An evening with Googles Marissa Mayer (alan.blog-city.com)
A lucky guy was invited to a lecture by Marissa Mayer, the product manager for Google. Here are some of the interesting things:
- The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
- Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
- One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean…" feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
- The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
- Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.
- Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
- Google has the largest network of translators in the world
- They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.
- They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
- The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
- Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.
- They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.
- Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.
- This wasn’t a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
- Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
- Quote: Integrate Sensibly
— from del.icio.us
比较有趣，顺手翻一下。
1、Google主页之所以只有这么点而东西，主要的原因是它的创始人们不懂HTML，只希望尽可能简单的页面，很长一段时间甚至提交按钮都没有，按回车是唯一的开始搜索的办法。
2、由于主页过于简单，早期的测试用户经常盯着屏幕，半天没有动作，原来他们都以为还有东西没出来，在等待页面加载完。。。于是Google的版权信息被加了上去以解决这个问题。
3、一个巨大的飞跃来自那个自动的拼写检查（“您是不是要找：…”），这个功能几乎立刻使访问量增倍。他们曾经仔细讨论这个信息放在那里合适，虽然大部分用户很快就适应了目前的方案，但是他们发现这个提示放在查找结果的下面最有效。
4、声明狼藉的“I feel lucky（手气不错）”功能几乎没人用，但是当尝试把这个按钮去掉时发现用户大多希望保留它，它变成一个安慰性的按钮。
5、Orkut是Google的另一个试验性产品，也是基于FOF理论的在线社区。
6、Google经常在一些特定的子网上小范围的尝试一些新功能，例如Excite@Home的用户就经常提前看到新功能，但是他们并不会被特殊的告知。
7、Google拥有世界上最大的翻译者网络。
8、Google使用20%/5%规则，也就是说，如果20%的用户使用某个功能，那么这个功能就会包含在服务中，如果5%的用户希望使用某个特定的搜索选项，那么它就会被放进高级选项中。
9、在用户测试用，他们发现在巨大的用户基数上，有很小一部分用户是极具代表性的，他们持续的组织一些测试来观察用户如何使用一页搜索结果。
10、Google这个名字是一个拼写错误，它的创始人们以为这个是Googol的正确拼法。
11、Gmail在变成对外服务之前已经在内部使用了2年。他们发现了大约6种电子邮件用户，而Gmail被设计为能够为所有这6种用户服务。
12、他们会主动的听取反馈，发邮件给Google不是发给黑洞。
13、员工被鼓励使用20%的时间在他们自己的项目上，Google News和Orkut都是这种工作模式的产物。
14、这不是一个技术性的谈话，所以没有提到任何关于基础设施架构的内容，但是他们确实提到他们有种奇妙的技术（居然用了mantra这个词！）来保证在500ms内完成任何页面的显示。
15 & 16、两个引语，不翻了。