As a product manager, I am often challenged with the notion of what is a good user experience. Of-course when you think about user experience - or specifically sleek user experiences - a few brands or products come to mind. Google, Apple - the usual suspects. So to build-out a sleek and useful user interface I started searching around the Google Corporate website and their blogs to see if they use some guidelines or have some methodology in place. According to their corporate page on the Google User Experience:

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is “Googley” – and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

 They outline 10 principles:

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts. 
3. Simplicity is powerful.  
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

Does your corporate site or product page follow any of the above guidelines? Is your page fast and simple? Does your site / product require a manual to use? Is your site / product trustworthy and does it have a human touch? This is very timely for me as I will be applying these principles in my product development.