Metric-Driven Design

Friday, March 19, 2010

Metric-Driven Design

Back in mid-2009, Douglas Bowman left Google for Twitter, and in the process a small meme developed about his exit blog post. He semi-famously wrote:

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. 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.

Now, I understand how someone who is passionate about design aesthetics would have a problem with that kind of culture, but when you operate at the scale that Google does, the difference between two shades of blue can mean hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Bing just proved exactly that in their redesign. The salient point for the Bing redesign was:

Microsoft also tested multiple versions of blue for links in their search results. A specific color of blue (#0044CC) drove $80-$100 million dollars a year increase over the light blue the design team tried first.

So, while I sympathize with Douglas Bowman’s pain, Google is making the right choice by being so metric-driven in their design decisions. Not only is it the right financial decision, but additionally, Google is a *utility.* It’s a means to an end, not an end itself. It should be optimized for usability (think: efficiency) over user experience (think: fun).