Google Analytics Secrets | The Real Story Behind the Interface

Posted • May 24, 2008 • Comments Off

At Webvisions 2008 Keynote Speaker Jeffrey Veen, ex-design manager and project lead for Google’s Measure Map, the company’s well-received web analytics tool, let us in on the real story behind the Google Analytics interface.

One night Jeffery was watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when the airplane scene came up, the one with the airplane overlaid on a map. As the plane flew from dot to dot (representing the cities) and left a trailing line (representing the path of the airplane) Jeffery exclaimed, “That’s it!” The next morning he took the video in to the office and presented it to the programmers and asked them to watch it. “This is the interface we need!” he said. ” You need to watch it.” The rest is history.

Jeffrey Veen is one of the founding partners of Adaptive Path and in addition to lecturing and writing on Web design and development, Jeffrey has been active with the World Wide Web Consortium‘s CSS Editorial Review Board. He is also a columnist for Webmonkey, the author of the acclaimed books The Art and Science of Web Design and Hotwired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites.

Webvisions 2008 was a great event!

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