Campbell Interactive

There has been a lot of talk the last couple of days regarding Doug Bowman’s departure from Google. I’ve read his account, a counter point of view, and some commiserating. I have also seen a bit of the “designers are whiners”, or they try to “overstep their place in the food chain”. It’s frustrating to hear these things more than anything, no one is arguing that a business like Google can’t muster along without someone to choose the right shade of blue, but anyone arguing that it was such things that these designers were there for in the first place is missing the point completely. A business who’s primary market for conducting business is on the internet not only relies on design but can very often live or die by it. That is because there is so much more involved than color, though that should not be overlooked.

User interaction design involves the understanding of the user, the task at hand, and proper clear communication between the interface and the user. These are vital elements to successful interaction design. Knowing what elements to combine on a screen, how they relate to one another, how much to ask of the user at any one time to ensure that both they and the application are well served to generate the expected outcome. Luke Wroblewski made an interesting point about this in a talk I attended call An Event Apart in Chicago in 2007, he spoke of a hypothetical situation regarding a banking application where by the natural tendency for a designer, which would be to default to the old adage of the closest distance between two points is a straight line, could in fact do more harm to the application as a whole. The idea that designing in some complexity to specifically avoid potential mistakes, especially when a user’s finances are involved, is not necessarily a difficult concept to grasp but it takes a skilled designer to accomplish it, or to consider doing it in the first place.

I’ve worked in several different environments where the balance of business goals to design goals have been weighed favoring either side, and rarely does a ideal solution come from any of those models. A balance must be struck where both are served for the greater good of the project, I admit I had more personal reward from those roles where design was favored, and I am sure that in those situations the business holders felt the frustration.  Who could feel rewarded when your contribution is viewed with little to no weight by those you work with regardless of what you do. The biggest hurdle  in for these teams is ignorance. Contempt is the easiest response to the arguments of the passionate when a lack of understanding is involved. In my experience design is always the first to compromise in such cases because rarely are the decision makers those who come from the design side of the equation. I’m not arguing that is some common misstep among businesses, certainly there are effective leaders to be found in the Crayola crayon set, if they so choose to aspire to such is another matter.

Designers will always only have so far to rise before they begin to rely more heavily on skills taught in business school rather than design school, that is just the nature of commerce. It doesn’t mean that you forget about composition, typography, or color theory. You just start to worry about PnL,  margins, payrolls, taxes, budgets and other insanely fun things that I have little comprehension of. The point of debating success without design is moot. Regardless of what your product is it has design, wether that product was designed by a classically trained designer or a MBA suit, if it’s borderline fine art or Craig’s list it was designed and both can be successful. I circle back around to my initial point which is to understand your user, the task and hand, and how to communicate clearly to affect the intended outcome quickly and easily, do that and you’ve succeeded. I suppose what I am getting at is, if you go to the trouble of hiring a designer let them do the work they were hired to do, trust in the skill that led you to hire them, interfere only when there is a real threat to the success. This is not to say you should not collaborate it just means that you should trust them on their choices much as they trust you in all your choices. Don’t respond with contempt when there is a lack of understanding, communication is key.

At the end of the day these designers left their positions because it wasn’t right for them, their evaluation of the role design played for their companies and the affect that had on their decision is not for me to speculate on as that is their experience not mine. I have felt their frustration in my own experiences in the past and I can relate to them. Calling it whining is silly, saying that they should know their place and shut up just shows that you have no idea what their place is and should probably consider your own ignorance and how to address that. If you question what design they have contributed to at Google you should probably try looking past the search box you see every day to some of the many other services they offer and note that design is so much more than color and pictures.

Google may not need those with the talent of these few designers that have moved on, I doubt many are arguing they do, but my opinion is they are lesser for the lack of it.