Comments on: The Non-Design of Google’s Software

By: Sean Rogers

Sean Rogers — Tue, 30 May 2006 03:20:01 +0000

John, the fact you believe Google takes no consideration of design demonstrates how little you know of good interface design. You bring up the iPod as an example of simplicity and beauty, yet I fail to see exactly where Google’s products differ from iPods aesthetically. Neither need to be flashy: they have nothing to prove except that they have the greatest interaction designers in the world working on them. In fact the similarity between Apple’s hardware aesthetic and Google’s software aesthetic is remarkable: for example, look at the software on an iPod and try to point out a single difference in looks to Google’s software.

I’d be interested to hear what exactly you think is a good-looking product, because in my opinion Google’s products are unsurpassed in their beauty.

By: Jason Hoffman

Jason Hoffman — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:30:59 +0000

Google Analytics is just Urchin’s UI

By: tom davis

tom davis — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:12:11 +0000

Google Analytics is pretty fly-looking… quite an upturn for the books!

By: Will

Will — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:35:07 +0000

This post made no sense to me. What does “undesign” even mean? Is it undesigned because they don’t share an opinion about type faces?

No one really likes “slick” sites other than graphic artists. They may be pretty to demo, but the slicker it is the more condesending and pretentious a company is. It says “we need to lie to you”.

Look at all the sites that people choose to use. Yahoo. Craigslist. Google. (Even useit for that matter.) I have no idea if that’s Ariel but I’m guessing it’s not a custom designed type face. It’s like dating a hot girl who spends all her time on her appearance. Fun for a while, but eventually you end up getting bored with the lack of substance. And then after a while, appearance becomes a signifier.

Maybe when you said “undesigned” you meant something like “not-slick” or “childishly styled”, but I think that people tend to interpret that as “more authentic” and thus less threatening and more trustworthy.

By: David Corking

David Corking — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:00:14 +0000

Come on!

Google’s design gets out of the way and lets you use the application.

Simple visual clues – subtle blue metal for the main view, garish green for the search results, and bold yellows for settings.

It is not a design to look at and enjoy – it is one to remind you what you are doing. Of course, I am well-known for having no taste.

By: Jonathan Brodsky

Jonathan Brodsky — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:16:05 +0000

I agree with your message of beautiful & simultaneously functional. I think that they have spent their money on functional designers, rather than people that are able to make something beautiful as well. There was an interesting discussion called Google and the Tyranny of Good Design about this earlier this week over on the design observer. Their stance was essentially that it was a conscious decision to make ‘un-designed’ applications. I don’t know who I agree with more on this front, but I suspect whatever google is doing with their design, there is lots of thought going into something.

By: John Gruber

John Gruber — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 01:23:53 +0000

William: Tufte’s books are spare, but they are also beautiful. He sweats over every details pertaining to them: the type, the layout, the paper, the binding. I mean, sheesh, Google.com’s only typeface specification is:

font-family:arial,sans-serif;

Which pretty much says it all.

By: Scott Stevenson

Scott Stevenson — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:37:46 +0000

Wow, this post has sure brought the militant anti-design zealots out of the woodwork. I had no idea your job was flashy design. Banish the meaningless orange bar and its 700 bytes of wastefulness.

By: sam

sam — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:30:44 +0000

I prefer Google’s non-design, or anti-design, to the alternative (although I do wish they’d get rid of the drop shadow). The reason being that their supposedly poor taste doesn’t get in the way of the utility of their products. Taste is such a flexible and transient thing anyway—give them taste and you’ll only have some design that needs to be overhauled in two or three years. I’ll rue the day that professional designers worm their way into the Googleplex.

And strangely or not, a lot of professional designers of Web 2.0 sites seem to be heavily indebted to the Google look. I prefer that to the kind of AIGA-looking monotony I see everywhere.

By: Amy Hoy

Amy Hoy — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 05:11:19 +0000

Google just does not put a high emphasis on anything but “spareness.” That much is evident. I agree with the person who said that when they do try, we wish they shouldn’t (anyone else think the Google Feed Reader looks like a giant smurf poop?)

Their applications’ usability could easily be improved by someone with experience. Since they do not focus on actual usability, their utter spareness is usually the next best thing (again with the exception of Google Feed Reader, and Google Pages, and Google Base, and…)

For that matter, I feel like there’s been a decline in search result quality lately. That doesn’t leave much in their favor.