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Google's Design Strategy is Killing Them.

14 points by benjaminlotan ↗ HN
When I interviewed for an experience design position at Google several years ago they asked me a question: "How would you work to ensure a continuous experience across all google products."

My immediate impulse was to subvert the question as much as possible and provide a "creative" answer. I told them the best approach would be to escape the idea of a 'continuous experience' as such a notion is impractical for a company of such size and with such an expansive offering of services.

I did not get the Job.

As distant as I am now from a Google career path, I am surprised how much this question and my response come back to me.

I still hold that the attempt to unify the experience across a diverse set of services is a terrible design choice, and I sometimes see it as a huge hurdle that inevitably keeps google's apps from attaining the success of the uber-famous classic apps like delicious, twitter, and facebook. Unifying across apps means that each design is fundamentally inhibited from becoming what it needs to be, and this in the end, could kill google, as it invests millions in the unification principle.

Thoughts?

11 comments

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benjaminlotan
I suppose what I was suggesting was to let each app develop along its own path. Let designers and engineers focus solely on building the best app possible. then throw the google logo in there and integrate with other google services as best fits the app over time.
faceplant
I think "killing" is probably an overstatement, but your idea has merit. Look at Apple's supposedly iron-clad Human Interface Guidelines, they were intended to create a similar kind of homogenised experience as well but Apple continuously challenges them because they're just too stifling.

Harmonisation and consistency is important, but there is such a thing as monotony.

benjaminlotan
i guess i was thinking about what they could do if they did not stifle their apps to fit some kind of unified design specification. 'killing' is supposed to reflect where i think they could be without following their own guidelines. Though apple sticks to design strategies and guidelines, there is much more flexibility, ie. when i use iphoto i dont feel like i am using itunes. whereas with google gmail feels like google.com, which feels like the rss reader, which feels like analytics.. and in my experience, i never really know where i am in google world. I know i am there, but i make mistakes because its all just generic space.
clojurerocks
Google is really an engineering company. SO they dont emphasize design as much as you might. Which is good because they have some cool projects but bad in that theyre applications tend to be really ugly.
maxbrown
"Why bother with brand consistency? Brand consistency has one massive advantage – recognition. With recognition comes familiarity. With familiarity comes trust and confidence." (http://www.attitudedesign.co.uk/the-no-1-rule-brand-consiste...)

Each app can (and probably does) develop along its own path, but always stays somewhat in line with their "continuous experience." When you start questioning if it's a Google product or not, they're probably doing something wrong. The Google Experience has become part of their value prop - why give that up?

keiferski
I don't necessarily agree with you in that there shouldn't be a overarching consistency to their products (no matter how subtle), but Google definitely isn't the strongest when it comes to design.
cullend
No. Then you get Microsoft. The drastically different design makes teams forget they are a part of a company, and they all turn into little companies doing their own things..
benjaminlotan
i think little companies doing their own thing is a pretty strong strategy, Microsoft did a bunch of other things wrong as well.
postalize
Red, Green, Yellow, Blue...

This is the consistency, no?

dsl
It sounds like you dodged a bullet. You were asked a subjective question to determine if you would fit in to what they believed was "right." In such a large company, you really do need to fit the company culture or it ends up being just as painful for you as it is for your coworkers.

As much as I thought I would love working at Google, that opinion quickly changed after the interview. I discovered it was everything I hated about school with a thick layer of free food and brightly colored bicycles smeared on top.

tnorthcutt
I think there's tremendous merit to a unified design strategy for Google. I think Google's medium to long term goal is to become ubiquitous with computing for many/most people. Lots of people already use a couple of their products (web search, email, online video viewing), but if they can make the user experience seamless across more products, they can probably speed up adoption for "average" computer users.