I don't want to hijack by focusing on your second footnote, but:
> I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.
Can any designers explain why it's unreasonable to provide data for a decision when you operate at Google's scale, and presumably can come up with that data very quickly?
It's one thing to override design based on data, and that's something that can be argued on its merits. But when the design answer is "one of these three," why not run the experiment and pick the best?
> I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that.
Can any designers explain why it's unreasonable to provide data for a decision when you operate at Google's scale, and presumably can come up with that data very quickly?
It's one thing to override design based on data, and that's something that can be argued on its merits. But when the design answer is "one of these three," why not run the experiment and pick the best?