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AMA: I'm Matias Duarte, a VP of Design at Google!

almost 9 years ago from Matias Duarte, VP Design, Google

  • Aaron SagrayAaron Sagray, almost 9 years ago

    Hi Matias,

    How did you go about creating a design culture at Google – a company that was formerly primarily engineering-driven?

    11 points
    • Matias DuarteMatias Duarte, almost 9 years ago

      For starters we were really lucky in having two key ingredients: A bunch of awesome designers. Like probably many of you, before joining Google I had assumed that the company simply hadn’t hired good talent. That was absolutely not the case, Google had a strong cadre of exceptional and talented designer leaders - folks like Jon Wiley, Jason Cornwell, Hector Ouilhet, Margaret Lee. Google just didn’t know how to empower them. Leadership that was visionary enough to know that it wanted to improve in design, but humble enough to know that the company needed to do something different. Consistently since becoming CEO Larry set out the challenge to Google to find new ways to work, because it needed to become better at design.

      With those two ingredients, the job for all of us together was to find allies who were excited and open minded about working in a different way, and then simply do great work with them. At first our wins were small, but over time they gathered momentum.

      12 points
      • Sean LesterSean Lester, almost 9 years ago

        "Like probably many of you, before joining Google I had assumed that the company simply hadn’t hired good talent. That was absolutely not the case, "

        This is a mistake I'll stop making. "Bad design! All they need is a good designer!" What I've found in these instances is companies that don't value good design, and aren't structured for the possibility of good design.

        6 points