Method Podcast from Google Design

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.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Interaction Designers Alison Boncha and Fiona Yeung about impostor syndrome, the importance of mentorship, and how they developed the bold, inclusive new brand for Hexagon—a supportive community of women and non-binary UXers. The trio also discuss great career advice, hard lessons, and why everyone should have a "Yay Folder."

A few highlights:

Alison on why you should leave your first job

"A friend in college told me, never stay your first job more than a year… or you're going to always be viewed as the junior person on the team."

Fiona on the hardest lesson she's still learning

"Even if you're the juiciest peach on earth, not everyone likes peaches. Remember that no matter how hard you try, there are still going be people you can't please. You have to like accept yourself for who you are."

How Hexagon got its name

"We came up with three names that we thought had potential: Thrive UX, We UX, and Go Boldly. Turns out Go Boldly already exists. But We UX and Thrive UX felt too literal. I wanted something that was more symbolic, with a deeper metaphorical meaning. So I was brainstorming more and came across an article on beehives and why you'd want to structure your team culture like a bee hive. I was fascinated… beehives are also symbolic of great collaborative environments because you have organization and structure and leadership. And worker bees are all female. So we explored more bee imagery, and the shape of honeycombs is a Hexagon."

Alison Boncha is an Interaction Designer on Google Express within the Shopping team. Allison works alongside engineers and product managers to take a product vision and deliver the best experience possible.

Fiona Yeung is a creator, artist, and Interaction Designer on Google's Material Design team. She's also the new head of Hexagon, leading an all-volunteer effort to foster supportive UX community.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews Interaction Designers Alison Boncha and Fiona Yeung about impostor syndrome, the importance of mentorship, and how they developed the bold, inclusive new brand for Hexagon—a supportive community of women and non-binary UXers. The trio also discuss great career advice, hard lessons, and why everyone should have a "Yay Folder."

A few highlights:

Alison on why you should leave your first job

"A friend in college told me, never stay your first job more than a year… or you're going to always be viewed as the junior person on the team."

Fiona on the hardest lesson she's still learning

"Even if you're the juiciest peach on earth, not everyone likes peaches. Remember that no matter how hard you try, there are still going be people you can't please. You have to like accept yourself for who you are."

How Hexagon got its name

"We came up with three names that we thought had potential: Thrive UX, We UX, and Go Boldly. Turns out Go Boldly already exists. But We UX and Thrive UX felt too literal. I wanted something that was more symbolic, with a deeper metaphorical meaning. So I was brainstorming more and came across an article on beehives and why you'd want to structure your team culture like a bee hive. I was fascinated… beehives are also symbolic of great collaborative environments because you have organization and structure and leadership. And worker bees are all female. So we explored more bee imagery, and the shape of honeycombs is a Hexagon."

Alison Boncha is an Interaction Designer on Google Express within the Shopping team. Allison works alongside engineers and product managers to take a product vision and deliver the best experience possible.

Fiona Yeung is a creator, artist, and Interaction Designer on Google's Material Design team. She's also the new head of Hexagon, leading an all-volunteer effort to foster supportive UX community.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews UX Designer Josh Lovejoy about the design of the Google Clips camera, building user trust in 'magical' products, and ways of using UX to help people feel more in the moment. Learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google by subscribing to the Method podcast.

A few highlights:

On overcoming the myths of magic, neutral AI, 10:22

"We can use technology to connect better with the self that we aspire to be. If we can get over some of these myths… I think we are capable of unlocking a renaissance of personal expression and human connection."

Why the Clips camera still has a photo-capture button, 6:35

"It was a fun internal debate for a long time. We hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided the initial version would not have a button. ...But then as we iterated over time, we found [a button helped build] trust—that bonding relationship between user and a new technology."

On the beauty of imperfection, 8:26

"When we tried to get things perfect, it actually was really problematic. Even when we hit that goldilocks sweet spot… users still believed that we must have missed something. [Showing more images that users could delete] made a huge difference in confidence level because the user got to be there. They got to be the curator and have the final say."

On taking an empowering approach, 5:20

"We wanted to build intentionally toward answering the question 'What is memorable and how can we use technology to help people feel more in the moment?'"

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Google Brain: A team at Google working to advance artificial intelligence through research and systems engineering, part of the overall Google AI effort.
• Google Clips: A wireless smart camera that captures images of familiar people and pets.

Josh Lovejoy is a Seattle-based User Experience Designer in Google's Experimental Design Group, where he works at the intersection of product design, ethics, and artificial intelligence. Josh also leads UX for People + AI Research (PAIR), a Google initiative to conduct fundamental research, invent new technology, and create frameworks for design in order to drive a humanistic approach to artificial intelligence.

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews UX Designer Josh Lovejoy about the design of the Google Clips camera, building user trust in 'magical' products, and ways of using UX to help people feel more in the moment. Learn more about the journeys and creative decisions of designers at Google by subscribing to the Method podcast.

A few highlights:

On overcoming the myths of magic, neutral AI, 10:22

"We can use technology to connect better with the self that we aspire to be. If we can get over some of these myths… I think we are capable of unlocking a renaissance of personal expression and human connection."

Why the Clips camera still has a photo-capture button, 6:35

"It was a fun internal debate for a long time. We hemmed and hawed and ultimately decided the initial version would not have a button. ...But then as we iterated over time, we found [a button helped build] trust—that bonding relationship between user and a new technology."

On the beauty of imperfection, 8:26

"When we tried to get things perfect, it actually was really problematic. Even when we hit that goldilocks sweet spot… users still believed that we must have missed something. [Showing more images that users could delete] made a huge difference in confidence level because the user got to be there. They got to be the curator and have the final say."

On taking an empowering approach, 5:20

"We wanted to build intentionally toward answering the question 'What is memorable and how can we use technology to help people feel more in the moment?'"

Handy info and links for this episode:

• Google Brain: A team at Google working to advance artificial intelligence through research and systems engineering, part of the overall Google AI effort.
• Google Clips: A wireless smart camera that captures images of familiar people and pets.

Josh Lovejoy is a Seattle-based User Experience Designer in Google's Experimental Design Group, where he works at the intersection of product design, ethics, and artificial intelligence. Josh also leads UX for People + AI Research (PAIR), a Google initiative to conduct fundamental research, invent new technology, and create frameworks for design in order to drive a humanistic approach to artificial intelligence.

In this episode, guest interviewer and Google designer Travis Neilson talks with Senior Interaction Designer Margaret Urban about the magic of language, the importance of considering cognitive load, and the future of voice user interface design.

On making computers sound human, 2:35

"How language is used in the social context is really important in creating something that sounds natural. Because we want the computers to talk like people. We don't want to force the people to talk like computers."

On the magic of language, 3:15

"I've been fascinated by language all my life. I think it's magical. It's like telepathy—that simply by the vibration of a sound wave, I can put an idea in your head."

On the science of speech, 7:50

"One of the roughest, cheapest ways we used to do sentiment analysis was by checking the amount of profanity that we were getting in the user data. We were literally running scripts to check the recognition logs for profanity—because when people are swearing, it tells us they're unhappy."

On how the brain processes language, 14:30

"It turns out that cognitive load is physically real. If you've got an electricity-measuring cap on somebody's head and you say something like, 'the birds that I saw in the swamp was white'—the minute you get to the word 'was' the brain kind of spins up in a little extra cycle. It's not that the meaning of the sentence is totally lost, but your brain works harder in parsing and understanding that meaning."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• VUI: voice user interface.
• Sentiment analysis: The use of natural language processing to identify and study affective states and feeling.
• Arrival: A 2016 sci-fi drama about a linguist trying to communicate with aliens to understand why they've come to earth.

VUI I/O playlist: A handful of talks from Google I/O 2017 on conversation design and voice user interfaces.

In this episode, guest interviewer and Google designer Travis Neilson talks with Senior Interaction Designer Margaret Urban about the magic of language, the importance of considering cognitive load, and the future of voice user interface design.

On making computers sound human, 2:35

"How language is used in the social context is really important in creating something that sounds natural. Because we want the computers to talk like people. We don't want to force the people to talk like computers."

On the magic of language, 3:15

"I've been fascinated by language all my life. I think it's magical. It's like telepathy—that simply by the vibration of a sound wave, I can put an idea in your head."

On the science of speech, 7:50

"One of the roughest, cheapest ways we used to do sentiment analysis was by checking the amount of profanity that we were getting in the user data. We were literally running scripts to check the recognition logs for profanity—because when people are swearing, it tells us they're unhappy."

On how the brain processes language, 14:30

"It turns out that cognitive load is physically real. If you've got an electricity-measuring cap on somebody's head and you say something like, 'the birds that I saw in the swamp was white'—the minute you get to the word 'was' the brain kind of spins up in a little extra cycle. It's not that the meaning of the sentence is totally lost, but your brain works harder in parsing and understanding that meaning."

Handy info and links for this episode:

• VUI: voice user interface.
• Sentiment analysis: The use of natural language processing to identify and study affective states and feeling.
• Arrival: A 2016 sci-fi drama about a linguist trying to communicate with aliens to understand why they've come to earth.

VUI I/O playlist: A handful of talks from Google I/O 2017 on conversation design and voice user interfaces.

In this episode, Aidan interviews Visual Designer Ayan Daniels about her work on Android Messages, her debate-sparking illustration for the Pixel phone, and what it's like being a woman of color at Google.

Ayan Daniels is a San Francisco-based Visual Designer hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio. Currently working on the Android Messages team, Ayan has been at Google for more than two years and previously worked on both Android and Pixel.

Handy info and links for this episode:

• RCS (Rich Communications Services): a universal communication protocol designed to replace SMS with its more feature-rich system.
• Android Messages: The default RCS messaging app on Android devices
• Duo: Google's one-to-one video calling app.
• Allo: An expressive, AI-infused messaging app made by Google.
• The first Pixel Welcome screen designed by Ayan and animated by Remington McElhaney

In this episode, Aidan interviews Visual Designer Ayan Daniels about her work on Android Messages, her debate-sparking illustration for the Pixel phone, and what it's like being a woman of color at Google.

Ayan Daniels is a San Francisco-based Visual Designer hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio. Currently working on the Android Messages team, Ayan has been at Google for more than two years and previously worked on both Android and Pixel.

Handy info and links for this episode:

• RCS (Rich Communications Services): a universal communication protocol designed to replace SMS with its more feature-rich system.
• Android Messages: The default RCS messaging app on Android devices
• Duo: Google's one-to-one video calling app.
• Allo: An expressive, AI-infused messaging app made by Google.
• The first Pixel Welcome screen designed by Ayan and animated by Remington McElhaney

UX Researcher and Sprint Master Sydney Hessel talks about her unconventional research background, the ins and outs of the sprint methodology, and getting people out of their comfort zones to generate creative ideas.