MY TECH
My Tech is a responsive web application that aims to
make it easier for all 200,000 full-time Googlers to
solve workplace technology-related inquiries, thus
keeping them at peak levels of productivity. This new
application surfaces personalized and guided content
to Googlers while also possessing the appropriate
policy guardrails to keep workplace technologyrelated costs in check.
Role: Lead UX Designex
BACKGROUND
There are 200,000 full-time Googlers that need workplace technology (i.e., hardware, accessories, & software) to be productive employees.
Before and during COVID, Googlers could get as much workplace technology as they wanted through Stuff, an internal e-commerce platform, and they could manage and support this technology through a myriad of other internal apps. Googlers even had access to a tech accessory vending machine! Getting workplace tech at Google was like being a kid at a candy store with $100 — there were no limits.
In 2022, things changed. The late/post-COVID era ushered in a new economic reality, forcing Google leadership to focus on financial stewardship, employee velocity, and enterprise security. The tech “candy store” needed to go.
My job was to respond to leadership — and pre-existing user feedback — by designing a new application that would enable efficient workplace tech distribution, management, and support, while ensuring Googlers stayed as productive as possible. I worked with cross- functional teams to introduce new paradigms, like personalized and guided journeys, and design them within the new platform, My Tech.
PROBLEMS EXPLAINED
Over the years, plenty of research had been completed in the workplace technology space. I began my time on the project by synthesizing and analyzing pre-existing research to uncover the longstanding user pain points. It was easy to see what the top, recurring problems were, but we still needed to validate a) whether these pain points still existed; and b) the business impact of them.
The animation below displays the Figjam board used to aggregate notes about research reports & collect insights.
I led several workshops with the core product team to ultimately suss out the following top problems
Users don’t know where to start when it comes to performing workplace tech-related inquiries. They’re unfamiliar with internal apps & they start out by asking co-workers
Simple tasks take a while to complete. User journeys are silo’ed, and require several ad-hoc, single-use tools.
Users want to self-serve, but cannot due to unclear information.
Users expect seamless integrations across apps, but don’t get it.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
I worked with our team’s UX researcher to create a research plan. Our research goals were to understand what critical user journeys (CUJs) in our domain needed the most help (the foundational research) and how to solve them with a new UI and platform (prototype tests).
We started by sending out a survey to >100 Googlers and analyzing click data to see the areas in need of improvement. The top “broken” tasks were: 1) Request/return devices and accessories; 2) manage and resolve security-related issues with a device; and 3) troubleshoot an IT issue. When we look at these issues against how painful they are, developers have a lot of trouble getting OS exceptions, requesting and managing computer exceptions, and troubleshoot IT issues were among the top.
OPPORTUNITIES
After analyzing the findings and considering where the business was going, it was clear that the new business direction would exacerbate certain problems. Based on research (i.e., what’s really broken now) and business priorities, we identified four solid opportunities for My Tech to address for its MVP.
Make it easier for Googlers to acquire & replace workplace technology, and focus on policy-guided flows over a shopping UX
Reduce tool proliferation by converging single-use tools into one tool that makes tech-related tasks easier to complete
Reduce support costs by streamlining fragmented tech journeys & upstream resolution? (42% of support volume is self-solvable!)
Improve governance via introducing system efficiencies
CONCEPTING
What would a product look like that would make workplace technology-related journeys easier and also enforce personalized policies?
To design a user interface, I’d need to understand users’ existing mental models so that I could properly consolidate required journeys into one design. Did users start technology journeys by thinking about their device or their intent? Did users want support journeys to follow a conversational or a logical flow? Did they want policies called out explicitly or handled more subtly? What navigation would combine acquisition, management, and support tasks?
We used the web tool, Optimal Survey, to survey 85 Googlers through open ended questions and an A/B click test. We tested two concepts: the device oriented UI (i.e., each device has it’s own card that acts as a control panel) and the intent oriented UI (i.e., intents guide user).
64% of Googlers preferred the device-oriented UI. The device-oriented UI also had higher success in the subsequent click tests.
INITIAL DESIGNS
I led several brainstorming sessions with the product team in which we sketched out ideas. We landed on three key themes to introduce: 1) Consolidation; 2) guided flows; and 3) self-service. Below are early initial designs that merged our sketches.
Consolidation is highlighted through the navigation, which combines all technology types, and the home page, which surfaces different tech-related content in one place. Consolidation also touches on how My Tech combines several apps into one to reduce associated confusion & cognitive load with solving tech queries.
Old
NEW
Guided flows are a new paradigm to ease users through IT acquisition tasks. Rather than users going to many different apps and finding antiquated and disjointed info, users will go to one place and be hand held through journey completion. They will also self-serve more with the anticipated prevalence of guided flows.
Old
NEW
The first feature launched in our MVP was a revamp of the Replacement Flow. A quick sentence about what this is goes here.
Lorem ipsum goes here a blurb about how th eflow works, how
we executed, etc
Step 1: XXX
Step 2: The first feature launched in our MVP was a revamp of the Replacement Flow. A quick sentence about what this is goes here.
Step 3
Step 4
The first feature launched in our MVP was a revamp of the Homepage. A quick sentence about what this is goes here
CONCLUSION
Consolidation is highlighted through the navigation, which combines all technology types, and the home page, which surfaces different tech-related content in one place. Consolidation also touches on how My Tech combines several apps into one to reduce associated confusion & cognitive load with solving tech queries.