If Jonathan Ives submitted a design for Google Instant, and his design was better than the "obvious solutions", then it would test well. If a better solution tests badly then, by definition of the word "test", you're not testing it properly. Whether or not the test candidates are "obvious solutions" or created by designers has no impact on whether testing is good or bad. Maybe someone can test whether testing tests better than not testing :)
I'm not saying that designers' intuition can be replaced by testing, I'm only saying that testing can not be replaced by designers intuition as the article implies. A designers' intuition, after all, hopefully comes from the experiences of informally testing out designs in real life.
What really annoyed me about the article was the attitude of "We designers come up with brilliantly ground-breaking yet subtle designs, and if testing says there is a problem, then ignore the tests because we are always right. Isn't that right, boys? YEAH! WE RULE!"
"If Jonathan Ives submitted a design for Google Instant, and his design was better than the "obvious solutions", then it would test well. If a better solution tests badly then, by definition of the word "test", you're not testing it properly."
Innovative products rarely test well, overall. If you test it to a group of visionaries who are comfortable thinking outside the box, then yes, it'll test well. But if you test with a group of regular / casual computer users, non-techies and the like, many innovative or important design decisions may not test well.
Take, for example, USB. The technology came out and was sparsely added to new computers, but always in addition to COM and Parallel ports. Apple saw that USB was the future, so they made the iMac which—gasp!—only contained USB ports. No COM, no Parallel, just USB.
You think that decision would have tested well with users?
"I can't use my existing printer?! That's stupid!"
Except… it was this very decision that made USB successful in the market, because it forced all peripheral manufacturers to make USB devices if they wanted to sell to Mac customers (a large enough market to be worthwhile for virtually all of them).
And so, USB succeeded in the market. But it wouldn't have if Apple had used Google's test-driven approach, because that decision would have tested quite poorly.
Hang on, Apple also did the same with firewire and it died even though it was a technically better solution. Its error was it was expensive to manufacture a firewire device as it needed a hardware layer on the device side. USB didn't, so USB devices were cheaper and they won the war once USB 2 came out and the speed difference was negligible.
So not all Apple decisions work, like PC's over Macs. Apple lost that war as the open standard won.
And then sometimes it is the better design, like iPods and iPhones over their competition that wins.
My point is I'm not sure your argument holds in general, sometimes its this, sometimes its the other thing that works.
I still feel you're mischaracterizing the point. Perhaps it might be seen as this, using testing you start from a position, create a few obvious alternative, test, iterate, resulting in a > b3 > c2 > d6 > e3 > f4. You then declare f4 is amazing because it beat the gradual iterations that got it there.
But a designer's there to sit down and go, right, what about z. And j. And 77883. And still not test them, but decide on one. And then refine it and then you test it some and refine it some more.
And even better is that the designed product will have a flow, a coherence because it's not about a bunch of tiny improvements and changes, it's about a vision.
It wouldn't necessarily test well against a to begin with. People don't like change, so say here's Ives' search and here's the instant that's almost exactly like the existing google and you've got a lot of initial resistance that will skew the testing.
But people who love new stuff and then evangelize, mavens I think Gladwell called them, will result in more people trying it and it will end up successful. The people who helped push Twitter and Facebook and Google itself. Not that I buy all of tipping point, but there are some good points in it.
Incremental design is not about design at all, it's more about fear. Designing can include A/B testing, but not at the start. It just seems the wrong way to go to me.
As for the tone, I didn't notice it, but then again I realized after reading it I already agreed with it, he was vocalizing something that has been dawning on me.
I'm not saying that designers' intuition can be replaced by testing, I'm only saying that testing can not be replaced by designers intuition as the article implies. A designers' intuition, after all, hopefully comes from the experiences of informally testing out designs in real life.
What really annoyed me about the article was the attitude of "We designers come up with brilliantly ground-breaking yet subtle designs, and if testing says there is a problem, then ignore the tests because we are always right. Isn't that right, boys? YEAH! WE RULE!"