Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

turn to Douglas Bowman, a designer with a résumé that includes stints at Twitter and Wired. He also started at Google in 2006, becoming one of its early visual design leaders.* Here’s how he justified his departure from the web search firm almost three years later: Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions . . . Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail . . . 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 . . . Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better.3 Forty-one shades of blue sounds like a lot, but if they were willing to go that far at Google, why not test for a hundred or a thousand? If some data is good, more must be better, right? As Bowman suggests, it isn’t.