Sometimes evidence-based, data-driven design doesn't make sense. Take Google, for instance.

Google is well-known for being a data-driven company... nothing wrong with that. Their focus on data-gathering is well-chronicled: They have so many users that they can run all sorts of usability tests to improve their software interface designs. Google's home page is famously clean, with a very low "word weight". I think the most interesting evidence they've published is based on eye-tracking studies, where they follow people's eyes as they look at web pages, to see what patterns emerge. Good stuff.

Evidence can be an excuse for taking chances. But data is good for testing things you've already thought of, not for creating beautiful, innovative things from scratch. In Goodbye, Google, one of the company's (former) designers, Douglas Bowman, explains exactly where the data-driven approach has gone too far. "When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."

Fiddling with pixels while Paris burns. Bowman says "I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle."

Meanwhile, I'd love to point out some design choices for Google to consider, especially concerning their online Office-docs clone.The company's Google Docs product is a rather uninspired (but, thankfully, light) version of what Microsoft has been producing for years. Why aren't they incorporating clean, effective ways for people to present evidence?

Comments

[Nathan Zeldes]

I think the difference between engineering and science in this respect is that the latter is accountable to an absolute truth - the way the universe works - so there's no room for guesswork. In Engineering, there is no absolute truth to the pixel width of that border - and at times it's OK to go on what your intuition tells you.

Of course in Science too there's a need for intuition in choosing which directions to explore; the data is mandatory later in the game.

[Happy Prancer]

There's an entire industry that has taken an evidence based approach to addressing its problems: Science. I don't think anyone has called data a crutch in science, nor do scientists get accused of avoiding daring solutions.

From his article, it sounds like Bowman would rather work in an environment that allowed him to pretend he was not accountable to evidence. In science, such people are called crackpots. But in business, I guess it's still socially acceptable.