I am opted into their user studies group. I haven't seen a new invitation in a couple of years now. And the way they handle user studies, opt in via Google Form, they still see a particularly biased community: Hardcore Google users, most likely technical in nature.
If Google went to a senior citizens' home, and watched how some of their less technically inclined users used their products, I'm confident Google would fire everyone with the word "designer" in their title and start over.
But this is largely immaterial to this particular joke. The joke was funny. The choice to implement it for real was not.
So, what you're saying is, from your limited view point, you have a conclusive overview of all of UX? Also, Google designers are intensely incompetent and deserve to be fired?
I dunno, you sure are quick to judge a very difficult subject area.
Google designers ARE intensely incompetent. And design's a pretty simple subject area. The problem is, designers need to justify their continued jobs, after a product is launched. So there's a constant set of increasingly more complicated overengineering projects to "redesign" things to stay "trendy". Generally sacrificing usability in exchange.
Ever since Google hired their "VP of Design", their products have heavily shifted away from being functionally useful.
There's a reason Gmail is the last bastion of competent design at Google. There's a reason that even Googlers said they wouldn't use Gmail if Inbox became the "new Gmail", and this is probably where this conversation rounds back to this prank:
Because if that is "functionally useful" then I will happily continue using trendy. The thing with design is that it is not a simple subject area. You are constantly balancing several (somtimes mutually exclusive) objectives.
At the end of the day, blame end-users. They use the products that are "trendy" and look nice. They dictate good design.
My not really updated portfolio page isn't really intended to be 'useful', lol. Though the navigation is much clearer than many websites today, and the pages load on pretty much any device nearly instantaneously.
You highlight my exact point: To you design is purely functional. To the overwhelming majority of people it isn't. That's the reason Google's Design initiative (Material Design) was started in the first place. Good design practices across all Google Services.
You want bad design, try most of the AWS tools. You can have both functionality and appeal. Pretending they are mutually exclusive is silly.
If Google went to a senior citizens' home, and watched how some of their less technically inclined users used their products, I'm confident Google would fire everyone with the word "designer" in their title and start over.
But this is largely immaterial to this particular joke. The joke was funny. The choice to implement it for real was not.