Google?s No. 1 Asset Is Its Ability To Empathize With Its Users Through Design And Product Development

As your Internet use has evolved, Google has evolved with you. And for you. Its ability to make the right decisions about what to work on and at what time is a testament to the leadership at the company. The latest wave in its evolution comes from Sergey Brin and its new CEO Larry Page, the people who started Google back in 1998. If you’ve thought that all of Google’s products looked cobbled together, or are different from one another, it’s because they were. It was a public view into how siloed the company was as far as its product-management and design teams were concerned. Everyone worked in a vacuum, so when a new version of Google Calendar came out, it looked nothing like the user experience of, say, Gmail. While this didn’t seem like a problem for a long time, as more people used more Google products, it became clear that Google was a huge company that wasn’t in touch with its users — or each other. What I’ve also learned while covering Google over the past two years is that it has an uncanny ability to put itself in the shoes of its users, almost to the point where they can leverage data and feedback to build, in essence, the perfect product. When I say perfect, I don’t mean flawless. I mean that when you use Google products,?you’re in essence a Googler, too. Google takes the concept of “dogfooding” to unparalleled levels, putting current and new products through such rigorous real-world testing cycles, that it’s impressive that things ever see the light of day. When you scrutinize something so much, it’s easy to scrap it because you’ve fallen out of love with it after seeing it all the time. Not Google, because it has a system in place to get feedback from both employees and outside users. The system makes the go-to-market plan a near bullet-proof approach to launching products, because there’s a good sense that it’s something that people will want to use, and use a lot. But lately, people have noticed a bit of a change in how Google designs its products. Some of the “look and feel” has been infused in everything that Google touches these days. Whether it’s Google+ functionality, Search, Maps or YouTube, you’re starting to see a little bit of “style” come out of Mountain View. That’s not an accident, because it

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/yAB5OkCm9Vw/

university of texas UT Austin Lizzie Velasquez NFL Network att libya engadget