Context

Daily at Google, a global team collaborates on building projects. From engineers shaping designs to cleaners ensuring post-construction cleanliness, effective communication is crucial. During construction, remote communication is vital for cost optimization, and in these moments, a digital solution steps in for seamless collaboration — and no, it's not Google Meet this time! 😄

01. Understand the goal (Why?)

In developing the Vizzy app, I conducted an interview with my Google manager to clarify the app's purpose and goals. Here's what we discovered:

• Why is this product important
  ‍The Vizzy app revolutionizes remote communication for Google technicians, electricians, and inspectors working on construction projects. It eliminates the need for frequent travel, bridging geographical gaps, enhancing collaboration, and reducing costs.
• What problems are we trying to solve?
  ‍Vizzy solves the problems of high costs and inefficiencies with in-person inspections. It cuts down travel expenses, makes decisions faster, and handles challenges in remote areas, allowing inspections to be done easily from anywhere.
• What impact does it have on the world?
  ‍By reducing the need for travel and improving how projects are managed, Vizzy lowers carbon emissions and speeds up project completion. It ensures experts can oversee work in remote areas, helping to build infrastructure faster around the world.
• How does this product benefit users?
  ‍Technicians, electricians, and inspectors benefit from real-time updates and inspection sharing. Vizzy increases productivity by reducing downtime and errors, giving instant feedback, and ensuring better quality results.
• What business opportunity does it create?
  Vizzy should lower expenses and boosts teamwork by making remote inspections easier. It reduces the time needed for inspections and increases accuracy and efficiency.

02. “Who” Context & Needs

To understand our users, their problems and environment, I interviewed 3 inspectors and 2 technicians. During these sessions, I asked about:

To understand our users, their problems and environment, I interviewed 3 inspectors and 2 technicians. During these sessions, I asked about:

03. Ideate + Prioritise

As cross-functional collaboration is crucial while making digital products, beside daily calls, retrospectives and other calls we organised design-dev-business meetings where we were ideating and prioritising our future steps.
After creating the initial user flows, we held brainstorming sessions with the business team and checked technical limits with the development team. We focused on:

• Choosing MVP Features:
Deciding which features to include in the first version based on user needs and business goals.
• Identifying Constraints:
Looking at technical and business limits to make sure our plans were possible and practical.
• Prioritizing Ideas:
Using the Impact vs. Effort matrix and other criteria like user value to decide which ideas to move forward with.
• How does this product benefit users?
Technicians, electricians, and inspectors benefit from real-time updates and inspection sharing. Vizzy increases productivity by reducing downtime and errors, giving instant feedback, and ensuring better quality results.
• What business opportunity does it create?
Vizzy should lower expenses and boosts teamwork by making remote inspections easier. It reduces the time needed for inspections and increases accuracy and efficiency.

We gathered feedback from everyone involved to improve our ideas. When there were disagreements, we placed ideas on feature matrix to find the best balance. This helped us pick the most important and achievable features for the MVP.

04. Solution | Design from scratch

After we built and confirmed user flows we started to design low + mid fidelity wireframes.

Upon PO confirmation, we encountered a UI library issue. Unable to use some of the current GM2 (Google Material 2) design system due to corporate constraints, we had to recreate GM elements from scratch and develop frontend specifications.
With the recent release of variables, tokens, and dev mode in Figma, I had the opportunity to enhance the design-development experience on the project. Along with another designer, I transformed styles into variables and then into tokens. We held several sessions with developers to explore how these features could speed up the development process.

More UI (Google Material Guidelines)

While sticking to Google's guidelines in Vizzy's interface it limited my freedom to experiment with flashy designs, this constraint served as a valuable opportunity. It deepened my proficiency in Material Design and shifted my focus towards elevating the app's functionality.

Prototype & Testing

To test our hypotheses, we created a clickable prototype. Here are a few screens. I also prepared usability testing documentation with scenarios.

Metrics & Improvements

According to the info from Google analytic team our MVP app launch resulted in significant improvements in various areas. Here’s a summary of the enhancements for the period of 4 months after launching Vizzy apk and implemented it into the general workflow of Technicians and Inspectors: