The problem: When I joined Google I had the pleasure of having my first team be with Play Books. The product had a long history, but it was lagging behind all competitors despite having the power of Google’s reach behind it. Why? The design forced the user to think way too hard and it was hard to find anything to enjoy. Reading is supposed to be relaxing, not work.
The objective: To develop a creative vision and design strategy that would shorten the path to consumption and ease the pain of finding something personalized that users actually might want. The plan was to provide product leadership and engineering something they could use to champion significant overhauls in functionality and approach.
The result: A truly consumer-focused app that felt like a best in class experience.
Every aspect of the app was torn down and redesigned from the ground up with the consumer in mind. Excess functionality was stripped out and replaced with intuitive and helpful interaction patterns.
We embraced the idea of “shallow experiences” realizing that it was actually desirable to have the user never have to go beyond the home page to find what they want.
We integrated all the must-have features that users have come to expect like - personalization, recommendations, and curated content. We also recommended taking a new approach to content by learning our users reading patterns during various times of the day and week to surface the right thing at the right time.
Role: UX Manager, UX Designer
Skills Used: Identity, UX design, UI design, project management, team management