What makes a design "Googley"?

Posted by Sue Factor, Writer, User Experience Group

Late in 2007, our User Experience (UX) group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing—set out to articulate the principles that ought to guide Google designs worldwide. What are the fundamentals that all Google designers and researchers accept? Which approaches to design are particularly "Googley"? How can we encourage teams throughout Google to dream big and make smart design decisions?

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.

These UX principles flow naturally from the Ten things Google has found to be true and the UX group's stated mission: to design products that satisfy and delight our users. We described the principles as "Our Aspirations" for two reasons:

• We have a lot of work to do when it comes to implementation.
• Every real-world product will have to strike a balance between all ten principles.

Still, we don't want to waffle too much. These principles represent the User Experience group's declaration of beliefs. With "Satisfy and Delight" stitched on our leotards, we're determined to get up on the tightrope and start juggling principles. Please applaud or boo, as appropriate, so that we can make the next act even better.

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Windows XP Version of OLPC

The founder and chairman of OLPC has admitted that only using open-source software has not been good for the project. Just a day after the resignation of group president Walter Bender, Nicholas Negroponte admitted that the choice of the Sugar operating system has hit the XO laptop project in two places: usability; and popularity.

With Windows XP already available for the XO on an SD card, the news that future OLPC machines may have Windows XP, with Sugar running on top, may dismay the non-profit brigade. But with no support for the latest versions of Flash—a staple on many educational websites—the XO may not be catering to its supposed target audience.

If Windows XP does become the XO's operating system, then a substantial reworking of the laptop will be in order. Currently just 1GB of internal memory is available, and XP needs around 1.1GB. Sticking a larger SSD inside the machine will just pump up the price, making the XO even further out of reach of those who need it.

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Mahalo Adds Microformats

Mahalo, the people powered search engine, just rolled out microformats for certain search results. Sean Percival told me about the rollout earlier this evening, and I had to admit a shocking amount of ignorance when I asked what he meant exactly by ‘microformats.’  I’ve never had the opportunity to actually use this technology and couldn’t imagine what application the term would have in the context of search, but I did a quick run of research on the topic and brought myself up to speed.

After a bit of looking, you’ll find, like me, that you’re familiar with several things that fall under the umbrella of Microformats, even if you’ve never heard the term used before. For example, there’s hCard, the microformat for contact information, and rel-nofollow, the microformat attribute designed to discourage splogging and comment spam.

Other than those two subsets of microformats, I really haven’t had the opportunity to take advantage of microformats much (and frankly, since switching to GMail over a client side solution, I haven’t done much with hCard other than to synchronize a couple mobile devices).

That’s not uncommon, and that’s probably why Sean gave a good example on how to take advantage of the feature from within the browser:

Getting Started:
1. Firefox users can download the Operator plugin to get instant Microformats support.
2. Visit the Paris Hotels page on Mahalo
3. Notice the Operator plugin in the top left of the below image. Every hotel featured on the page is now available for quick and easy export. You also get a few other nice features like quick access to mapping websites. Get the data you need and drop it into your address book and phone with a few clicks.

It’s a useful feature, and an interesting upgrade I haven’t seen on any other search engines so far. It might just even inspire me to break out my old WinCE device and test it out.

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Facebook Finishes Chat Integration, Makes This Blogger’s Life Miserable

I made the mistake of leaving Facebook open on my desktop as I stepped out for the evening on Tuesday night. I returned to a complete mess of Facebook Chat messages. Some users got access to Facebook Chat as early as April 6.

Others trickled in over the following two weeks. But in the last hour a mass of users (all the rest, as far as I can tell) is reporting seeing it for the first time.

I have a policy of accepting all friend requests on Facebook (although I am quickly reaching the 5,000 friend limit). Apparently a significant number of my friends decided to test Facebook Chat as it went live with yours truly. I’m trying to respond to the messages, but a response seems to lead inevitably to a conversation, and having 25 of those at once is a little challenging. Meanwhile, eight more pop in.

Settle down, Facebook friends, and don’t be offended if I’m not jumping right in to the conversation. Except the guy who said his dad is an investment banker for Yahoo - please keep sending those messages.

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SightSpeed Launches Video Mail on MySpace

Having already announced its plans to create a no-download version of its video chat tool as an integrated communication tool for users across Open Social participating networks, SightSpeed has finally been able to release its MySpace version of SightSpeed Light. Beyond just chatting via video, there are also public video posting options as well as video mail.

SightSpeed Light supports both PCs and Macs, and works across most browsers, including IE, Firefox and Safari. As I already mentioned, SightSpeed Light does not require a download. That’s pretty key for use within an existing social network, especially given the demographics of the user base found on sites like MySpace.

I can only imagine the type of enhanced comments we’ll be seeing on MySpace profiles as a result of video posting and mail options. What’s good about this particular implementation of video communications is that it can be one-sided, and doesn’t have to operate in real time.

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IPhone In India In September?

Business Standard reports, quoting "Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) retail sources" that the iPhone will be launched in India the first week of September with Vodafone (NYSE: VOD). We have not been able to confirm this independently, so it's anybodys guess. However, readers might remember this story from BS about the Google Mobile Phone being launched in India. Ironically, that launch was supposed to happen in September as well (last year), and we know that never happened.

As per the story, the 8GB version of the iPhone will be launched in September 2008, at a rather high price of Rs. 27000-28000 ($680-700), much above its $399 (Rs. 15960) price tag. Compared to that, unlocked iPhones are fairly common now in Indian metros, with the 8GB costing between Rs. 18,000-21,000 ($450-$525); Cerius bought a 16 GB version recently for Rs. 21,000 ($525). The story also claims that an exclusive deal is being worked out with Vodafone for India - though I don't see how Voda will be able to lock-in customers. If the launch does happen, lets just hope that the existing unlocked iPhones in India don't get bricked just to make that exclusive deal count. I know a few Vodafone subscribers who wouldn't be too happy. More as we have it.

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The Forbes billions

And so are we in a recession?  You wouldn’t know it from the latest Forbes billionaires list which now boasts of 1,125 members, breaking four digits for the first time.

Bill Gates is down at number three, giving up the number one spot to his good buddy Warren Buffett , at $62 billion - with a 6x surge in net worth since last year, thanks to flying shares of Berkshire Hathaway. The number two spot now belongs to Carlos Slim Helu of the Mexican wireless telephone company, America Movil.

Interestingly, the Ambani family of the Indian company the Reliance group might have come in first on the richest list with a combined worth of $85 billion, except that the warring Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil split up their fortune and showed up in fifth and sixth positions respectively, with individual net worths of $43B and $42B.

And how about the youngest self made billionaire? Yes, you guessed it - it is 23 year old Facebook genius Mark Zukerberg who is worth $1.5 billion. Of course this number is based upon Microsoft paying $240 million last October for  a 1.6% stake in the company, which pegged Facebook’s value at a whopping 15 billion. Not many believe this huge valuation, and the story going around is that Microsoft paid up not necessarily because it believes that the company is worth as much, but more to keep out those who might be thinking about taking over all of Facebook!

While on unnamed suitors for Facebook, Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin made the top of the Forbes thirtysomething list with $19 billion apiece..

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Insight into YouTube videos

Posted by Tracy Chan, Product Manager, YouTube

I remember the first time a video I posted to YouTube cracked 100 views. I wasn't so much surprised as curious: Who were these people? How did they find this video? Where did they come from?

Today we're taking our first step towards answering these questions with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. For now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.

Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing -- both on and off the site -- and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups.

There's more about this on the YouTube blog.
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