Google Search App

Re-building a high-performing team and strategic product vision for one of the biggest products in Google search

The landscape

With over 10 billion downloads, the Google Search App (for Android and iOS) has the largest usage of all Google search products.

It’s a home for various Google wide products and features from Lens to Chrome and partners closely with Pixel and other hardware products to deliver the best Google experience to users.

The team

3 Designers

12 Engineers

3 Product Managers

1 Researchers

1 Content strategist

MY ROLE

Hands-on UX Design lead / manager

  • Defining strategy and vision with PM/ENG leadership

  • Managing UX and scaling teams

  • Leading xfn product teams

  • Leading multi-disciplined UX teams (UXR, UXW, UXD)

  • Coaching, mentorship and career development

A tale of four hats

Different hats for different jobs

In order to help drive a strategic vision forwards, whilst building out a team and way of working, I approached this space with the mindset of 4 hats which gave me different views abilities to help deliver a transformation

The listening hat

To help really delve deep and understand what’s working well as well as where the opportunities and challenges were

The planning hat

To take all the insights and learnings into a plan to improve, optimize and enhance product, people and process

The building hat

To implement the plan in a phased way, learning and pivoting along the way if needed

The learner hat

Understanding what’s worked, what we need to change, new ideas and how we can continuously improve

HAT 1

The listening (and observation) hat

I joined the team as a hand-on design manager/lead  and part of my job was to help bring about change and develop a trusted and safe environment for people to be at their best. 


After numerous  121s, in depth coffee-chats, retros and even a few anonymous surveys across UX, ENG,PM  and Research, here’s what I found…

Isolation and low team morale

The team was isolated and siloed which often lead to low team morale and not feeling empowered to drive forwards

A crowded product

The product was a one-stop-shop for most Google teams and it showed with us shipping or org-structure resulting in less connected experiences

No clarity on decision making

With no clear ownership, lots of opinions and multiple teams, it wasn’t clear how decisions were being made which was leading to confusion

Swapping the listening and observation hat for the planning hat

Planning together

UI setup and ran a cross-functional workshop to consolidate and look at how we can address the people problems, the product problems and the process challenges in a collaborative playback session and develop a hypothesis driven approach to develop solutions

So, what was the plan?

To help combat Isolation and low team morale, we planned to:

  • Do in-person OKR planning

  • Forming cross-team core-working groups with problems to solve rather than specific features to ship

  • Having quarterly x-team sprints and workshops to foster collaboration

To tackle a crowded ‘one-stop-shop’ product, we planned to:

  • Set a vision and strategy for the team and the product itself

  • Initiative a higher bar for features and experiences going in

  • Change our operating model from shipping features into shipping (measureable) journeys and experience

To tackle a lack of clarity on decision making, we planned to:

  • Create a culture of curiosity, learning and iteration using Agile and Lean UX principles to help inform decision

  • Lead decisions with insights and data

  • Usher in more experimentation and ‘Beta’ releases before scaling or deciding to move forwards

  • Drive a cadence of learning that helps us fail fast

With the plan at hand, how did we go about implementing it?

Time for the building hat

Addressing siloed teams

COLLABORATIVE PLANNING

Ran OKR x-team planning with the US (either in person or remote) to drive alignment as a team

X-TEAM DESIGN SPRINTS

Setup quarterly x-team design sprints to foster collaboration between Lens, search, Chrome and Assistant teams

RAISING VISIBILITY FOR THE TEAM

Provided bi-weekly updates to the wider org on wins, progress, blockers and any support that was needed

Addressing low morale

OPENING UP FEEDBACK

Introduced & ran quarterly, yearly and bi-weekly team surveys and retrospectives (ENG/PM/UX) to address any issues

CREATING SPACE FOR INNOVATION

Introduced Search-wide ‘innovation’ sprints every month to encourage teams to prototype and pitch new ideas as a cross-functional squad (dragons-den style)

CONSISTENT LISTENING & SUPPORT

Setup more structured weekly and monthly coaching and 121 sessions for folks who needed more attention and support

But what about the plans for product and process?

Tackling the on-stop-shop crowded product

CREATING A SENSE OF PURPOSE & TEAM CHARTER

Worked alongside my ENG and Product Directors to establish and define our own product positioning, scope and mantra for the ‘Content Player’ team.

Actively reached out of to other teams across the org to define collaborative OKRs as well as set our own to ensure that user experiences were homogeneous and less ‘plug and play’

SETTING A VISION AND SCOPE

Now we have a charter, what about the scope for the teams? To set up an outcome and objective, I led a cross-functional leadership session to set a strategy focus the team on user problems to help empower and align teams on what we are driving to achieve:

Digital literacy

When I'm not so confident about using technology, I want to be able to find what I need and feel reassured that I'm not ruining anything. so that I can get the most out of my time on the web.

Resumption

When I'm halfway through deciding on a restaurant but get interrupted, I want to easily jump back to the options I was looking at so I can pick one and make reservations

Keep context

When I'm looking at a website, I want to understand a particular part of it without leaving. so I don't break my journey.

Consume & Search

When I'm curious about something, I want to find some things on my own and have some things shown to me, and I want those to happen seamlessly, so that I can keep moving in any direction I choose

Right place, right time

When I'm embarking on a complicated project. I want to have help for each stage I'm in -research, deciding, and completing - but not too soon or too late, so that I can finish what I'm working on without being overwhelmed or annoyed

Addressing decision paralysis and ownership

BUILD, MEASURE LEARN (AND ITERATE)

To ensure we are making more informed decisions on next steps, I established an insights driven  ‘build, measure, learn style process for the team as part of the product design life cycle

How did that work in practice?

PLAN

Generating Hypothesis and ideas

Working collaborative and quickly, looking at business outcomes (OKRs) as well as user outcomes and what ideas we had that we wanted to experiment with and how quickly we could test out hypotheses

BUILD

Developing quick and dirty prototypes through to real data prototypes depending on learning need

Once we had hypothesis, quickly developing experiments to learn more and evaluate our hypothesis based on combinations of qual and quant data (sometimes it was a UX prototype and sometimes it was a live data prototype), to measure the impact, figure out what we learned and deciding to pivot, progress or park ideas

MEASURE

Testing together as a team

We had our questions and stimulus (prototypes), now it was time to conduct field work. I led the team to establish the right method for the right hypothesis, working alongside my researchers and other cross-functional teams to recruit the right participants and develop discussion guides and the right questions. We did this as a team to help drive joint learning and common understanding

Concept testing

Develop high level concepts and prototypes to help quickly gather feedback on multiple concepts and iterate quickly

Diary studies

Combining concepts and developing live prototypes to test with users over a period of time in real-life scenarios

Usability testing

Using methods like RITE to refine designs and experiences to optimize ease of use

LEARN

Evaluating what we learnt and what we discovered

I led a cross-functional workshop to evaluate what we learnt from each cycle of testing to decide based on what we learnt what we wanted to park, pivot or progress. Sometimes these were whole features and sometimes it were bits and pieces of the experience. The goal of these sessions was tho use the insights from testing to inform the next iterations of design. Building our confidence level as we go

LAUNCH, LEARN AND SCALE

Once we had the data and insights, we made the call based on metrics and insights to scale and launch a feature or product

Leveraging and adapting the material design system, working closely with ENG and product on GTM plans as well as ensuring we have learning models (listeners, surveys and user interviews) in place to ensure learning was continuous after launch

Adapting and enhancing the material design system with new patterns and components

Working closely with ENG team in Dual track agile sprints with discovery and delivery

Impact & outcomes

Launch of Google app saves and collections

Launch across iOS, web and Android, enabling users to save pages, images and videos (and more) across the web, creating their own curated collections. Heavy active user-base (still live today). Contributed to increased engagement with 7-day active users with strong engagement metrics

Launch of smart Google app smart screenshots

Enabling users to lens search, extract text, send deeplinks and more - all from a screenshot. Launched in partnership with Android, Chrome, Lens and Pixel. This was later adopted by Pixel as part of the OS setting. We saw Increased re-engagement metrics via deep links. This feature paved the way for action-orientated screenshots

Developed and pitched new innovative ideas to challenge the art of the possible

As part of our monthly innovation sprints, we were able to explore big and bold concepts to help stretch the art of the possible and shape or growth strategy.

Incognito mode to help safer browsing. Later launched in the app

Highlighting on the web to help students with keeping track

New app browser to help latency and integration of new features

Evolving our processes to have a positive impact on ways of working

Having an impact on the product is one thing, but what impact did these changes have on our process and ways of working?

Quicker time from idea to launch
Going from 6-10 months per feature to 3 months (per QTR)

Raised quality bar 
through the use of design CRITs, design reviews and leveraging and growing the design system

Joint OKR and team planning annually and quarterly which resulted in better cross org alignment and less

Quicker delivery of insights through the use of diary, cafe and lab studies, establishing a data driven approach

Key learnings and takeaways

Learn quick and fail fast

We used hypotheses driven design to learn at a fast rate. Using surveys, low-fi concepts and storyboard to quickly learn and fail fast to discard any ideas based on early feedback and learnings

Some early concepts we testing to answer a hypothesis around overall value add and satisfaction. Testing and iterating weekly allowed us to evaluate hypotheses quickly and reject ideas and concepts early

Winning hearts and minds is vital to success

Answer the ‘why we care’ and the ‘how it can be done’. One of the key lessons I learnt it truly inspire and with the heart with a vision, a just cause and somethign to believe in. This could be a human impact on peoples lives or gathering emapthy through team research. Winning hearts is one thing, but winning minds is just as important. We were able to provide rationale, tangible targets and ways forward to answer the ‘how’ once we had the ‘why’

Timing is everything

Not everything was launched. Some ideas we had to park due to viability and ensuring it aligns with the overall strategy for the company. However, we some ideas such as highlighting on the web and lens powered screenshots gave way to other innovations (like circle to search)