More thoughts on Google Optimize, behavior recordings, hover states

On the one hand, Google Optimize shutting down is a big deal. It’s absolutely going to change the pricing structures of the experimentation industry, mostly for the better. In the meantime, everyone should be concerned about one company consolidating power for six years, and then walking out of the room when it suits them.

On the other, I kind of… don’t care? Perhaps I have moved into a state of acceptance. I have been here before. Being an evergreen process, design does not care what tools you use. If Adobe buys your tool, you can use a different tool. If Google shuts your tool down, you can use a different tool. The goal is to practice design in a way that feels nourishing and creates positive business outcomes.

Business does not profit from Google Optimize. It profits from the results that a tool like Google Optimize is able to create. Google Optimize is not the only tool, and it never has been. The goal is not to run experiments, and it never has been. The goal is to use design as a tool for generating profit.

Grieve first, then act.

In this moment, I’d like to invite the following questions of all value-based designers going forward:

• What specific business outcomes am I focused on?
• In what ways am I focused on them?
• What tools nourish my design practice? Why?
• What tools distract from or harm my design practice, and in what specific ways will I be disengaging from them going forward?
• What can I gently say “no” to in order to give more space to the outcomes I seek to generate?

Google’s shutdown of Optimize brings clarity – a harsh clarity, yes, but clarity all the same. With clarity comes a deeper understanding of right relationship to your design practice. And there is only one direction we can face, in this and every moment: forward.

This week, for paid members

• Our fortnightly teardown is for the unpronounceable, curiously punctuated coffee replacement MUD\WTR. Are they more mud, or are they more water?
• Our next in our series of Store Design lessons is on behavior recordings.
• And finally, our design of the week talks about one of the best collection pages we’ve seen a while. Not all design needs to be torn down, am I right?

Want in? Join us now – named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.

Links

• Menus shouldn’t disappear immediately after the customer has hovered away from them – and now Baymard can prove it. Note that hover states can be delayed within a single line of CSS, using the transition-delay property!
• Ageism: “the last acceptable prejudice”. Yep.
• Europe has the best variation in UX quality in banking, and this updated benchmark shows how.