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Comment by cavalcade | Hacker News Reader

Wow this is a bit naive and egotistical. I HATE the new google reader but to think that it takes ONE man outside of Google to fix their product is downright silly. The redesign was made in the context of Google's near-future plans to ignore that is ridiculous. A more constructive move is to provide a short checklist of things to re-consider or build/recommend a competing product. Its not like Google cant improve it more soon to find a good middle-ground.

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> to think that it takes ONE man outside of Google to fix their product is downright silly.

He spent 5 years at Google, including being the lead designer on the Google Reader project. It's not like he's some schmuck out of nowhere, and I don't think he asked to be a one-man team.

I think the point is that (apparently) no one at google is paying attention to how the new features integrate with the actual experience of using the Reader. He can fix that, at least.

Figure it this way: instead of Kevin Fox being pretentious, he's making a public statement. Could he have sent Google a professional email? Yes (and I suspect he did, actually). More importantly, he is making a public statement as an ex-Googler, and thus as an authority on Google engineering, that sympathizes with the negative feedback from the user base. If the users are not sending a powerful enough message, here is an ex-employee (who left on good terms, as far as we know, and was very good at what he did) giving a personal declaration to the company. That it is public shows his confidence, and that he feels (correctly) that many are dissatisfied with the recent change. And from the perspective of a large company like Google, this is not just some uninformed group griping for no reason, this is a real issue. Kevin Fox isn't attempting to be arrogant, he's giving legitimacy to an issue that may otherwise be overlooked in a classic case of a large company missing the demands of its user base.

Thank you for this comment. I really appreciate it.

Do not underestimate the importance of just one single person. Examples abound.

How many people should it take to design a UX for an application with a single screen?

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