Responsive Gallery – July 2012
Catch up on the best of responsive with Kiwibank, dConstruct 2012 and ZURB.
Categories
dconstruct
Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them
Bobbie Johnson at GigaOm:
“What is Google? What do they sell?” asks Don Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things and a demigod of the design world.
It’s a question that gets asked a lot, especially as the company’s power and products continue to expand. In a talk on Friday at the dConstruct conference in Brighton, England, he pointed out that – despite the complexity of the organisation – the answer usually looks pretty simple.
“They have lots of people, lots of servers, they have Android, they have Google Docs, they just bought Motorola. Most people would say ‘we’re the users, and the product is advertising’,” he said. “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”
Then he went further. “They say their goal is to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place, but really their goal is to gather all of the people in the world and sell them.”
Whilst some bemoaned the fact that his opening keynote shared little new, I think it’s important to be reminded how the industry works, and how it’s changing – sometimes for the worse. The world needs more people like Don Norman.
A greener conference badge for dConstruct
dConstruct has long combined its conference programme with the name badge, a simple yet cost-effective design. This year we hope to go one better.
Upcoming attractions
As Summer hurtles towards it’s conclusion (and let’s assume for a second that it actually started) so the anticipation for two very special geeky events can begin.