Method Podcast from Google Design

In this episode, host Travis Neilson interviews a trio of Google illustrators creating images to inform and delight millions of people around the world. Designer Mat Helme shares insights from his work creating the guidelines for Google's product illustrations. Motion Designer Laura Dumitru talks about her creative process and the animations she designed for the new Pixel startup sequence. Doodler Hélène Leroux shares the story of her illustrations for Back To The Moon—a Google doodle about filmmaker Georges Méliès, and the first doodle to be nominated for an Emmy.

A few highlights:

On what makes a good product illustration"Immediate comprehension." — Mat Helme

On the hierarchy of words and images"It's a bit of a competition sometimes, between illustration and copy. We've learned that a lot of the time, if you have an animation, people just don't read the copy. It's something we always need to be careful with." — Laura Dumitru

On the magic of Google doodles

"The logo of a company is normally something untouchable. If you have the freedom to replace the logo with, oh, a dragon who's burning the letters, it's something that you've never seen before. It brings a lot of fun to the brand." — Hélène Leroux

Handy info and links for this episode:

• "Principles Not Platitudes" is an essay written by Google UX Researcher Jess Holbrook, arguing in favor of measurable and meaningful design principles.
• Back To The Moon is the first Google doodle to be nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Program. Honoring French director Georges Méliès, the short film was directed by Hélène Leroux and Fx Goby. It was produced by Nexus Studios.
• Go behind-the-scenes of Back To The Moon in this video by the doodle team and Google Spotlight Stories.

Mat Helme is a Palo Alto-based visual designer and the lead designer of Google's product illustration rulebook.

Laura Dumitru is a Google motion designer based in London. Her current work includes illustration and animation for the Pixel phone.

Hélène Leroux is an animator, designer, art director, and film director based in San Francisco. She is currently on Google's doodle team.

In this episode, Travis Neilson interviews Jens Riegelsberger, a UX Director at Google, about the company's evolving design identity. Riegelsberger discusses his role in launching Google's Product Excellence program—an initiative that sets the bar for quality and usability across all Google products—and what it means to build teams that favor multiple perspectives and diverse skillsets.

A few highlights:

On being a good leader"Look at your job as chiefly to enable other people's insights and eureka moments. That doesn't mean abdicating responsibility. It takes actually quite a bit of work to do this well."

On embracing healthy friction"Frankly, we can't have a static, preordained culture because we work in a field where so much change is happening all the time. So knowing that we all have to negotiate culture and that it's a fluid thing prepares us well for the changes that are coming."

On the value of "dabbling""I have a PhD in computer science, but I also taught at art school. So there's this mix of different identities that I've had to cobble together. I've never deeply believed, 'Okay, this worldview is the only true worldview; my science or my community knows how it's done,' because I've always jumped around."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Riegelsberger co-authored this whitepaper on a 2013 project aimed at increasing empathy for users. Over the last five years, the project has helped more than 1,500 Google engineers, designers, and product managers immerse themselves in observational research.
• Product Excellence is a Google initiative, started in 2014, that's working to identify and solve systemic barriers to excellence—by focusing on the user. Download a PDF of the principles to guide your own work.
• Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed the company's first Pagerank algorithm in 1996 at Stanford.
• Global UX research is a rapidly growing field. Here are 10 strategies used by Google's international research team to build empathy and impact for the next billion users.

In this episode, Travis Neilson interviews Jens Riegelsberger, a UX Director at Google, about the company's evolving design identity. Riegelsberger discusses his role in launching Google's Product Excellence program—an initiative that sets the bar for quality and usability across all Google products—and what it means to build teams that favor multiple perspectives and diverse skillsets.

A few highlights:

On being a good leader"Look at your job as chiefly to enable other people's insights and eureka moments. That doesn't mean abdicating responsibility. It takes actually quite a bit of work to do this well."

On embracing healthy friction"Frankly, we can't have a static, preordained culture because we work in a field where so much change is happening all the time. So knowing that we all have to negotiate culture and that it's a fluid thing prepares us well for the changes that are coming."

On the value of "dabbling""I have a PhD in computer science, but I also taught at art school. So there's this mix of different identities that I've had to cobble together. I've never deeply believed, 'Okay, this worldview is the only true worldview; my science or my community knows how it's done,' because I've always jumped around."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Riegelsberger co-authored this whitepaper on a 2013 project aimed at increasing empathy for users. Over the last five years, the project has helped more than 1,500 Google engineers, designers, and product managers immerse themselves in observational research.
• Product Excellence is a Google initiative, started in 2014, that's working to identify and solve systemic barriers to excellence—by focusing on the user. Download a PDF of the principles to guide your own work.
• Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed the company's first Pagerank algorithm in 1996 at Stanford.
• Global UX research is a rapidly growing field. Here are 10 strategies used by Google's international research team to build empathy and impact for the next billion users.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Ryan Powell, Waymo's Head of UX Design, about the company's Early Rider Program and the challenges of designing during a technology paradigm shift. Plus, Powell unpacks the thinking behind how his team decides what details to include in the car's interfaces so they foster trust with users. A few highlights:

On the challenge of replacing human drivers"I think there's some number out there that says more than half of all communication is nonverbal. When you don't have that human in the driver's seat, how do you recreate the [nonverbal] communication that takes place?"

On building trust with the passenger"I think there's a fine line between providing the user with just the right amount of information versus overloading them or being intrusive. We think a lot about when we should try to draw your attention out of what you're doing in the car versus providing ambient information that's available in case you glance up and want to see something."

On the value of quick prototyping"What's nice about the way that Waymo works is that my team and the engineers all sit very, very close together. We're able to try ideas and get something into the vehicle on a weekly basis. We're able to get out and just hop in the car right outside the door, go for a test drive, and try something out."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Waymo's Early Rider Program: Launched in Phoenix in 2017
• Waymo 360: An interactive 360 degree video showing a self-driving car's POV
• Kitt: A self-driving car from the classic 1980s TV series Knight Rider

Ryan Powell is head of UX at Waymo, formerly Google's self-driving car project. Before joining Google's UX Leadership team in 2014, Ryan worked for Samsung, Microsoft, and Motorola developing consumer product experiences.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Ryan Powell, Waymo's Head of UX Design, about the company's Early Rider Program and the challenges of designing during a technology paradigm shift. Plus, Powell unpacks the thinking behind how his team decides what details to include in the car's interfaces so they foster trust with users. A few highlights:

On the challenge of replacing human drivers"I think there's some number out there that says more than half of all communication is nonverbal. When you don't have that human in the driver's seat, how do you recreate the [nonverbal] communication that takes place?"

On building trust with the passenger"I think there's a fine line between providing the user with just the right amount of information versus overloading them or being intrusive. We think a lot about when we should try to draw your attention out of what you're doing in the car versus providing ambient information that's available in case you glance up and want to see something."

On the value of quick prototyping"What's nice about the way that Waymo works is that my team and the engineers  all sit very, very close together. We're able to try ideas and get something into the vehicle on a weekly basis. We're able to get out and just hop in the car right outside the door,  go for a test drive, and try something out."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Waymo's Early Rider Program: Launched in Phoenix in 2017
• Waymo 360: An interactive 360 degree video showing a self-driving car's POV
• Kitt: A self-driving car from the classic 1980s TV series Knight Rider

Ryan Powell is head of UX at Waymo, formerly Google's self-driving car project. Before joining Google's UX Leadership team  in 2014, Ryan worked for Samsung, Microsoft, and Motorola developing consumer product experiences.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Google Sound Design Lead Conor O'Sullivan about the nuances of crafting product sounds and the choices that shape everything from notification pings to haptic feedback. The conversation also covers the elements that make up Google's sonic branding, including resolving G chords and piano music. A few highlights:

On the value of sonic subtlety, 9:31 "I do think your goal as a sound designer is to provide feedback that doesn't jump out too much. It sounds very counterintuitive—you're designing sound that you don't want to be heard—but in a lot of cases, it makes sense."

On working with a multidisciplinary team, 15:57 "We have a team of writers—the UX content team—and they're absolutely awesome at naming our ringtones. They really capture the feeling of the sound. Our default notification sound is called Popcorn. It's such an awesome name for that sound. If you're to imagine what popcorn sounded like musically, you'd pick something like that."

On using sound to build a brand, 10:22 "I really think about creating sound as creating a soundscape. You want to be able to tell a story from end to end."

Conor O'Sullivan is a sound designer and composer originally from Ireland, now based in San Francisco, CA. Conor is best known for his work in the emerging field of sound design for consumer products, including interface sounds for the Google Pixel phone.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Google Sound Design Lead Conor O'Sullivan about the nuances of crafting product sounds and the choices that shape everything from notification pings to haptic feedback. The conversation also covers the elements that make up Google's sonic branding, including resolving G chords and piano music. A few highlights:

On the value of sonic subtlety, 9:31 "I do think your goal as a sound designer is to provide feedback that doesn't jump out too much. It sounds very counterintuitive—you're designing sound that you don't want to be heard—but in a lot of cases, it makes sense."

On working with a multidisciplinary team, 15:57 "We have a team of writers—the UX content team—and they're absolutely awesome at naming our ringtones. They really capture the feeling of the sound. Our default notification sound is called Popcorn. It's such an awesome name for that sound. If you're to imagine what popcorn sounded like musically, you'd pick something like that."

On using sound to build a brand, 10:22 "I really think about creating sound as creating a soundscape. You want to be able to tell a story from end to end."

Conor O'Sullivan is a sound designer and composer originally from Ireland, now based in San Francisco, CA. Conor is best known for his work in the emerging field of sound design for consumer products, including interface sounds for the Google Pixel phone.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Material Design director Rich Fulcher about the evolution of design tools, the importance of flexibility in a design system, and what it means to design for users who are also designers and developers. Learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google by subscribing to the Method podcast on Google Play, iTunes, RSS, or Spotify.

A few highlights:

On designing for designers and developers

"It's a little hard to get a feel for who your users are at the end of the day because you have layers of users. You have the other designers and developers who are going to utilize the system that you're producing. They're going to look at the guidance, they're going to look at the code that you're building, and they're going to use that to satisfy the needs of their users in turn. So that kind of hierarchy of users is always a tricky thing to kind of get one's mind around a little bit."

On the ever-evolving state of design

"We say this same saying many, many times on our team. We say, 'design is never done,' and I think we feel that in our hearts all of the time."

On the challenges of building a design system

"I think some designers approach design systems as, 'Oh, they're making all my decisions for me—they're taking my authorship away. We very much don't think that way. We're trying to provide what we think of as a, a well lighted path of good decisions you can make."

Rich Fulcher is the director of Material Design. He worked with a multi-disciplinary group of designers, researchers, writers, and engineers to build the updated Material Design, which launched earlier this month at Google I/O.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Material Design director Rich Fulcher about the evolution of design tools, the importance of flexibility in a design system, and what it means to design for users who are also designers and developers. Learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google by subscribing to the Method podcast on Google Play, iTunes, RSS, or Spotify.

A few highlights:

On designing for designers and developers

"It's a little hard to get a feel for who your users are at the end of the day because you have layers of users. You have the other designers and developers who are going to utilize the system that you're producing. They're going to look at the guidance, they're going to look at the code that you're building, and they're going to use that to satisfy the needs of their users in turn. So that kind of hierarchy of users is always a tricky thing to kind of get one's mind around a little bit."

On the ever-evolving state of design

"We say this same saying many, many times on our team. We say, 'design is never done,'  and I think we feel that in our hearts all of the time."

On the challenges of building a design system

"I think some designers approach design systems as, 'Oh, they're making all my decisions for me—they're taking my authorship away. We very much don't think that way. We're trying to provide what we think of as a, a well lighted path of good decisions you can make."

Rich Fulcher is the director of Material Design. He worked with a multi-disciplinary group of designers, researchers, writers, and engineers to build the updated Material Design, which launched earlier this month at Google I/O.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews UX Researcher Todd Hausman about human side of research, taking career risks, and his work on Chrome OS—the operating system on devices like Chromebook and Acer's new Tab 10 tablet. Learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google by subscribing to the Method podcast on Google Play, iTunes, RSS, or Spotify.

A few highlights:

On the best part of being a researcher

"What I love about being a researcher is that you get this snapshot of someone's life for just a fraction of a moment. You get to see where their pain is, where their strife is, where their hopes are, and their aspirations."

On overcoming career fear

"Do bold things because what's the worst thing that can happen? You get fired. …[But] if you got this job, don't you think you can get another one? What often holds us back is the fear of discipline or the fear of retribution. But don't be afraid."

On giving honest feedback

"It's one of the hardest parts of leadership. The people I admire the most are people who can give hard feedback in a way that doesn't feel hurtful or cutting. It feels true and it gives you something to grow on."

Todd Hausman is a UX Researcher working on Google's Chrome OS. Todd specializes in ideation in cross-disciplinary teams, participatory design, and ethnographic field studies—especially in emerging markets.