390 likes | 501 Views
Google’s Goals, User Experience Challenges. Maria Stone 10/08/07 based on earlier talks by Jen Fitzpatrick, Jenny Gove, Deepak Menon and Michael Margolis. Google’s Mission. Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful . Innovate. Remember portals?.
E N D
Google’s Goals, User Experience Challenges Maria Stone 10/08/07 based on earlier talks by Jen Fitzpatrick, Jenny Gove, Deepak Menon and Michael Margolis
Google’s Mission • Organize the world's information and make it universallyaccessible and useful.
Innovate. • Remember portals?
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)
Keep it simple. 1999 2007
5 User Experience Challenges • Understanding our users • Localization and internationalization • Consistency • Integration • Anywhere, anytime
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
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.
Google Talk (in Gmail) Version 1 Finding: users got stuck, looking for send button
Google Talk (in Gmail) Version 1 Finding: users got stuck, looking for send button Version 2 Finding: some users thought chat window was a popup – closed before seeing message
Google Talk (in Gmail) Version 1 Version 3 Version 2 Success!
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
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.
1. Understanding our users • Logs Analysis • Statistical analysis of aggregated records of actual usage behaviors. • Tells us: What? When? How many? • When: After launch
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
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.
“. . . 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) …
“. . . and useful. . .” • People rely more on landmarks than addresses in Japan. Show more landmarks (e.g. stores and buildings) than in US or Europe.
Watch for Cultural References • Ice cubes don’t mean “cool” in other languages. • Argentinians use “bananas.”
But wait. . . there’s more! • Right-to-Left Text and UI • Arabic, Hebrew, Urduare bi-directional • Text input in Asia • Google preferences in Arabic
4. Integration 1 + 1 > 2
5. Anywhere, Anytime “. . . make it universally accessible. . .”
In conclusion. . . “Focus on the user, and all else will follow…”
Thank you! • Questions?