Wednesday, 7 March, 2018 UTC
Summary
Jay Wong is the UX Lead on Project Fi, Google’s phone carrier service that aims to provide a better phone plan. Lauched in 2015, it utilizes the best available network between Wi-Fi and three 4G LTE networks — Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular.
Depending on the signal strength and speed, Project Fi automatically switches between networks and transitions between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The idea behind it is that by “designing across hardware, software and connectivity, people can connect and communicate, better.”
The three focus areas of Project Fi are:
- Establishing the highest quality connection, which is done by seamlessly transitioning between Wi-fi and cellular networks via an automatic VPN.
- Enabling easy communication across network and devices. In this endeavor, Project Fi provides connectivity across 135 countries in the world.
- Making the service experience as simple as possible, which is why Project Fi comes with a flat rate pricing system that allows customizing data allowance and rolls back credit for unused data.
Jay’s and her team’s work is an important component in shaping the customer experience across the service.
Customer service and experience are vital cogs in today’s wireless telecom experience, where churn rates are lower than before but customer satisfaction remains in early to mid 70s across the industry.
We spoke to her about her experience before coming to Google and Project Fi, how her team works, what are things they focus on and how their work interacts with the engineering and product side of the service. Along the way we got to learn about some interesting testing ideas at Google and what challenges they face in collaboration, which of course if what we at zipBoard aim to solve, so as to bridge the communication gap between teams working on web projects.
Before Google and UX
Jay received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of New South Wales, where she studied Computer Science and Digital Media. Human computer interaction was a particular interest of hers, which started from an early stage when she started building websites from the age of 10 years.
Her dive into Yahoo! Geocities and Neopets, gave way to designing and coding websites with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Coupled with her interest in graphic design, filming and photography, Jay was interested in user experience even before she knew that such a field existed.
From there she started her own design company, where she was both UI designer and Front End Engineer.
Jay: “We were designing not just websites, but proprietary software for companies similar to BestBuy. Phone companies, radio companies, electronic companies — we’d be designing the internal systems that they used. For instance, one of the things we designed was a program that would monitor the phone records of big companies with 10,000 employees or more. They would get all the phone records for their employees, stores and locations. The program would separate out everyone’s bills and flag any kind of inconsistencies like, a calls from a store location at night time when it should not to be making those.”
At the end of 2012, Jay joined Google where she worked on Google+ Photos and Hangouts before coming to Project Fi.
The UX Team Behind Project Fi
When Jay Wong came into Project Fi, she was the only designer on the team. Today, she has grown the team to 5 designers including Jay, 2 UX writers, 2 researchers, an engineering prototyper who supports them part time, as well as a production designer who works on asset delivery,specs and implementation.
From a business perspective, Project Fi aims to build a phone carrier that provides transparent plan, without any shoddy design practices. One that puts the user first and leverages multiple networks to provide the best service possible.
The UX team’s focus is to design and curate the interaction that shapes the user’s relationship with the service.
Jay: “As a UX designer, the thing that’s been awesome about working on Project Fi is that we really design every part of the user experience, and every piece of the service. Where other UX designers work on maybe just the app design, or on design only one digital element, we design the end to end service. Everything from the mobile app, the web app, the marketing site, to the sign up flow. We design the packaging of the SIM cards, we design the SIM cards themselves, and we design the boxes that the phones come in. We also design the vending machines that you can get cool Project Fi freebies from when travelling overseas, because one of our core tenants is being able to pay the same amount no matter where you are in the world for your data.”The UX team works on all aspects of customer experience, from packaging to web design and app interface on Project Fi. source: Techspot
“We end up designing the entire experience, from packaging to illustration to app design.”
How the team is setup
Design work on the team is not taken up on the basis of expertise. All the designers on the team are generalists. The separation of design duties is based on points in the customer lifecycle.
So one designer is responsible for everything related to awareness, which entails how people learn about Project Fi. For example, the website is a major source. Another designer owns the conversion stage in the lifecycle. They cover the various channel for users, how they choose to convert, what motivates them to convert and every interaction related to that stage. Similarly, another designer is responsible for the sign up and activation stage, and one for everything related to apps, which covers the post activation stage, after the phone has been activated.
The Process
The iterations for each design stage depend on the size and depth of the project. There isn’t a rigid by the book methodology that the team follows.
“We’ll usually have a kick off sprint. If it’s a small to medium project then a mini-kick off sprint, which is generally half a day or one day. For really big projects, something as big as like an app redesign, we do a week long sprint at the beginning. But the one thing I’ve learned in the time I’ve been designing is that there isn’t really one method that you can apply to each project. I think you can have a set of processes, or a set of tools that you can use, but it depends on each situation when choosing the appropriate specifics so that you have the right fit.”The Project Fi UX team uses design sprints as a platform for iterative design.
Research
For major activities like redesigning a feature, first the team does exploratory and fundamental research. What are the challenges? What are the problems? What are the goals of the project? What are the pain points of the users? What are their goals? What are the needs from the end design?
Mocks and design critiques
The initial mocks, drawn in Sketch, from this research are refined over weekly design critiques that the entire team participates in. And not just internally with the UX team, these design critiques also involve feedback from the engineering and product management team.
The UX team works closely with both of these teams to refine the mocks into prototypes, which then go through several rounds of testing.
“There are also two types of design critiques. One is design engineering critique where designers and engineers share feedback and that can also include the PMs. The other one is a design critique involving only designers, because it is important for them to have their own space as well. But this has to be balanced with critique from the stakeholders who are less design-oriented, but slightly more technically oriented.”
The team uses Google’s internal tool Gallery for exchanging feedback and tracking reviews on design iterations.
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https://medium.com/media/14fe222aef772f504c661b9de7d5c05b/hrefTesting and studies
During testing, the team keeps iterating rapidly, either studies each day or maybe after a week the changes will be implemented, followed by another round of testing. Only specific parts of the mocks are turned into interactive prototypes for studies.
Once the team has a design it is happy with, they take it for testing with the users. For exploratory testing, the team prefers recruiting users from areas where the general demographic would not be overly tech-savvy. For this reason, Silicon Valley is not a preferred choice for studies, or even Seattle. Rather cities like Chicago or Los Angeles are preferred.
On using a mix of user testing and research methods, Jay said:
“It all depends on what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve used different methods at different times. Like the standard thing is user studies and user interviews, where we do usability testing. We’ve also gone to Vegas to do intercept studies, where we essentially had a camera and a questionnaire, and we would approach random people asking them if they’d be willing to do an interview. We’ve used focus groups and diary studies.”
Another area that we talked about was how involved engineers and product management are during testing.
Jay: “A lot of the time at Google, it is pretty rare for engineers to be involved in testing but I feel very strongly that it is really important for people building the product, including engineers and PMs, to watch the studies. So on Project Fi, most of the time, at least one product manager and one engineer will be in on testing, and sometimes will take notes.”
Implementation and review
Post that development and implementation starts, where engineers code the product, in tandem with the UX team to finish the design so that it is informed and influenced to include edge cases. This stage also comprises of implementation reviews involving all stakeholders, where the engineers display demos in-product.
Flexible group plans is one of the ways Project Fi has made the service convenient for users. source: The Verge.Release
The team follows a six-week release cycle for the mobile app wherein, a new version of the app is released every six weeks. The web app is pushed every week. Beyond that, for the overall product, there is major launch annually. This generally coincides with the holiday season and a hardware launch around October. The plan is to increase this frequency in the future, so that there is one major release in the first half of the year, around March, and then the other one in October.
Customer Feedback
To gauge success from the team’s work, customer satisfaction is a metric that is actively tracked.
On Project Fi, customer satisfaction sits around 91%. Put into perspective that for other phone carriers, this number is at best in the 70s, it’s an impressive stat. It is also a testament to the team’s effort of creating a transparent and simple experience.
The UX team conducts customer surveys to monitor satisfaction and also looks at support tickets collected from the customer support team.
Another interesting source of feedback comes from what Jay described as ‘Starfood’. Starfood-ing is Google’s spin on dogfooding, or testing your product internally to the fullest. But given that a sample size of only Google employees would not be big enough in case of a phone carrier service, friends and family of fellow Googlers are also included into the starfood ring and act as early testers for the product.
Apart from this, at a weekly cross-functional leads meeting, the top 10 user issues are also discussed. Not only do they track the persona of users that make up their customer base today, but with the help of a marketing agency, also establish personas for perspective users most likely to be suited for Project Fi.
UX + Marketing = Great Experience!
Creating a great user experience is it’s own form of marketing
-Hubspot
Often user experience is considered to be the serving side of things, while marketing is considered the selling side. But having the two sides work in cohesion can create a much better and seamless experience for the end user. And more so in the case of Project Fi, which competes with traditional phone carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile.
Jay: “We work very closely with the marketing team. Traditionally, the design team has owned a lot of the marketing side because if you think about Project Fi, your experience of the product really does start from the marketing side. Unlike an app, where sometimes people might not even go to the marketing site, and can directly download the app from the Play Store. But because Project Fi is like a phone company, you really need to convince people beforehand, and that starts with the marketing side.”
“We work with the marketing team to decide what are our brand values, what is the tone we want to communicate, what is the message we want to get across, what is our personality. From there, marketing works with us to come up with the creatives that will be the video ads or a specific concept. But we work together to decide how that gets realized. So they own the stuff around TV ads and we work together on the website.”
Challenges in running a UX team
We asked Jay what were the main challenges in running a UX team and leading the design effort in general. Here’s her take on it:
“One of the biggest challenges that designers face across organizations, sometimes, is getting an equal set at the table. And it’s not necessarily because there’s a lack of respect of design. It’s more so because of a lack of understanding about the nuances and the complexities of specific design problems.
The thing about design is that if it is good, it is not always noticeable. But one doesn’t realize how much work went into making something that simple. And so designers, not just at Google, but at probably any company, undertake a lot of work that doesn’t have anything to do with design itself.
During collaboration, getting buy-in from your stakeholders can be a challenge. UX designers represent the user and focus on their concerns. At times, that may not align with business goals. As a UX-er, maintaining that balance of channeling the user and keeping the company’s business goals in mind is important. On the surface something may not work for the engineers, but as a UX designer it is our job to communicate its value, justify the merits of one design over another, and being reasonable enough to comprise when necessary.”
Overseeing the team and future plans
On her end, Jay gets into the weeds if something specifically needs her attention or if there’s a complex project that needs all hands on deck. Overall she monitors the product design strategy , what comes next and how that has to be worked out, apart from driving the planning and prioritization on each project. She closely oversees all of the design work and actively critiques her team’s work.
“Because I have an overarching view of the entire product and what everyone is working on, I’m able to connect the dots of the different parts of the product. I ensure that nothing is left unaddressed and all the cases are being covered.”
She also coordinates with the heads of the marketing, engineering and product teams on higher level product decisions, such as promotional campaigns, referral programs centered around hardware launches, growth goals, and coordinating engineering timelines.
Now that the team has built a product that users like, and have responded positively to since Project Fi’s launch, the goal for the future is to market it more aggressively.
If these ideas seem interesting to you, then you can check out Project Fi’s website here. You can also follow Jay Wong on Twitter. We’re grateful to her for taking the time to speak with us and share her thoughts and ideas.
And in case reading this makes you interested in working on Jay’s team, then here are the things she looks for when adding to her team:
“The qualities that I look for are, of course, basic skill set in design, quality of craft and execution. But what I’m actually looking for is someone who has a growth mindset, is willing to learn, egoless and has an eagerness to learn.”
This interview is part of zipBoard’s design series where we speak to product and UX designers to better understand their work and challenges. You can read more of those here.
zipBoard helps teams communicate better with contextual feedback by adding annotation and comments on web projects. Whether that’s a live website, HTML prototype, image or PDF. If your team is facing collaboration challenges, then see how zipBoard can make things easier for you here.https://medium.com/media/14fe222aef772f504c661b9de7d5c05b/href
Leading UX on Project Fi: Interview with Jay Wong from Google was originally published in zipBoard on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.