Google+ Designer Profiled

March 21, 2012

We see that Google is ramping its PR engine. Mercury News declares, “Apple Pioneer Brings Emotion to Google+.” The write up profiles Andy Hertzfeld, a longtime Apple veteran who now works at Google. Hertzfeld designed the prototype for Google+’s Circles feature, which many consider to be the social site’s strongpoint. He also gets a lot of the credit for Google’s visual changes over the past year.

Writer Mike Swift quotes Hertzfeld regarding his approach:

“We try to operate at the intersection of design and engineering. One of the reasons why things aren’t as good as they could be sometimes is that the engineers and the designers don’t work closely together enough.”

Hertzfeld was around for Apple’s break-through graphical user interface, which introduced the very concept of clicking on icons to launch software. He has written a book about that time, “Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made”. Hertzfeld commented:

“ . . . The real breakthrough of the Macintosh was that we cared about UI. I learned in a formative experience that caring about UI matters, and if you do care about UI, you can make the world a better place.’’

As a user, I can say I do appreciate that attitude.

Stephen E. Arnold, March 21, 2012

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.