The Non-Design of Google’s Software
Earlier this week, TechCrunch published a bunch of pre-release screenshots of Google’s purported calendar app, code-named CL2. If you didn’t know better – by which I mean having any familiarity with other Google-developed apps such as Gmail and Google’s flagship web search – you’d think these screenshots showed an app in such an early state of gestation that visual designers hadn’t yet been added to the development team.
But, knowing the look-and-feel of Google’s in-house software, we know otherwise. The screenshots of Google’s calendar strongly resemble Gmail and their other software, and regardless how much longer we’ll have to wait before it actually ships (as a public beta, no doubt), this is, I think, almost certainly pretty much what it’s going to look like. Which is to say: dowdy.
Yes, yes: calendaring and web mail are essential components in Joyent’s web platform, and so at least in some measure a calendar app from Google will be something we’ll be competing and judged against, and so as the guy charged with directing and defining the Joyent user experience, I’m rather patently biased with regard to my opinion of Google’s UI. And, further, yes, Gmail is extremely popular and Google is very profitable and their stock is doing very well.
But I’m not saying their design is bad, or even ugly. It’s more like it isn’t really “design” at all. It borders on non-design, and I’m not sure how anyone could argue with this.
I’m not saying they ought to make it fancy, gaudy, or trendy. One of the core tenets of Google’s brand – which brand is undeniably powerful, well-defined, and well-known – is the simplicity, bordering on austerity, of their interfaces. They’re right to focus on that. All things considered, simple is better than complex.
My point is that there is no reason that simple can’t also be beautiful. Simple and beautiful is better than simple and plain. The best examples I can think of are Apple’s iPods: they are both simpler and more beautiful than competing gadgets. The iPod Shuffle, in particular, epitomizes both qualities.
So why do Google’s apps look like this? It certainly isn’t for lack of resources. A small team of a half-dozen or so kick-ass designers is all they’d need. (It’s also worth noting that the software they buy, like Blogger and Measure Map, is usually very nicely designed.)
My only guess is that their executives lack taste. (The sample is small, but evidence to date points to a strong correlation between software monopolies and poor taste in UI design.) If you have no taste – or no faith in your taste – how can you judge whether a design that strives for elegence actually achieves it? In Microsoft’s case, what happens is they fail much more often than not.
Google’s visual design strategy, on the other hand, seems to be not to try at all.
26 Responses
I have a theory about this. Google knows that the vast majority of its users will be on windows machines. They know that that the Windows GUI is cluttered, messy, incoherent—and it’s against that backdrop that they are designing (or “designing”) their webapps. Within the Windows context, Gmail and CL2 seem, in their utter bareness spareness, positively elegant. In that context non-design may be the best design. (I would also say that simple beauty is the most difficult to achieve, simply because the artist or designer is working with so few elements that each element must be perfect, and perfectly related to every other element, for an effect to come off.)
And John: how would you compare Google’s non-design design to the look of Backpack and the other 37signals apps?
Agreed, maybe they need to purchase Apple next. Also, have you looked at the beta products coming out of Microsoft and Yahoo? Some of these are just as bad.
Personally, I think they’ve done most of the hard work. Simplifying a product or UI is the bigger portion of the battle. Styling a clean interface is much easier than cleaning up a fairly good looking but cluttered interface.
It does seem like a good portion of the Google sites are very light in terms of bandwidth. Maybe that’s a priority for them?
Google… I’ll help you if you need it!
I for one am always a little sad when google purchases a perfectly nice looking, not-out-of-beta-yet, web app. If they ever end up integrating it into their lineup, it will most certainly end up looking very Ford Fairmont.
Alan: I think that, compared to Google’s apps at least, 37signals’ apps look positively gorgeous – they’re simple, but not ugly with it. I think they’re mostly designed against the backdrop of a Mac, which may help (maybe someone should study this?). What I really hate is the shade of blue Google have chosen as their ‘official Ajax colour’, it looks really harsh on my iBook’s LCD.
Google’s design is not simple. Google makes its products look like the result of programmers putting things where they think they fit best. Doing that is a design-choice. And like all design-choices, it is made to achieve a goal. I think Google’s goal is to have their products look like computer applications, not like the hi-brow Web2.0 design stuff everyone puts out nowadays, but like real-world applications everyone can use, regardless of their intellectual powers and the power of their computers.
In business, good design is not the design that looks best, it’s the design that gets the most people to use your product.
When Google does attempt design, they shouldn’t.
Google Earth for OS X
I, for one, am glad that Google does not even try. I am a Mac user and generally a sucker for pretty things, but I don’t get what’s so bad about Google’s search or Gmail. The color scheme could be a little less gaudy, but apart from that, they both are best of breed, as far as I’m concerned.
I think it’s funny that you bring up the iPod. A portable music player lends itself to minimalist design, so in the hands of capable designers and engineers, something like the iPod was bound to emerge at some point.
Email, however, is pretty complex. People write, read, store, delete, manage, filter, categorize, prioritize, et cetera in a myriad of different ways, and the majority of them are not exactly what you would call computer-savvy. Perhaps a gaudy color-scheme and simplistic (as oposed to minimalist) design are the best fit for GMail’s intended user-base? Judging from the reactions of the people I’ve introduced to GMail, I certainly think so.
RM – Google can thank Keyhole for the Google Earth UI design (non-design?).
I think Google sticks with its spartan design because it is adequate and easier. “Nice” design is harder to create, harder to maintain, harder to integrate, harder to learn, etc.
John, I couldn’t disagree with your argument more, that the Google design strategy is to not try at all, and Google apps lack beauty. I would argue that resisting bloat, keeping the interface clean yet still feature complete, and integrating with Gmail are going to make the Google calendar app an outstanding example of its kind. And if you look it up, that’s one of the definitions of beauty.
I think the reason for this is so dead simple that it’s easily missed. Google is run by Linux hackers and mathematicians. The lack of design, I think, evolved from a unix mentality of ‘no frills because it’s unnecessary’. In other words, usability is seen as a requirement for a functioning product but appealing to more fuzzy human desires is not.
Several people mention 37signals, which is an interesting contrast. They clearly see beauty as part of a functioning product in that the emotional reaction is part of both the developer’s and user’s overall satisfaction.
This article is completely off. It is apparent that Google puts a lot of thought in the design of their products, and they do it very well. It’s just that it is not design in “let’s make everything look pretty” sense but design in the “let’s communicate information as efficiently as possible” sense. See the work of Edward Tufte- I would imagine he is their design inspiration.
This from a blog that consists of inverse-video text (white on excrement brown, no less, with a slightly runnier brown for the actual content), a difficult-to-read sans serif font, a couple of icons half-hanging off the right side of the screen, and a meaningless glaring orange bar across the top. I’ll take google’s simple, organized, easy-to-read pages any day.
Hey! I wrote the calendar. Google sent me their resume and I accepted!
You may be saying this because you earn your living by designing stuff and Google makes it seem as if flashy design – your job – is not so important. Examine your motivation!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Google Analytics is pretty fly-looking… quite an upturn for the books!
Google Analytics is just Urchin’s UI
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.