Post Mortem: Nexus S microsite
Originally published on March 19th, 2011
I’d decided to wait awhile to write about my experience working on the Google Nexus S site.
Designing is personal. Its a craft that can take an emotional toll. The long hours, the struggle to do something ‘better’ —it’s a byproduct of ego. One of the worst things that a designer can be labeled is being ‘unoriginal’. Criticism can be a bitch when it comes to design.
The best way to take negative criticism is to let it settle. Gather it up but don’t respond to it right away. Let all the fear, anger, and insecurity pale in time, and return to it afterwards. You grow as a designer when you’re able to scale back the blinding emotions and see things as objectively as you can.
I tend to place more weight on the negative comments than the positive. What can you really learn from the ‘pat on the backs’? The design looks great. People are happy. It’s getting a lot of page views. When it comes to either ‘here or there’ its really the ‘here’ that matters —I appreciate the support but I’m past the ‘there’.
After the Nexus S site went live there were a lot of positives, however what I found myself searching for were the negative criticisms. And I found them.
What I took most personally were the comparisons to Apple’s site. The comments were hard to swallow as they essentially stripped me of my role as a ‘designer’. It was saying I was unoriginal, and that I took ‘the easy way’. What good is a designer if he’s relegated to the role of forger?
Forget about the ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘aesthetically pleasing’ — a designer’s respect comes from their originality. Anyone can be a good designer by following the rules. The great ones are those who do something different whether its by chance or a genuinely unique way of thinking.
Saying that the Nexus S site looks like Apple put me in the ‘good’ category, and as any self-respecting designer knows, being ‘good’ sucks.
So now, after a couple of months (okay a month and a half), I will attempt to find my self-respect back by what I hope to be distilled objectivity.
Before I begin, I feel I need to be forthcoming and say that I spent my time at 1 Infinite Loop, and that I wouldn’t be the designer I am today if I hadn’t. It taught me how to be a better designer and I’ll leave it at that.
Self Assessment:
I think the site looks very similar to Apple’s. Does that mean its unoriginal or does it mean that its a straight-forward product a marketing site? I’ve wrestled with this comparison a lot, and my conclusion (after the weeping and gnashing of teeth) is that its both. Its an unoriginal, straight-forward, product marketing site. Its a good site, it’s a professional site, but it could be pushed further.
Being Honest:
Did I intend to copy Apple? I can honestly tell myself that, ‘No, I didn’t’. Speaking to other designers who have worked at Apple, I can tell you that after leaving the company, every project that follows is an attempt to ‘break-free’ from it. That being said, if anything, it was (and will always be) a struggle to not copy Apple.
It was a struggle because going against Apple means going up against ‘good design’. Doing something different than Apple means spending more time and effort into doing something that breaks the rules of conventional design. When it comes to following design principles, Apple is a by-the-book savant.
This is actually a good thing, and if given an ideal amount of time and resources, it would push a designer to break free from good and come up with a great solution. However, unlike Apple, a lot of companies are just starting to appreciate the value of investing in visual design. So in the meantime, I often find myself prioritizing and making the best with what I have. It means squeezing every ounce of creativity I can come up with to fit in a limited amount of time, and making myself a resource for things that power the success of the design.
Asset Control:
When I started the two month project, we didn’t have any product photography and looking at the budget costs, we wouldn’t get the amount nor the quality that we’d need to showcase the Nexus S and its features. It became clear right away that the only way to get the product photography right in the amount of time we had, I needed to have as much control as possible over the creative assets.
I had never done product photography before so most of the time I would normally spend on visual design, became devoted to studying, experimenting with different rigs, and post-production Photoshop. The phone needed to appear desirable and sexy —it needed to sell itself at a glance. It was the most important design element of the site, and I needed to have as much control as possible.
The design of the site is that it focuses on the device. If the device isn’t attractive or desirable to consumers, the site loses its value. Clever words, graphic details, flashy animations and interaction models help to make a site great, but are meaningless without content and purpose.
Be Mature About It:
Criticism should not be taken as an attack but an opportunity to be honest and aware of your design. Evaluating design criticism of whether or not the site looks like Apple’s I am able to understand that I every design choice I made was an appropriate one. It had nothing to do with challenging Apple design, but all to do with design itself.
As designers we should always evaluate our designs and ask ourselves the hard questions. Sometimes we may find that we don’t like the answers, but at least we can be confident in our response to others because it comes from reason and integrity.
Conclusion:
I am proud of the work that the team and I have done on the Nexus S site. Are there similarities to Apple’s site? Yes. Is the plan to make the new Google-y Apple-y? Of course not. Will we continue to design sites around content and the best user experience? Yes.
If anything, the core success of the Nexus S Site lays within what it represents. It shows that Google isn’t afraid of taking chances when it comes to design. We have proven internally that the numbers associated with the success of a product isn’t through compliance to standards, but by focusing on clean and appropriate design.
The Nexus S site is not a standard. It will never be a template for future Google design. It does however, prove that there is value in taking chances —there is value in focusing on quality design.
