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
Both practical and aesthetic concerns The group [of Irwin, Howard, and Wortz]'s thinking here seems to have been influenced to a degree by Christopher Alexander's landmark article, "A City is Not a Tree" (1965)... Irwin referred specifically to Alexander's argument in his effort to sort out his own thinking about how the Miami International Airport might be designed with both practical and aesthetic concerns in mind, allowing for their overlap and emergence from the conditions on the ground. Matthew Simms, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art A City Is Not a Tree