A conversation about design
By Nadya
Direkova, Staff Designer and Design Evangelist
When Google launched, it was a crisp white page with a simple search box. You might not have
thought there was much in the way of design, but its appearance underscored two of our most
important principles: simplicity and usefulness. Those principles haven't changed much in
fifteen years, but our understanding of what makes great design has—throughout the industry.
Today, there’s design in everything we touch. And as a developer, even if you don't happen to
be a formal designer, you've undoubtedly faced design challenges as you've built your own
products. Design has always been a rich conversation, and it's one that we’d like to have with
you as you work on your projects and as we work on ours.
At Google I/O this year, we will have sessions and workshops focused on design, geared for
designers and developers who are interested in design. We're looking forward to exchanging
ideas with you both at the conference and online afterwards. Remember, registration is open
until Friday and details on Google I/O Extended events are coming soon.
To start off the conversation, today we're kicking off a series called "Google Design Minutes"
with three videos where we share some key learnings with you-from Glass, Maps and Search. We
hope they'll help you navigate some of your own design challenges.
Search — The beauty of speed: Jon
Wiley discusses the importance of designing for simplicity and speed.
Maps - Putting the user front and
center: Sian Townsend looks at the importance of understanding how a user approaches
your product, while Jonah Jones talks about adapting the approach to make the map the user
interface.
Glass - Make it simple: Isabelle
Olsson talks about the focus her team put into making Glass simple, and how this choice guided
all the decisions they made.
We'll be continuing this conversation around design over the coming months—including more of
these videos, as well as design-focused content on our
developer site. And we'd love to hear from
you! We've set up a
Google
Moderator page to hear your questions for our designers and researchers; in the
coming weeks, we'll share our thoughts on the top questions. We look forward to seeing you at
Google I/O, and hearing your own thoughts on what makes great design today!
Nadya Direkova is a Staff Designer at Google [X]. She runs design sprints across
Google allowing interdisciplinary teams to design with skill and speed.
Posted by Louis Gray,
Googler
