My buddy Doug Bowman is headed to Google. Doug — who I believe to be the best designer in our industry — was snatched up by Google to lead all their design efforts across all their products. This position wasn’t around before this announcement, it was a special position created just for Doug. Wow.
I truly think that both large companies and startups need to put “usable and attractive design” higher up on their priorities list, because right now design seems to be below Aeron chairs and cappuccino machines. I hate to quantify this opinion, but I’d venture to say that for every 10 companies reviewed on Mashable.com, Read/Write Web, Solution Watch, and others, only 1 or 2 have both an attractive and usable design. I can count on my fingers the number of startups who actually put thought and money into their user interface… hmm… here we go: Joyent, Cork’d, Rollyo, JotSpot, and Wayfaring off the top of my head.
So my question to all the entrepreneurs and businesspeople out there, do you have a “Doug Bowman” on your team, or did your cappuccino machine eat up your design budget?