Google Account
(2016–2018) UX Designer,
Adecco Group, on-site at Google
UX/UI design for mobile and web
The Google Account team earns people’s trust in Google products that play an ever more intimate role in their lives. My work gave people more control over their privacy choices, their data, and how it's used.
2016: My first assignment was consent UX for that year's Google-wide privacy policy changes
2017, 2018: Next, I led and collaborated on data transparency & portability tools with the redesign of Dashboard and Takeout. This was one of Google's first visible trust.next/GDPR efforts.
2018: Due to my expertise, I was asked to take on consent UX with another round of high-priority consents: Private-by-default UX for Google Account creation and Phone-Number-Use consents.
AWARDs:
🏆 Spot Bonus for contributions to a broader user-recognition program, Feb 2019
🏆 Spot Bonus for phone number usage consent, Jun 2018
(2016)
Critical trust moments—Touchpoints for a privacy policy change
Critical trust moments—Touchpoints for a privacy policy change
Goal: Maximize informed consents to new privacy and ads policy changes
To the right: the consent content itself (my contributions: finalizing the illustrations)
The project
My first assignment at Google supported a company-wide goal and one of the biggest investments in Google's critical areas (display ads).
This was a large, Google-wide effort to gather consents to the 2016 privacy and ads policy change. But respecting users' privacy rights was equally important.
Thus, the consents were opt-ins, not opt-outs. This required the right touch when notifying users.
I was responsible for the four touchpoints: the desktop pushdown promo, Terms of Service & Privacy Policy summary for sign-up, Android notification, and sign-in interstitial for native mobile.
My contributions
UX/UI design & prototyping
Illustration
The team
1 Lead UX designer
1 UX designer (myself)
1 UX writer
1 UX researcher
1 product manager
# engineers
Partners
3 legal counsels
2 cross-Google product areas
Launch dates
June 2016
Impact
Hit the goals in half the time
50-100% increase in click-through rate for our pushdown promos on desktop
Well-written push notifications for mobile proved to be a useful tough point
Accomplishments
Reviewed multiple UI frameworks (OneGoogleBar Alerts, Google Account Notifications, mobile sign-in and sign-up, desktop sign-up) to determine best approach for injecting a consent
Collaborated with a large set of stakeholders: UX Writing, legal, brand, quantitative analysts, and product teams (UX, product management, and engineering from OneGoogleBar team, Account Notifier team, and Account sign-in team for mobile sign-in/sign-up) to decide on approaches, implement, run public experiments, and launch final versions
Provided illustration improvements for the consent content
Navigating complexities
Worked with Brand Team to resolve a conflicting branding requirement from a VP of Brand, successfully advocating for user needs for the Android notification touchpoints
Worked closely with an Associate Product Manager to narrow and define an overly large set of experiment variants. I defined each experiment's premise, which made it easier to see which experiments were successful and why.
Desktop pushdown promo
Androd push notification
Native sign-in interstitial:
Evolution of the illustrations:
The illustration weren't clear enough for users during research testing
I brought clearer concepts using arrows and the use of a callback in the second illustration
(2017)
Dashboard & Takeout redesign
Dashboard & Takeout redesign
Tools to see and control your data in one place
Google Dashboard, before & after the redesign
The project
Redesign Google's original transparency tool (Dashboard), and make it the one place to to see and control your data with Google. Prepare Google's industry-leading data portability tool (Takeout), to accommodate new forward-looking functionality.
In 2009, the Google Dashboard was Google's original transparency tool. Showing summaries of users' data, recent activity, access to product settings and help, it let users review what data they had with Google, and investigate suspicious activity.
But in 2017, with a much more mature My Account and more automated security features, the Dashboard needed an update.
Similarly, Takeout, released in 2011, gave Google industry leadership in data portability. In preparation for GDPR legislation in the EU, we want to take Takeout to the next level with more capabilities (company-to-company data portability, recurring archives, and more).
We launched the first phase of this redesign with an overhaul of Dashboard, launching successfully in September 2017, providing one of the first visible GDPR-related efforts to share with Digital Protection Authorities (governing bodies that shape privacy legislation).
My contributions
UX/UI design & prototyping
The team
1 UX manager
1 UX designer (myself)
1 UX researcher
1 UX writer
1 product manager
3–6 engineers
Launch dates
2017
Impact
One of the first publicly visible GDPR efforts, which saw an increase in traffic
Despite a massive reduction in the summary data, post-redesign Help Center feedback shows requests for only one piece of information (one that I wanted to keep, so the team investigated how to provide it again).
Accomplishments
Audited existing Dashboard & Takeout UX
Redesigned Dashboard & Takeout, overhauling Dashboard as strictly a transparency and access-to-control tool
Worked closely with UX Research in Munich & Mountain View on:
An iterative research process to refine the UX. We used a variety of research studies from speed-dating-style sessions, recurring general-research rounds, to dedicated researcher-moderated usability studies in the EU)
Designed user-satifaction surveys for Dashboard and Takeout before and after the redesign
Built initial prototypes and coordinated with Munich and Tel Aviv UX engineers on a fully interactive prototype
Continuing UX consulting support as we begin implementing the redesign of Takeout, and more powerful features such as recurring data backups, and “World Takeout”—the ability to copy data to other companies, offering truly convenient data portability
Navigating complexities
Identified & acted on a need to re-test critical tasks, finding low success rates in a usability test I ran in Mountain View
Identified need to recruit experienced Dashboard/Takeout users for research studies to help us understand the atypical users who are actually likely to use these products. This research confirmed the success of our final UX adjustments (with 100% completion of critical tasks) and viability of the final design.
Worked closely with Google Account engineering in Munich to spec and implement the 40+ product cards in Dashboard, and coordinated with PMs, designers, and engineers across Google product teams to update their Dashboard data summaries.
Web/desktop view of the Dashboard redesign:
Mobile view of Dashbaord redesign:
(2018)
Privacy by default for new Google Accounts
Privacy by default for new Google Accounts
The project
Goal: Give new users true control over their privacy & data use choices (the right thing to do + required for GDPR compliance)
At the time, all new Google Accounts are created with default privacy setting choices. These settings aren’t necessarily what every user would choose, and remembering to go to My Account to adjust settings doesn’t fit the principle of “privacy by default.”
Instead of an all-in consent screen, this change gives users control over their privacy and data-use choices before creating their new account.
My contributions
UX/UI design & prototyping
The team
1 UX manager
1 UX designer (myself)
1 UX researcher
1 UX writer
1 product manager
3–6 engineers
Launch dates
2018
Contributions
Joining partway through the project, I quickly ramped up to provide UX support for testing variants in the information architecture
My collaboration initiatives led to a consistent information architecture for the content
Navigating complexities
Identified the need for and coordinated PM, Legal, and UXW to craft legally sound but digestible content, working with multiple product teams (Ads privacy, UDC/My Activity, YouTube)
Through research, validated a control type (radio buttons) that allows Google to hopefully provide what I call “informed opt-outs” as well as informed opt-ins
The UX flow for customizing privacy settings
The information architecture provided consistency, and frequently needed information
