A small team gathered to discuss these questions and define the Googley Design Principles:
1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.
recently, i’ve been looking at design and creativity from a different lens (especially for web design). the 3 main things that i’ve been trying to drive are:
1. simplicity (means sacrifice)
2. speed (optimize around design elements that don’t change)
3. data driven decisions (is not a substitute for innovation, but is absolutely critical)
but the most important thing i always want to design around is: EMPATHY. empathize with the people using the product. alot of corporate jargon like “end user”, “consumer”, “call to action”, “ROI”, etc really take away from what design is all about… it’s about improving the life and experience of a person. if we can make our experience improve the quality of life and add a curious joy to the few seconds we interact with someone, i think we have a success.
yes, we need to crack the code and make bundles of money… but we have to make the people first. if you put them second, they’ll know.
as bill bernbach (the advertising forefather and one of my inspirations) said, “never underestimate how smart people are.”