Flexible controls for Google Meet users to easily manage the upcoming meetings.
Note. I do not work at Google, this was a passion project.
Personal Project
Overview
As a personal project, I designed new features in Google Meet that allow users to easily create a new meeting, propose a new time for upcoming meetings, decline meetings, and auto enter next meeting.
BACKGROUND
Meeting after meeting have become norm
When you are in a meeting, do you check your calendar about upcoming meetings? As a designer, I occasionally have multiple meetings on a daily basis, which occurs back-to-back. When I am in a meeting, I want to focus on meeting, without having to check the calendar or rely on system notifications to check the upcoming meetings.
This experience led me to explore ways to rethink and design new ways to manage upcoming meetings from the Google Meet. Before I jumped into identifying problems, I did quick survey to understand how others are experiencing online video meetings.
Back-to-back meetings occur with same group of people
Have back-to-back meetings at least once a week
Spent in video meetings for upper management
PROBLEMS
Weaving through meeting schedules while focusing on current meeting
I collected data from Google Meet community and conducted semi-structured interviews with working professionals pain points from their experience with Google Meet and meetings in general:
Packed meetings
Some days, working professionals have their calendars filled with consecutive meetings and while they are in the meeting, it's often hard to keep track of upcoming meetings.
Distracted
Many users relied on either e-mail, calendar, or system notifications to check for upcoming meetings, which often distracts the ongoing meetings.
USER PERSONA
Focusing on working professionals
With key insights that I gathered from the research, I created two primary personas that I wanted to address the problem for:
OPPORTUNITY
How might we help working professionals to better manage upcoming schedules and not be distracted while in the meeting?
GOALS
Empower users to focus on meeting
With a good understanding of problems and opportunities, I identified two main goals to address from the current Google Meet.
Integrated services
Manage upcoming schedules within Google Meet, without having to open up Gmail or Google Calendar
Awareness
Show upcoming Google Meet meetings from Google Meet.
EVALUATION
Identifying where to redesign
Before I jumped into brainstorming, it was important for me to identify where the redesign of Google Meet will take place.
While Google Meet home page already displayed the upcoming schedule, I wanted to avoid interactions that would force the user out of the existing meeting, so I decided that the inside the meeting would be the most ideal place.
IDEATION
Exploring new possibilities
After identifying where to design new features, I quickly sketched out multiple ideas for managing upcoming schedules in Google Meet.
Idea 1
In-app alert and split-view
Idea 2
Calendar Icon to view upcoming meeting
While both ideas addressed the need for managing schedules and being aware of upcoming meetings within Google Meet, both options had a major flaw, because, with the Google Meet tile view, the action controls could possibly get in the way.
Upon further audit on Google Meet, I noticed this interaction pattern that shows side panel.
This side-panel interaction seemed a viable design approach, since, whichever viewing mode the user is on, it will automatically rearrange each video tile. So, I leveraged this pattern with additional action control in the bottom-right footer. For third idea, I created a medium-fidelity wireframe that I could test with.
Idea 3
Add calendar action control in the footer
LEAN USER TESTING
Understanding how users perceive the new controls
After generating third idea, I created a wireframe to conduct lean user testing. I conducted the user testing with coworkers and friends that I conducted interviews with.
Feedback 1. Need for smoother transition between meetings
Few participants mentioned that reminders alone would not be helpful if the next meeting starts right after. This was surprising because even with the Join Now button, which would allow a user to move to the next meeting from Google Meet, people expected to have more automatic control for upcoming meetings.
Feedback 2. Ways to create a new meeting
Some participants mentioned that they often create follow-up meetings. But as the day gets busy, they often forget to do so. They suggested a way to create a follow-up meeting from Google Meet.
ITERATION
Taking inspiration for next iteration
Based on the feedback, I thought about an alternative approach to facilitate the smooth transition for the back-to-back meeting.
I checked other video applications for inspiration and I found out about the Zoom Auto Start feature. Zoom Auto Start is a feature integrated within Zoom Room, which automatically starts a meeting for users. I have decided this incorporate similar feature into the iteration for smoother transition between meetings.
HIGH-FI DESIGN
Cohesive design following Material Design guidelines
I finalized the user flow to account for new requirements. Each task requires same initial entry point of clicking Calendar icon button, which would provide consistent flow to achieve each task.
User Flow
Design Components
Adhering to Material Design Guidelines
SOLUTION
New Controls for Google Meet
Set auto enter
Users can easily set up an auto enter to allow Google Meet to switch to the next meeting automatically. Users can also set a timer to remind them before the auto enter.
Schedule a new meeting
Flexibility to create a meeting and easily copy participants from the current meeting if they need to schedule a follow-up meeting.
Propose new time
Things do come up throughout the day, so the new design gives users the ability to propose a new time for upcoming meetings in Google Meet.
Decline meeting
Occasionally, our days are packed with meetings and we might want to free up time to get our work done.
Users can decline upcoming meetings from Google Meet without having to go through Google Calendar or G-mail.
NEXT STEPS
What would I have done if I was designing at Google...
Since this was a personal project of mine, I wish I had an opportunity to test the new concept with larger user base to validate design. Had I been part of Google Meet Design Team, I would have tried to validate the design using these key metrics :
Conversion Rate : Check percentage of users that are performing desired actions to auto enter new meeting, reschedule, decline, or create new meetings from Google Meet instead of Google Calendar or G-mail. If user came to Google Meet, but later used Google Calendar or G-mail to perform these actions, then I would consider it to be a drop-off.
Task Success Rate :Check how many users can complete each new feature. Ideally, I would have tested with around 100s of users and target for ~80% Success Rate.
Feature Adoption Rate : Task success rate alone wouldn't tell whether the new features would be useful for users, therefore, I would have also utilized how many existing Google Meet users are using the new features, instead of Google Calendar or G-mail to auto enter meeting, reschedule, decline, and create new meetings.
Lesson Learned
Working on redesign of existing product, especially a product that are used by millions of user allowed me to think design with constraints and strategy in mind.
Designing to conform to Design System: Working on a redesign gave me an opportunity to investigate more deeply into Material Design and the rationale behind each design component, which led me to think more critically about which design components to use in every step of the user flow.
Product Thinking :Working on a redesign of an existing product required me to think deeply about how Google Meet currently integrates with other Google products such as Google Calendar and G-mail. The whole ecosystem of these three Google products helps working professionals manage meetings. Based on my personal experience using Google Meet, I saw the gap in Google Meet that can be improved to enhance the productivity of Google users.
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