Overview

Google will always hold a special place in my heart because I transitioned from engineering to UX there. In the course of more than two years, I had an opportunity to work on four different projects, spanning from the advanced technology projects at Google ATAP, Tilt Brush VR and Google Lens to core products like People & Sharing and Gmail. Let me share some highlights of this journey.

Pokemon Wallpaper & App

QA/UX design, Aug - Dec 2019

This is a collaborative project between Google ATAP and the Pokémon Company featuring Pokémon Sidekick live and interactive wallpaper, and Pokémon Wave Hello app. Offered for Google's Pixel 4, both products make use of Motion Sense technology (Soli), a revolutionary system with a miniature radar chip aimed to detect precise movements.

With a tiny talented team famous for the Emmy award-winning Google Spotlight Stories, I lead quality assurance project, helped out with UX, and provided constant feedback for the user interaction and visual design.

Do users know what gestures to use at any point? Should Pokémons have a life of their own? What time should Pikachu wake-up and fall asleep? Those are some of the UX questions our team was solving for.

Tilt Brush VR

UX design/QA, Dec 2019 - Mar 2020

Tilt Brush by Google is a VR application that enables people to paint in 3D space with light. It introduces a unique spin on digital art creation and won the hearts of thousands of VR artists and hobbyists around the world bringing Google two Gold Lions for Innovation and Digital Craft from Cannes Lions in 2017, as well as other impressive awards. I joined the team for its last public release as a QA Lead and UX designer, and helped refine UX for three large features - Camera path, Google Drive backup support, and Sketchfab support.

The Camera Path feature allows Tilt Brush users to create paths around their 3D artworks, and then record them as videos. It was a wonderful feature to work on for two reasons. First, I came in with some background in filmmaking, which made it easier to work with user mental models around filming a VR scene. Secondly, skills in Adobe Creative Suite came in handy, because much of the feature had to reflect mental models of working with Adobe Creative Suite tools like Pen and Paths tools.

How easy will users find the Camera Path feature? How easy will it be to manipulate points? How intuitive is recording a video?

To answer these questions, we conducted an internal usability testing session. Our findings shined the light onto some UX problems. For example, deleting and adjusting the anchor points didn’t appear easy, neither did creating a secondary camera path. We addressed all of these problems before the release.

People & Sharing projects

Product design, Sep 2020 - Mar 2022

As a UX designer in the People & Sharing team at Google, I designed and managed the process of aligning six products that are central to person views. Three of them were mobile (Android Contacts, People Sheet iOS, People Sheet Android), and three Web (Hovercard, Web Contacts, and Web Companion). 

These products were designed at different times, built by different engineering and product management teams, and had significantly different UI design. A substantial part of my job was to coordinate and harmonize the redesign of the UI for each of these four products. I also translated two products into the new Material design system known as Material You.

My goal was to create a unified design system that would align user experience across six People & Sharing products.

This system will enable the engineering team to reuse the same components and save time. Like most products at Google, the overall goal was to drive user engagement for all these products.

At the end of this design project I created a unified design system that aligned user journeys in Android Contacts, People Sheet iOS, and Web Contacts. Redesigning our products into a card format enabled the engineering team to reuse the same components across different surfaces. Importantly, it saved us time and helped move to a more sustainable development model. Our customers browsing content in cards also saved time by hiding the least valuable content by default (an example of sustainable design). Switching to Material Next enabled having coherent user journeys across Google’s multiple mobile products. 

The redesign had a positive impact on our success metrics and business goals.

After Web Contacts redesign, the number of our paid Enterprise 1-day active users went up by 40%, from 213K to 301K.

Google Lens

Visual design/Branding, Apr - Jun 2020

For this internal project for a Google user research team, my goal as a designer was to develop a series of digital postcards. We called them “Postcards from the field”. These cards were based on insights from product research accumulated during the couple of months prior to the project. Small and witty, they were meant to fulfill the important role of bringing valuable insights about users into the minds of those who build relevant products - engineers, designers, product and project managers. 

The project goal was to increase empathy and engagement among the product creators.

In collaboration with a user experience researcher Natalie Salaets and a user research team on Google Lens, I ideated and created a series of 21 digital postcards. We’ve also explored UX around card delivery and viewing by internal Google users. 

The first digital cards collections were met with enthusiasm.

It was our hope that the internal stakeholders would find value in them by getting to know users better, and we believe this mission was successfully accomplished. I think that similar user-centered design practices will be valuable for any user-centered product as they let us view products through the eyes of our customers.