Senior / Staff Interaction Designer (2015 - 2019)
I worked 4 years on consistent UI components, accessiblity efforts and account settings across the Google universe (Munich - Silicon Valley - Tel Aviv).
OneGoogle
OneGoogle was born as an effort to bring consitency (and engeneering efficiency) to the back in 2016 widely indepentend Google products. Goal was that a user of e.g. Gmail is familiar, pleased and efficient with main UI components like the Top App Bar and finds the same consistent UI elements on other products like Calender, Docs, ....
As UX Lead of OneGoogle I was responsible to collaborate with all those UX teams of the various Google products (there are many!), to synthisize their and the user needs of a global audience into usable user interface components.
OneGoogle top right pattern
In late 2017 I was stepping up within Google's UX org from focusing primarily on UI components to also defining and driving vision, patterns and strategy for better representing users within Google products. This work fundamentally shifted how a user and their identity is showcased across all of Google.
A clear representation of the user’s identity, the account status and the Google brand - “It’s me, it’s a Google app, I’m logged in. Users can distinguish (within a single tap) which account data is being read from or written to. Users can control which, if any, account to use. The Account Menu is focused on representing the signed-in account, providing users with tools to manage this account and switching to other accounts. The Popover UI pattern was built to suit most of Google’s 1P apps.
By June 2019 most of Google’s 1P apps have launched the OneGoogle pattern and account popover.
OneGoogle navigation drawer, account menu & Gmail Relaunch
A product always very close to OneGoogle was Gmail. Therefore we often released major updates to UX patterns and UI components first there. Gmail launched a major redesign in early 2019, the UX patterns and UI components for the navigation drawer, the top right user representation and account menu were provided by OneGoogle.
Accessbility UX
Over the years I contributed in many "20%" of my time to A11y efforts across the Google universe. Starting with thorough accessibility testing, bug filing and fixing for major launches, I quickly became a well known go to person for consulting on A11y UX topics across the company. This gave me the chance to work with a wide range of teams at Google and to improve the assecibility of services and products that are used by billions of people every day. Definitly a career highlight for me!
Co-Organizer for Accessbility weeks in the Google Munich office (2015) and Tel Aviv office (2017) including user research sessions, bug fixing sprints, workshops, talks.
Regularly acted as A11y UX champion for Google's Search - User - Maps UX team.
From 2015 till 2017 I also contributed to the A11y efforts at the Google X self driving car project, later renamed to Waymo. My work ranged from enabling accesibility hard- and software features for hauling, meeting & entering the car. This work eventually enabled the first self driving car ride by a blind person in history.
My a11y work helped to unblock critical user journeys across the Google product universe. Sign-In flows, consent flows, account setting flows are critical when it comes to accesiblity, because with dead ends / unusable needle eyes the user would be blocked and not able to reach their desired goals.
I also regularly contributed to the Material design system. I helped defining the behavior and UI details of components like the Bottom Sheet. My work ranged from defining platform specific UI and transition behavior to defining best support for screenreader & gestures.
Working @ Google
I loved working at a truly global company. My team was split between Mountain View - Munich - Tel Aviv. That gave me the opportuniy to spend many month in San Francisco / BayArea and Israel; to work across time zones, cultures and professions; to co-work with many smart & kind collegues; to grow as designer - strategist - manager; to interview - onboard - mentor many young designer. During my time I also got promoted from "Senior Interaction Designer" to "Staff Interaction Designer".