Google’s Irene Au on design challenges
In a Q&A, user experience director Irene Au explains to Business Week how Google can manage design and consistency in its traditionally bottoms-up culture
“As Google products proliferate beyond search, design decisions become more critical if the company wants a coherent brand image. That’s where Irene Au, the company’s director of user experience, comes in. An eight-year veteran of Yahoo!, Au has worked at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., since 2006, overseeing some 200 designers, anthropologists, ethnographers, researchers, and interaction specialists responsible for the look and functionality of Google’s products.
Au recently spoke to BusinessWeek’s Helen Walters about the challenges of managing Google’s design process and consistency issues raised by Google’s own defiantly bottoms-up culture.”
