Comments on: Google vs. Facebook Interface Design: Design by “Committee” vs. Baptism by Fire

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:25:56 +0000

So many nightmare stories you come across about “design by committee” . It’s an epidemic. It’s just so difficult to make it work. Fuchsia McInerney tells the tail of one of these nightmares and gives some advice on how to attempt to make it work. http://www.fuchsiamac.com/design-by-committee-avoiding-logo-design-pitfalls/

By: The Pied Pipes

The Pied Pipes — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:16:03 +0000

Right, gotcha. I agree. Balance is needed. Stats can’t generate soul. But they can be convincing; especially if the person with the most soulful design isn’t a great articulater of their vision.

Question though: that last para of your last comment assumes that it’s a wayward, rogue designer. That may well be the case, but how do you know it wasn’t a team of wayward designers who were battling to get their own ideas brought to the surface, and in so doing, made that most reprehensible mistake: design by committee of designers? :)

Surely there are enough designers at FB for that mistake to be a likelihood if the leaders weren’t strong enough to go with a single, unified vision of the new interface.

By: Chris Cardinal

Chris Cardinal — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:01:39 +0000

@The pied pipes:

My point was that some (Scoble) were harping on Facebook for giving in to their users, citing “Design by Committee”, which usually has negative connotations. I argue that what they were doing by integrating user feedback was similar to Google’s approach, which is effectively to design by the largest committee possible, with the stakeholders largely quieted by statistics instead of subjective feelings.

I’m definitely not criticizing the Google approach outright–I’m admitting that it can clearly be a bit excessive, but it also provides a more functional user experience. The argument over whether it removes the “soul” from a design is better left for a separate article, and is something that’s been ruminated over quite a bit since Bowman left.

There’s definitely a balance though; simply allowing a wayward designer to deliver what he believes is best while ignoring the pleas from large percentages of your user base is completely opposite Google’s approach of letting the user effectively design the interface.

By: The pied pipes

The pied pipes — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:35:42 +0000

I don’t really get your point about google. Are you saying they got it right by using the wisdom/taste of the masses? You seem to be contradicting yourself somewhat by suggesting that fb doesn’t listen to its users whilst also criticising google for doing just that…

But maybe you’re just one of those people who loves to have a moan. Probably. When you’re in a position of having to develop a product that is used by hundreds of millions perhaps you’d be a little more forgiving.

By: Chris Cardinal

Chris Cardinal — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:53:50 +0000

I disagree with the contention that the redesign in any way impacted the ability for businesses to become part of the social graph. I contend that the change is an entirely different and more annoying way to frame the data, not a change to the data itself. (This happened weeks before when Mark first announced that the new design was coming, with how they revamped Pages; it did not affect the home page at all, and needn’t not in order to work.)

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:17:57 +0000

while Scoble is right, that this re-design allows facebook to start adding businesses and raking in money hand over fist, it’s also true that if they drive away their entire user-base, they won’t make shit.

Just ask myspace: by driving away everyone over the age of 12, (implementing half assed features, giving you the lamest on/off privacy controls, and letting their users create god-awful puce and lime green UI garbage) they allowed Facebook to break their hold on social networking