LKM said: Usability tests and iteration and data are an essential part of great user-centric design.
Designers don't design in a vacuum. That's what artists do. Designers create functional objects which are used by humans and which need to be usable for humans. And that is something that can and should be measured, just like the efficiency of code can be measured.
I agree with this, and it also seems to me that Douglas would not only agree but have experienced this. But, acknowledging that I know as little as anyone, that's not what seems to get him down. Doing three mockups and testing them and making several iterations and testing *them* is perfectly fine.
But Google is now working on such large a scale that they're actually convinced that the difference between a 3, 4 and 5 pixel border is measurably different, that the difference is statistically significant and that the improved performance, if you can actually put it like that, is worth their time and money and provides for better customer satisfaction than something that looks as originally intended.
This is micromanagement of the highest order and I would be hard pressed to imagine that my employer regarded my input as valuable, or my direction as direction, if I were to have been high-pass-filtered in every last detail in this way.
Which is completely different from saying that they do it on purpose, or with the intent to quash the thing that they hired him to do.
by Jesper — Mar 22
Designers don't design in a vacuum. That's what artists do. Designers create functional objects which are used by humans and which need to be usable for humans. And that is something that can and should be measured, just like the efficiency of code can be measured.
I agree with this, and it also seems to me that Douglas would not only agree but have experienced this. But, acknowledging that I know as little as anyone, that's not what seems to get him down. Doing three mockups and testing them and making several iterations and testing *them* is perfectly fine.
But Google is now working on such large a scale that they're actually convinced that the difference between a 3, 4 and 5 pixel border is measurably different, that the difference is statistically significant and that the improved performance, if you can actually put it like that, is worth their time and money and provides for better customer satisfaction than something that looks as originally intended.
This is micromanagement of the highest order and I would be hard pressed to imagine that my employer regarded my input as valuable, or my direction as direction, if I were to have been high-pass-filtered in every last detail in this way.
Which is completely different from saying that they do it on purpose, or with the intent to quash the thing that they hired him to do.