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Google’s Goals, User Experience Challenges

Maria Stone10/08/07

based on earlier talks by Jen Fitzpatrick, Jenny Gove, Deepak Menon and Michael Margolis

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Google’s Mission

Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

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Innovate.

Remember portals?

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Embrace the browser.

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Build for scale, speed, and reliability.

According to comScore:

• Google is the #2 Web Property in the U.S., with 129 million monthly unique visitors.

• Google is the #1 Web Property Worldwide, with 561 million monthly unique visitors.

(Source: comScore Networks, 9/07)

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Keep it simple.

1999

2007

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5 User Experience Challenges

1. Understanding our users

2. Localization and internationalization

3. Consistency

4. Integration

5. Anywhere, anytime

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1. Understanding our users

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Diversity of Users and Needs

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1. Understanding our users

Get different parts of the story from different sources at different stages.

• Usability Studies, Field Studies and Contextual interviews

• Quantitative market research

• Live online experiments (aka A/B tests)

• Logs

• Customer support

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1. Understanding our users

Usability Studies and Discovery Research– Fast, qualitative, customer research with small samples

– Tells us: Who? What? How? Why?

– When:• Before: Rapid discovery techniques define problems and needs (field studies,

phone interviews, card sorts, competitive evaluations, diaries, etc.)

• During design: Evaluation methods (think aloud, eye tracking, prototype testing, cognitive walkthroughs, etc.)

• After launch: More evaluation and discovery for next iteration.

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Google Talk (in Gmail)

Finding: users got stuck,looking for send button

Version 1

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Google Talk (in Gmail)

Finding: users got stuck,looking for send button

Version 1

Version 2

Finding: some users thoughtchat window was a popup –closed before seeing message

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Google Talk (in Gmail)

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Success!

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1. Understanding our users

Quantitative Market Research

Includes – Profile groups of users (e.g. demographics, segmentation).

– Monitor customer satisfaction and net promoter scores.

– Identify key drivers of satisfaction.

– Test concepts.

– Quantify issues identified through qualitative research.

• Tells us: Who? What? How many? Where?

• When: Before design, after launch

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1. Understanding our users

Live Online Experiments (aka A/B tests)

• Present new UI to small % of users and compare to use of existing UI.

• Tells us: What? When? How many?

• When: After build, but before launch.

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1. Understanding our users

Logs Analysis

• Statistical analysis of aggregated records of actual usage behaviors.

• Tells us: What? When? How many?

• When: After launch

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Statistical Log Analysis: Spell Check

• Initial spell-checker was low quality

• Build a better product – improve quality

Stronger UI - big and red

Logs show that people still misspell; don’t click on suggestion

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1. Understanding our users

Customer Support

• Tells us: What’s wrong?

• When: After launch

• How: Direct feedback from users highlights common issues and problems for launched products and services.

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Customer support feedback: Gmail

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2. Localization and Internationalization

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“. . . the world’s information . . . universally accessible. . .”

…

• ~65% of all Internet users speak a primary language other than English.

• 79% of Internet usage is outside North America (InternetWorldStats.com)

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“. . . and useful. . .”

People rely more on landmarks than addresses in Japan.

Show more landmarks (e.g. stores and buildings) than in US or Europe.

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Watch for Cultural References

Ice cubes don’t mean “cool” in other languages.

• Argentinians use “bananas.”

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But wait. . . there’s more!

• Right-to-Left Text and UI– Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu

are bi-directional

• Text input in Asia

Google preferences in Arabic

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3. Consistency

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Consistency: Reinforce Google brand.

A B

C D

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Consistency: Reinforce Google brand

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Consistency: Reduce learning curve.

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4. Integration

1 + 1 > 2

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Integration

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Search + Movie showtimes, Maps

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Universal search—trivia facts and news

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Talk + Gmail

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Smart Widgets in Gmail

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5. Anywhere, Anytime

“. . . make it universally accessible. . .”

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Going mobile. . .

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“Focus on the user, and all else will follow…”

In conclusion. . .

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Thank you!

Questions?