Going forward, I think we’ll see more of that come into our understanding of what makes good design good.

But also important is the need to have imagination and conviction in what you’re doing. The Henry Ford quote about faster horses springs to mind, I also like Stevenson’s point about the fact that consumers do not always tell you the truth for fear of seeming imperfect. I think we are all guilty of this at times, a good example is when asked questions like ‘How much money do you donate to charity?’.

This over-reliance on data in decision-making is becoming increasingly pervasive in the current climate, where arse-covering-at-all-costs seems to be the standard M.O for corporate managers living in fear of retrenchment. Unfortunately, the logical end point is complete inertia as doing nothing becomes preferable to taking any kind of a risk.

Related to this reliance on data, it seems that Google underestimates the importance of emotional factors. Arguably this is because, as Jared points out, it is fundamentally an engineering-driven organisation. However, to me this somehow seems at odds with its touchy-feely, “let’s break for softball and muffins” philosophy.

Nic: spot on in regard to the importance of look and feel. The iPhone is evidence of this – on launch it trailed competitors in terms of price, camera megapixels and speed of connection, yet all these factors were trumped by the fact that it looks great (both the handset and what is on it), and is a breeze to use.

I was having a conversation earlier about Android and the fact that it is designed around attracting developers to the platform. However, while facilitating open innovation is important, as the success of the iPhone app store shows, ultimately it is consumers who call the shots, not developers. Developers will gravitate towards platforms that consumers embrace, not the other way around, and look and feel matters a lot more to consumers than APIs.

I’m wondering how much of what we see at Google has to do with an impedance mismatch behind “design thinking” versus “engineering thinking.” (Please don’t confuse my reference to “design thinking” to the current Design Thinking fad.

In my experience, people, like Doug, who are designer-types, think about the design process and solutions very differently than people who are engineer-types, like most of who Doug had to work with. There’s no right or wrong way here, but they just think about process and differently.

Part of this, I think, comes from training and education. Designers who are trained through a classical Graphic Design or Art progam are trained with tools like critique and studio. Engineers are trained with a different approach, using an analytical deconstructive set of problem solving.

To produce great designs, you need both, but the disconnect in communication makes it difficult. The fact that Doug had to explain why he was choosing one border width versus something else shows a lack of fundamental understanding of the designer’s approach. (From what I know of Doug, I’m sure he wasn’t asking the engineers to make similar rationalizations of their detailed choices, so that must’ve been frustrating.)

From our research at UIE, the best teams are those that have a solid understanding of the fundamentals across the entire team. Engineers understand design fundamentals and designers understand engineering fundamentals. This solid team-wide background solves many communication issues and allows people to quickly get to higher-level conversations, necessary for solving the big problems.

A balance is needed between quantitative analytics and qualitative user research. What do the users feel about the lack of emphasis on the visual design? Are users more or less able to perform their tasks based on how it was designed? When they talk about your product what is the general outcome; positive or negative? Do the users feel a sense of brand affinity to the new design? etc. etc.

I personally think the best designs are when you find a sweet spot between business goals, user needs, and technology constraints. Anything less is just either look at numbers and hoping, being a yes man, or designing for a billion edge cases.