Case study

Privacy, safety and security

Client

Google

Google is the most popular search engine in the world, serving over 8.5 billion searches/day.

The problem

Users are drowning in the information overload era, they have too many passwords and digital artifacts spread across the internet.

Opportunity

Provide billions of users with a single place to manage and organize their digital life.

My role

We kicked-off the project with a 3 day design sprint. Initially, we were briefed by executive leaders and key stakeholders to get a better understanding of the business/operational goals, scope and timelines.

We captured lots of ideas on post-it notes while listening to our speakers. We also conducted an affinity diagram exercise by organizing post-it notes into groups to identify high-level themes.

As individuals, we generated as many ideas as we could in 6 minutes. We selected our strongest idea and sketched and refined that idea. As a group, we discussed our ideas and voted on our favorites. Between day 2 and day 3, everyone prepared a possible use case/scenario.

Use case #1: Google is proactive and takes care of things for me.

Google can make contextually relevant suggestions e.g. Hey Jake, your passport is about to expire… would you like some help?

Use case #2: Google understands user intent.

Google knows that you’re researching hotels, booked a flight or rented a car and is smart enough to recognize that you are planning a trip.

How I led it

I was the lead information architect on the Google work, with one visual designer, one sprint facilitator, and one UX researcher. The work meant aligning key stakeholders and executive leadership across the organization: legal, customer service, content, and engineering.

The hardest call was prototyping. I wanted to create a digital prototype, but we ended up using paper prototypes to get some early initial user feedback.

The tradeoff was fidelity. By keeping the initial concepts in grayscale, as wireframes, we were able to iterate quickly until the team felt there was a solid solution in place, and then we transitioned to higher fidelity designs.

The work

From first concepts to shipped screens.

Conducting an affinity diagram exercise by moving post-its into groups to identify high-level themes.

Grayscale wireframe of the Google Homebase dashboard, showing a welcome panel for Jake Smith, a Vault for important documents, connected devices including a Nest thermostat, iPhone and Fitbit, settings toggles, latest orders and an activity feed — Wireframe / early explorations

Grayscale wireframe of the My Devices view in Google account settings, showing a Nest Learning Thermostat connected to Google Glass, a Fitbit Force, a Nexus 5 Android phone and a Google Nexus 7 — Wireframe / early explorations

Grayscale wireframe of the My Orders view in Google account settings, listing orders from Google and other retailers with purchase dates, prices and delivery status — Wireframe / early explorations

Outcome

Our initial explorations informed the interaction and visual design direction for Google’s Privacy Settings, where billions of users can view and manage their personal data and privacy preferences.

Deliverables

Design briefPersonasPresentation for executive leadership to highlight proposed features/functionalityUser needs and goals matrixWireframes

Testimonial

“

Hugo’s highly adept at cutting through static so he can surface – and solve – critical dimensions of design problems. He’s thoughtful, generous, and always displays grace under pressure – a great colleague and collaborator.”

Next project

Citizens, Designing for personalization

Citizens Financial Group delivers a broad range of financial services to millions of individuals, companies, non-profits, and institutions.

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