[TeMPOraL]

And yet Android UI is mediocre and isn't a qualitative improvement on the previous status quo.

I think the point of GP is that listening to the 'someone who "gets it"' can speed up the development process. Indecision has costs, and you can run studies in parallel anyway. Sometimes costs of having to backtrack every now and then are outweighted by the benefits of moving fast.

RE arguments against testing in code - testing is cool and all, but at some point you have to ask yourself whether you want to ship a product or a test suite.

BTW. the whole anecdote reminds me of a story from Microsoft about problems coming from a group of PhDs:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html

[DonHopkins]

"Getting it" can also mean having already tried something before, or having tried enough things that are similar that you can triangulate on what something would actually be like.

I'm all for testing and empirical studies, but it can be taken too far. Zynga focuses so much on measuring and testing, that it sucks all the fun and personality out of their game designs.