Stack App
A product from Google’s Area 120 internal incubator
0-1 design and build of a new AI powered app to help organise and handle documents and paperwork
The challenge
How do you build and launch a product within 6 months that can help people handle, organize and recall their paperwork and documents?
This was our challenge. We secured initial buy in and funding for 6 months as part of the internal incubator hub in Google (Area120) to spin up and prove value by building a new product in a lean startup style
The team
1 Designer
1 Researcher
1 Product Lead
2 Engineers
MY ROLE
Hands-on Lead Designer
Hands on full end-to-end design
UX, UI, Visual, Research and content
Front-End prototyping
Strategy and pitching ideas
The approach
Starting with a blank canvas the first questions were really ‘what problems do we want to solve’ and for who? I lead some initial brainstorming which we then took to the streets (via user testing) to gather some insights into the problem space.
Core problems/themes that we discovered:
Understanding the problem space
“I don’t have the time”
One of the resounding insights from both interviews and surveys was that people found it difficult to find the time to deal with paperwork
“I need reminding”
People often forgot tasks related to paperwork. Paying a bill, renewing insurance and cancelling services topped the charts
“Where did I put that?”
One of the biggest pain points and problems to solve was around organization. Keeping important documents in a secure and organised place where they could access them at any time was a key challenge
Reframing our insights for ideation
Armed with our insights, it was time to reframe and develop. hypotheses that we wanted to test. I led the team through reframing using the How Might We (HMW method to first explore ideas based on the insights we have gathered
ONE OF OUR HMW STATEMENTS
How might we help Angela quickly recall her drivers license number when she needs it for ID purposes
Reframing our insights for ideation
I ran a series of ideation sprints with the team to explore ideas (going as wide as possible) in how we can start to solve some of these problems and develop concepts that we can test and evaluate with users
Build measure learn cycles
We quickly moved into a Plan, Build, Measure, Learn cycle to evaluate concepts, learn quickly and fail fast to weed out concepts and ideas which we not feasible, viable or desireable
Example of one of the testing sessions we ran with a live data prototype (Audio on)
Outcomes
Successful launch within 6 months of the new ‘Stack’ App . Designed to help
Impact
Successful re-funding from A120
We managed to successful re-fund wafter 6 months within Area 120. We launched a successful internal ‘dogfood’ and then went on to launch in the Play and Apple App stores
Received positive reviews and created value for users
“Stack is simple to use and effective. It's helpful that the app isn't too crowded with unnecessary features. Its user interface is sleek, and it doesn't take long to feel comfortable using it.”
Adopted and absorbed by Google Drive
Due to the standalone access and usage of the app, the capabilities and app later ‘graduated’ into Google Drive and became part of the of Google Drive product offering