I joined the Glass team very early, when there were just a few hardware engineers. Working with Tom Chi and Ricardo Prada, I prototyped and tested dozens of interactions, hardware configurations, and visual designs--including the first wearable display. These early designs weren't very slick, but they taught us a lot about what experiences really worked, led to important product decisions like weight distribution and display position, and contributed important IP.

First prototype Design sprint

After stepping out to start the emerging markets design team (below), I returned in 2012 to lead the interface design for the initial product launch. Starting with a team of two, I borrowed ten additional designers and engineers and led a one-month design sprint to decide on the interface strategy. We prototyped five complete options and tested them with our target customers, leading to a clear design decision.

Specifications Mobile + desktop

I led the creation of design specs for both the core Glass interface and the supporting mobile and desktop interfaces. I also restarted recruiting for the team, building to 15 full-time designers and prototypers by the launch date in May 2013.

Documentation + speaking

After the launch, I continued to support new features as well as documenting and evangelizing our design work through public presentations.

Among several other projects, I led the design and prototyping for a communication product, codenamed Megaphone, which allowed people to record, share, and listen to audio messages with people around the world by simply placing a local phone call. This project aimed to bring some of the power of the internet to people without data connections. It also gracefully extended functionality to people who were online.

Pitch deck slide

I also led the concept and product design for a game about managing a street football (soccer) team based in emerging markets cities. By playing matches, recruiting sponsors, and training your team, you could build a dominant local team and take over your city. I managed contract game designers and illustrators to create this game.

Playing a match Your neighborhoods Training your team

I started by taking the design and engineering teams up to San Francisco for a day of interviewing people. We stopped and talked to lots of people on the street about their YouTube experiences--the good, the bad, the funny. We learned that regular people's behaviors were much different than our own; very few people were ready to rely on the internet for entertainment, instead turning mostly to their televisions.

Learning about YouTube use Learning about YouTube use

For the visual design explorations, I crafted a survey that we gave to both internal and external people (via the YouTube blog and Facebook page). I clustered the feedback into five major categories, and led five visual designers in an exploratory process around them. For example, one designer focused on what a "Friendly, Cheerful, Inviting, Playful, and Bright" YouTube would look like, while another tried the direction of "Packed, Dense, Rich, Immersive, and Vibrant".

YouTube users describe the site Visual design explorations

After reviewing all of these possible directions with YouTube leadership, we decided to focus on a "Simple, Clean, and Light" theme. This put the focus on the content, not the interface, and made YouTube suitable for both cat videos and presidential announcements. Starting with the Watch page redesign in 2010, these themes became the core of the YouTube design philosophy.

YouTube in 2009 Our proposal, July 2009 YouTube in 2012

On the product side, I created a set of 18 unique product opportunities that YouTube could focus on over the next year. These covered YouTube's three major audiences: creators, viewers, and advertisers. I led the YouTube executive team in an exercise to prioritize these opportunities, and then wrote, filmed, and edited a concept video that showcased what they might look like.

Product opportunities Prioritizing opportunities Filming the vision video

One surprising discovery was the importance of TV, touch, and social interactions in the YouTube experience. The YouTube Remote app was developed by an internal team after they saw the vision video. The iPad was released 6 months after our work, and tablets have become a significant portion of YouTube traffic.

Social viewing concept TV + phone concept Touch interface

After 4 years as an online service, AdSense was due for a refresh. Publishers struggled to manage their ad inventory and couldn't make sense of their earnings reports. The design team tried to build features and interfaces equally suited to professional publishing companies and novice bloggers, which led to unfocused and complex designs. To build a strong foundation for the future, I pitched and led an effort to redesign the product.

Calling publishers Brainstorming

I worked with our research team to do publisher visits, phone interviews, and usability studies. We found that our most engaged publishers were also the happiest. They worked hard to learn our features and optimized their ad choices for their sites. However, our site wasn't designed for them and they constantly encountered roadblocks in doing so.

My design mantra became "Empower the engaged, and develop the disengaged." My goal was to give those engaged publishers the tools they needed, and train novices until they were experts--we didn't want them to remain unskilled forever. We focused on four areas: Trust, Information Needs, Publisher Development, and Control. I led the creation of new features for each of these areas, including detailed interactive reporting (with charts), individual ad approvals, and integrated help content.

Old homepage New homepage

I developed an interactive prototype in HTML, JS and CSS, which we tested using the RITE method (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation). Research lead David Choi led near-daily usability studies where the entire team observed and took notes. Between studies, I led design discussions with the team and implemented changes to the prototype. In the span of just two weeks, we evolved the product tremendously.

Old reporting New reporting

The new AdSense design launched in 2009 to select publishers. It handled $6B of Google's revenue in 2011, and has been a solid foundation for future enhancements, which the old design couldn't support. It was positioned as a tool to make effective business decisions, as we had planned in the design process. The design was also used, with only minor tweaks, for the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Much of the visual design, which I developed with Jeromy Henry, was subsequently used in Google's other ad and publisher products, from AdWords to Analytics.