It turns out that Douglas Bowman is leaving Google after three years leading up their design team. He is leaving because, as he says:
“I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case,” said Bowman. “I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.”
Does this go to show that data can only go so far? Is there a point where design outweighs the need for metrics, data points and measurements? What is that point? And why does this issue affect so many different companies?
Without a doubt, Google is hugely successful on any number of fronts. However, have they simply become too inflexible?
How does this apply to your startup? Find the balance between the right engineering choices and how you run the rest of your business. Amazon.com is also well known for being very engineering driven, though they would never win any design awards (at least from my perspective) but they are hugely successful.
I guess the simple question is. When do you stop listening to the engineers?
March 20th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I think it’s a normal case of 3-year itch, or burnout. Google has always been an engineering company, and engineers just want proof. When you feel fresh, you pick your battles and stay the course. When you are burned out, every small setback can lead to dramatic decisions.
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Maybe it’s not “metrics” so much as having to defend every little decision to a committee. At first it’s fun because it’s fun to be challenged and defend things, but after a while it’s just nit-picky.
It’s like arguing about curly-brace style. It was fun in my 20s. Now I know that it just doesn’t matter as much as MANY other more interesting things. If I had to defend a brace style I’d feel the same way.
I also agree with Sergei about burn-out.