A week ago, Professor Foster had a lecture where he talked about Google’s visual designer Douglas Bowman leaving the company in order to join Twitter because Google’s engineers focus on things like tests for 41 shades of blue [1].
The argument is related to that of form and function. Should engineers adhere to data and rules, or are gut decisions the seeds of good design? This argument is hotly debated among designers. It appears in architecture, automobiles, and even in evolution where every feature in an organism exists due to function instead of form.
Professor Foster then mentioned on how Google’s engineers are acting like applied scientists, and that us engsci’s should steer clear of the data oriented design style. I have to disagree; I feel that Google is definitely on the right track and that gut feeling should be overruled by data. Why? I have 2 points to justify my claim:
1. Google attracts users through functionality, while Apple is riding on popularity, not design
Google currently ranks as the world’s top search engine. It has evolved from the little search engine that could to what it is now while similar search engines like MSN Search and Yahoo were left in the dust. Clearly, Google is doing something right. Upon closer examination, Google’s products are clearly not the most beautiful, yet they rank high in functionality. From the simplicity to the intuitive layout, users can navigate the software with ease.
Apple, however, uses a different strategy. Their products are clearly the forefront of design, moulded by the hands of someone considered to be a God among large numbers of people. However, apple has clearly filled a peculiar niche. If you look at other companies who tried similar strategies, such as Sony’s Vaio or Dell’s Adamo in the laptop department, they are clearly not doing as well as apple while their products can still be considered well designed. Why? The difference here is reputation. Apple can get away with lacking features or functionality in their products (ie: no radio) because they have a “cool” factor on their side. Yet ask a person about a company like Dell and their mind immediately jumps to poor reliability. In other words, function is valued before form when popularity points are not counted.
Whether a design will be popular cannot be quantified by Engineers. Instead, engineers should focus on what is concrete and guaranteed to satisfy users, and that is functional design decisions that are well justified.
2. Human decisions are flawed and cannot supersede data
Professor Foster said that gut feelings should be a valid design decision, while data should be used merely as a guideline to decisions. Professor Foster brought up an excellent refute to this claim in another recent lecture. He mentioned antennas that were used in space were designed by old people with an incredible knack in finding the correct antenna shape. However, even the best gut designs were completely outmatched by antenna’s designed by genetic algorithms, which are able to produce very close to mathematically optimal solutions to extremely hard problems. In this example, human intuition is easily crushed by a machine.
It is arguable that data can be skewed or can be made invalid through the measurement itself, yet is also arguable that humans can be biased, experts can be overconfident, and that gut feeling is unjustifiable in court.
Evolution is based on function. A giraffe has a long neck not because it makes it pretty and unique, but because it allows it to eat leaves from tall trees.
Going back to the 41 shades of blue, it can be seen that humans cannot comprehend the complexity of some problems, and gut decisions will ultimately fail to data:
“A designer, Jamie Divine, had picked out a blue that everyone on his team liked. But a product manager tested a different color with users and found they were more likely to click on the toolbar if it was painted a greener shade. As trivial as color choices might seem, clicks are a key part of Google’s revenue stream, and anything that enhances clicks means more money.” [2]
Now I may just be a first year engineer student, yet looking at user responses to blog posts relating to Douglas Bowman’s leave shows some consumer opinions:
It is obvious that asking an Apple fanboy would produce different answers, but then again, fanboy’s are attracted to Apple’s popularity. I am not saying that Professor Foster might have been biased in his lecture, but he does own quite a few Apple products.
PS: I would have to say Blogger is a Google product that is horrible in functionality. My editing screen is horribly small, the HTML does not do what I want it to do, loading images one at a time is a chore, and text gets constantly messed up. I could also do with some spell check feature so that I do not have to type everything up in Word first. Perhaps all these features are hidden around here somewhere, but a user shouldn't be digging for solutions. Google docs has simular problems with text layout and organization. A good idea would be to have the ability to move all blog posts and comments and everything from one blog provider to another, because if there was another blogging site that has better UI and moving there doesn't mean starting over or messing up people's RSS feeds, then I would be so in on the idea.
[1] http://i.gizmodo.com/5181402/googles-design-problem-all-data-no-vision
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html?_r=1
A couple of points...
ReplyDelete- "... should steer clear of the data oriented design style"
I think/hope that what I said was along the lines of "meld judgment and intuition with data" and not "steer clear of data". I'm rarely that definitive in my statements, so this feels off a little.
- "... In this example, human intuition is easily crushed by a machine."
Only because there is a solid, empirically-tested model of antenna function that can drive the algorithms. In the absence of such a model (as would be the case in many human interaction situations) the algorithmic approaches don't tend to work.
- "...but he does own quite a few Apple products"
... which he will happily critique. I certainly loathe the new approach taken by iMovie, and the Dock has issues. That said, my own experiential data has shown that I get things done more quickly on the Macintosh than I did with Windows, OS/2, or KDE/Gnome.
The "data" said that people had many peripherals that used the PS/2 port or the serial port on their computers, and as such any new computer should include these ports. Apple (and Sony) chose to go with USB, completely ignoring that data, and now almost everything is based on USB (and not the better, and also Apple-inspired and Apple-ruined FireWire (which is a whole other story)).
Much of this comes down to issues of:
- What can be measured (or, more accurately, what is a good metric)?
- The distinction between "leading" and "reacting" (each of which is legitimate approach)
- Whether there is a single indicator (such as clicks) or whether there are multiple outcomes (in which case the experimental protocols are overly complicated, to the point of being intractable)?
I think that a purely data-driven approach to design has flaws, just as does a purely gut-driven approach. By definition though (OK, unless you get into the deep philosophy of science) Applied Science cannot go beyond data whereas Engineering can bring together data and intuition.
P.S. Wikipedia for "parsimony"
"I could also do with some spell check feature so that I do not have to type everything up in Word first. Perhaps all these features are hidden around here somewhere, but a user shouldn't be digging for solutions. Google docs has simular problems with text layout and organization."
ReplyDeleteIronically, it appears Microsoft Word did not detect the misspelling of the word "similar".
"Ironically, it appears Microsoft Word did not detect the misspelling of the word "similar"."
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly the problem; I typed that section in while in Blogger and not in Word, so the mistake was never detected.