How many people do you know who are impeccable dressers?

How many people do you know with amazing taste in art?

How many who are witty, and wise?

How many who are well read, and smart?

If you know lots of people who are like this, congratulations. I know a few, but the vast majority I can’t exactly categorize this way. Don’t call me smug, or arrogant, I find fantastic admirable things about nearly everyone I meet if given the time.

But when I read things like this article about how google makes meetings more effective by focusing on data and not politics, I have to think about the source of the data…

Reading about statistics on usability, or marketing online can be floor dropping. Little things like arrow on the left, vs on the right side of a link can make surprisingly big differences in the way users interact with a site.

I’m not going to tell you A/B testing isn’t a good thing. I’m not going to tell you user metrics aren’t a good thing. They’re both great tools to help design a site that works, and sells.

But they can’t be your only tool. If you let the crowd decide everything, you’ll lose yourself. The crowd is dumb, lost, scared, and unimaginative. Worse, they’re random, and tenuous.

Style and taste does not come from usability studies. Inventiveness does not come from a customer survey. No focus group ever created an original solution to a problem. Original smart ideas and products are driven by strong individuals and companies who are interested in pushing ideas forward rather than meeting quotas.

When a truly great  design or idea happens, it will redefine any of the metrics you thought you knew anyway.

This isn’t a slam at Google. They’ve been amazingly successful at pleasing the masses. But for those of us who live in the niche, there’s just no place for this type of thinking.