from contact with others. Matthew Simms, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art 251. Different Chairs furniture