Google

Overview

Google Consumer Surveys is a market research service that had two platforms for delivery:

1. an HTML embed for desktop and mobile websites where consumers could answer a short survey to gain access to premium content.
2. an iOS and Android app where users could opt-in to receive surveys for Google Play Credit or cash via PayPal.

Survey creators would write their survey, choose their target respondents, survey size and pay for the survey to run. Surveys used the same demographic targeting infrastructure as AdWords and would collect the responses and show them in a reporting/results dashboard.

Involvement

• Interviewed several CPG companies, ad agencies, pollsters, and boutique market research firms for product/market fit.
• Ran UX studies with respondents for both web and native survey app experiences.
• Designed the survey creation, targeting and reporting/analysis UX.
• Designed survey prompt UX across web, YouTube, and mobile (iOS and Android).
• Wrote front-end code to help with styling, client-side JavaScript, and D3 charts.
• Managed other measurement product UX teams in the Ads org.

Overview

I was a player-coach manager, doing individual contributor work on the YouTube video player while leading video consumption UX across desktop, mobile, and devices and visual design.

Involvement

• Designed the YouTube video player for several releases.
• Added enhancements for auto-play, closed captions, ads, and video quality switching.
• Wrote Python, ActionScript, and JavaScript and did front-end code reviews.
• Designed a cloud-based editor for YouTube videos.
• Designed and implemented a cloud-based closed caption editor and added closed-caption capability to external Python APIs.
• Designed and implemented a Chrome extension used by the UX team that would pull high-definition video thumbnails from any YouTube search, browse, or video page. This saved each designer a few hours a week to screen-shot high-definition videos for UX mockups.

Early developer products at Google

When I first joined Google, I was the sole designer on Google's developer products (App Engine, Code Search, Project Hosting, API docs) or Search APIs (Custom Search and Webmaster Tools).

App Engine

App Engine was Google’s first cloud developer product and the first platform as a service for developers. Developers write code, and Google figures out scaling and site reliability.

• Founding team member and product designer of the first web front-end to a cloud developer product.
• Worked with engineering and product teams to take key parts of Google infrastructure and expose it to outside developers in easy to use APIs. Worked on nomenclature, documentation style guides, and example apps. Consistently built example apps showcasing the platform’s capabilities as part of dogfooding and filing bugs.
• Worked with founder Kevin Gibbs, and key Python community members Guido Van Rossum (Python inventor) and Brett Slatkin (Python book author) on App Engine’s developer UX and productivity features and roadmaps.
• Recruited 20% contributions from UX designers and researchers to help other developers and cloud products when the entire cloud UX team was just me. I grew a full-time team of three people before transitioning to YouTube.
• Spoke at Google Developer Days and Google I/O promoting the product.
• Prototyped and co-developed a native desktop app manager for the App Engine SDK.
• Designed a system status dashboard that was adopted across all cloud apps (Drive, Gmail, Docs, etc...).
• Designed marketing material such as coupon vouchers for developer credits, direct mail pieces, t-shirts, and schwagg for team members and partners.

Google Custom Search

Custom Search allows webmasters and developers to add search tailored to their website or a collection of sites already in the Google search index.

• Designed the search widget experience for consumers. Designed the developer portal to configure the widget and view usage statistics.
• Wrote blog posts for new features.
• Collaborated with teams in Ads and Webmaster Tools to integrate ad and sitemap/search crawling features into Custom Search.
• Awarded a Google Operating Committee (OC) Award. These were an annual, large monetary award to teams significantly contributing to the business.
• Earned JavaScript readability for contributions to the front-end codebase. Only a handful of UX designers (and even fewer art/design school graduates) at Google earned this. Readability in a language means you can review and approve the production code of others who have not earned readability in it.

Company citizenship

Through my 11-year tenure at Google, I focused on two ways to contribute to company culture and growth.

Education

I co-developed a user experience and front-end development curriculum for Google's internal engineering education group.

• I wrote and developed a three-hour class on UI sketching and paper prototyping. A few student alumni later credited it with their path to becoming UX designers. I was invited to teach the class at Stanford and Google Ventures (GV) startup boot camps. The class was featured in business writer David Sax’s book, Revenge of the Analog. I traveled globally to teach the class and trained local UX team members to teach it.
• I also taught two front-end classes: an introductory CSS, JS, and HTML class and an Intermediate CSS class.

Hiring and performance management

I assisted with hiring, recruiting, and performance management reviews for design, research, prototyping, and front-end engineering job ladders.

• I interviewed over 400 candidates and traveled to college campuses and conferences to help with recruiting.
• I served on or chaired several promotion committees during company-wide annual performance cycles.