Google Buzz Is Not “Designed For Meaning”

Umair suggests that Google’s design for Buzz exhibits bad design: it is not ‘designed for meaning’:

- Umair Haque, Google Buzz and the Five Principles of Designing For Meaning

Once upon a time, Google laid down the law: we’ll never bundle stuff the way Microsoft does — because that’s evil. But Buzz is bundled with Gmail so tightly, it’s the first thing you see beneath your inbox. Buzz makes it more costly to improve Gmail, and vice versa. Better that each was an independent service.

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Tomorrow’s products and services have to be designed not just for mere consumption, but “designed for meaning”: they must yield lasting, shared, meaningful economic gains — or else. Or else we continue our voyage into a no-future future. That’s the big picture that tomorrow’s radical innovators must redraw. I think Google Buzz is actually really, really cool — it’s just not yet a meaningful service. It lives in the shadow of yesterday’s big picture, instead of redrawing it. Redrawing the big picture of prosperity, by going from Great to Good: that’s today’s fundamental challenge.

Another joining the chorus that Buzz has to be recast at a different scale to become important, and specifically, it needs to be broken out of Gmail.