Household Notes on Hub
A usability study with the Google Assistant team
Background
Household notes is feature on the Google Home Hub that allows users to leave notes on the device which can be either communal notes or private notes
Evaluative and Strategic Research
Main Goals
To understand user perceptions and motivations around leaving notes for other members in the household
To evaluate whether or not household notes feature aligns with users’ current behavior and expectations
Methodology & Procedure
Usability Study
8 participants recruited
30 min sessions
Lab setting in Mountain View & San Francisco
Recruited Participants
Families or adults living in a shared household
Had mixed experience with home devices
May or may not have prior experience leaving handwritten notes
My Role
Process & Challenges
I invited and encouraged stakeholders to view the usability sessions to help further their shared understanding of user’s needs and increase their overall investment
Disagreement among team
During the initial study briefing, stakeholders (Product managers, designers, engineers) had some early questions around the value of the research. Also they had some disagreements among each other about the direction to take the product.
Encouraging Collaboration
As a way to try and address this, I invited them to view the sessions in the lab while I took notes. Here, we discussed ongoing issues, potential decisions about the product, and data points of interest that otherwise was not stated during the briefing.
I moderated sessions and analyzed findings to learn:
Initial Findings
Initial analysis showed that many participants were confused about the private mode, didn’t see the value in the feature or thought of the notes as reminders
Value & use case
Many participants wouldn’t use the notes feature
Too similar of intent with reminders
Many participants thought of the note feature as the same as reminders
Confusion of the mode
Many participants were confused on who would be able to view ‘private’ notes being on a communal device
(Participant feedback began to uncover a trend in perception)
Example page from report that captures user’s sentiment
Overall this was not the most favorable news to the team wanted to hear. With product launch around the corner, I scheduled to meet with the lead stakeholder to go over the initial findings.
My two main goals at this point were to:
Focus in on what the most actionable insights for the team were
Decide how to best frame unfavorable findings
By meeting with key stakeholders early on
Confirmed team’s priorities
Discussed feasibility of feature requests
Alerts, notifications, assignable notes, device sync
Understand efforts from adjacent teams
Syncing results from a similar study
Incorporating more key data supporting the same findings
Impact & Results
I framed the findings in a way that was conducive for fruitful discussion and highlighted actionable insights to help the team best make strategic decisions
Turning bad news into actionable insights
As a UX researcher, sometimes you have to be the bearer of bad news. In this case, I had to tell the product team that a feature they had been developing for months, was not perceived as useful and was completely confusing to participants. However, in circumstances like this, its critical to keep the door open for constructive conversation and to leave the team at a place where they feel confident going forward.
I created a detailed report that encapsulated user’s sentiment and trends, as well as supporting quotes to highlight the nuance differences between users
Stopping Launch of Feature
As a result of the study and our collaboration, the team made late-stage pivots prior to launching at CES
Removed ‘private notes’ functionality
Shipped experience as communal only feature
Renamed the tool “household notes” (was “communal notes”)
Discussion around combining efforts with ‘reminders’ feature
Will continue to examine iterations of assignable notes & private notes for the future
Quick Summary
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to check out some of my other projects or if you have any questions about the research process for this study, feel free to contact me and I would be happy to go over in more detail!