After a blunt post just last week, frustrated Ex-Google designer Doug Bowman has left Google for Twitter. In a meeting with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Business Week’s Associate Editor Spencer Ante was told the company had officially hired the ex-Google lead designer to join Twitter full time.
Bowman caused a stir after he ranted liberally about the frustrations behind working for Google. Being a creative, Google’s reliance on data fell short of his expectations.
In his post he says:
“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, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.”
Bowman replaces Stone as the Twitter’s Creative Director. Whilst I hope the service maintains it’s simplicity, let’s hope the veteran designer is given the freedom to test a few enhancements - let’s face it, it’s about time Twitter is given an uplift.
Good luck, and good call! I only hope they hire new engineers as well to fix the hopeless image upload problems :)
mmm… the last twitter redesign was quite good – Is this not a day early April fools joke? Sure he has left Google but what’s the big design deal for twitter. I’d have hoped he’d fix up the uglyness of friendfeed :D
mmm… the last twitter redesign was quite good – Is this not a day early April fools joke? Sure he has left Google but what’s the big design deal for twitter. I’d have hoped he’d fix up the uglyness of friendfeed :D
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
That more a technical problem than a design issue, right?