SHAUN POST • UX DESIGN LEAD

Intro: Google Assistant Product Inclusion
Challenge + Response

Role: Design Lead

As a newly created group within Google Assistant our goal is to develop & enact a sustainable strategy to improve user experience & quality across Assistant features for underrepresented groups. In practice, Product Inclusion is integrating an inclusive lens throughout the product design & development process to delight and serve users as a whole, not just on average. 

We believe that we can do well and do good by intentionally centering underrepresented voices at key points in the product design process - ideation, UXR, design, user testing, marketing & post-launch analysis.

As a design lead for this initiative I’ve been tasked to provide UX leadership and mentor others, design and establish a core brand identity and visual guidelines, craft a team site to share our messaging and build a scalable incubation pipeline to test and validate MVP concepts our team can act on quickly.

Product Inclusion Feature Qualification Process

One of the bigger projects I had the pleasure of working on was the Product Inclusion Feature Qualification Process. My role was to lead a team of product managers, designers, engineers and content specialists to create an incubation pipeline to validate new product features/ideas for serving underrepresented users. Our goal was to increase perception for underrepresented users that Assistant “is a product for people like me.

The need:
Focused on developing a process to identify and evaluate promising use cases for underrepresented users with a goal of learning fast and getting early signal on PMF with users.

The process:
Leveraged an iterative process for evaluating early product market fit (PMF). First step is generate ideas with the team.

Output:
By performing this research early in the product life cycle, we gather early PMF indicators that are used to make go/no go and Ok2Execute decisions before any significant resources are invested--no engineering, very little design, and without significant cost expenditure. The findings can also allow early pivots or adjustments to ensure the eventual feature has the highest chance of success per Assistant OKRs.

Outcome

Beginning today, you can ask Assistant, "OK Google, Happy Black History Month” to see images and hear details from the Google Arts & Culture archives via Google Assistant. As we partnered closely with local artists you’ll be able to see their work displayed on devices when this query is invoked.

Our partnerships expand beyond Black History Month. We have also collaborated closely with artists for National American Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Awareness Month and many others we celebrate and promote throughout the calendar year.