Google Keep: Is it a keeper?

Guerilla testing into Keep’s usability, learnability, & functionality!

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I ran a guerilla usability test of Google Keep — a note taking application available on both mobile (Android & iOS) and web — to uncover any pain points or opportunity gaps.

Google Keep is a very effective tool in creating quick to-do lists and notes, but usability testing revealed that users run into 2 critical issues with the app’s features.

Objective

Identify the pain points of Google Keep’s current “Notes” interface on mobile:

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Test Parameters

• What: Google Keep mobile app platform.
• Who: Any user with a mobile device and Google account.
• Where: Screen passerbys outside of a coffee shop, Colorado Springs, CO.

Test tasks

1. Create a note.
2. Organize/file the note according to label or color.
3. Add a reminder for 3 minutes from the time of creating the note.
4. Share the note with another user (me).
5. Edit that note: add photos, drawing, or voice recording.

Tasks were determined based on essential needs of a note taking app. The tasks were phrased as open-ended scenarios to avoid leading the user to solve their problem in a predetermined way.

Processing

Reviewing notes, identifying the usability issues and prioritizing them:

Some of the notes from the user interviews that I conducted.

Grouping issues by similarity, then naming the buckets.

Findings: 2 Key Issues

EDITING A NOTE

Users expect more simple text-editing functionality when creating a note, such as bolding, underline, italicize, as well as being able to have checkboxes AND paragraph text within the same note.

“Wait, why can’t I do ANYTHING with this text?”

As users went to create their first note, many played around with adding or removing checkboxes. However, they were also looking around for ways to edit the text within their note, such as bolding, underlining, or italicizing their text. Although each note had a bold title, there lacked other ways to create a visual hierarchy within each note.

Highlighted areas in read show opportunities where either (a) visual hierarchy could be improved with more text editing tools and (b) the ability to have both a checklist and paragraph text in a single note would be helpful.

RECOMMENDATION: Enable users to create the visual hierarchy they want with the tools they’ve come to expect from other text applications, such as Google Drive and Gmail. While Google Keep works awesome for super short notes or to-do lists, users oftentimes want the ability to create slightly more elaborate notes/to-do lists. Simple tools to allow bolding, underlining, italicizing, sizing of text, as well as allowing both checkboxes and paragraph text in one note are prevalent functionalities within mobile/web-based apps.

ORGANIZATION

Users have trouble organizing their multiple notes on their Google Keep homepage.

“Whoa. The home screen is super busy. Where did my labels go?”

There’s a few issues in the organization of Google Keep’s notes:
Google Keep lets you make super simple notes or to-do lists in a snap. Perfect, right? Well…. that is, until you have more than about 5 notes. One issue that many users faced was how to organize multiple notes in a way that made sense. Users always asked:

• What’s the difference between labels and colors?
• What happens to the labeled folders? Where do I find them?
• Are the labels synced with my Google account?
• How do I find specific notes once I have more than like 3 notes?

Users expect to be able to find notes more quickly than just scanning. Additionally, searches don’t always return the right note, adding to increased user frustration. It’s not clear to users that in order to access the “labeled” notes, they need to click on the menu button. This extra step proved to be a large pain point with the users.

As you can see, the home screen can get quite overwhelming once users have more than 3–4 notes. In order to specifically filter the notes by label, there is no button on the home screen to do so. Users must know to navigate to the main menu.

“How do I keep my most important, ongoing notes at the top of my screen?”

Many users voiced their concern about how clunky and awkward it was to have to hold, drag, and drop notes in order to rearrange them. It became a more difficult task when notes were long or spanned more than the length of a user’s phone screen. Users wanted to be able to “pin” their most important and frequently edited notes at the top of their screen.

RECOMMENDATION: Users need to be able to organize their notes into visible categories or folders, as well as be able to filter or search quickly based on those labels. Redesigning the homepage so that users first see pinned notes and their folders can help alleviate the barriers that come with scanning or searching for a specific note, especially once the user has more than 5 or 6 notes.

A Design Suggestion

Users want to have more functionality when it comes to organizing their information, both within a note (with more visual hierarchy) and within the app (with their labels and folders). Here are potential solutions:

1. Give the users slightly more text-editing tools.

Bolding, underlining, or italicizing can go a long way in creating the visual hierarchy that users want and need. By keeping the text-editing basic, Google Keep can maintain it’s lean look and feel.

2. Give the users formatting tools.

Users should be able to have both checkboxes, ordered and unordered lists, and paragraph text all in one note. Additionally, the functionality to nest lists within lists or indent text should be available.

This is a mockup of what the text editor toolbar could look like in Google Keep. As you can see, the toolbar is basic and offers just enough functionality to give users a lot of customizing power in their notes.

3. Add folders, pinned notes, and filtering capabilities to the home screen.

A quick mockup of what the Google Keep “notes homepage” could look like to a user.

Next Steps

This is the first part of my user research into Google Keep. Next is to synthesize this data and dive deeper into the personas and context of use for the app. It’s important to understand the environment that users are most often in when using Google Keep.

The following is my design process:

This is a typical double diamond process that UX designers use in the field. I have just elaborated on specific components of the diamond with my own personal preference and methods!

Why the double diamond approach? I want to make sure I design a product that people actually need, not what we (as designers) think users need.

Google Keep is one of the few products that I use every day and love using — this was just a fun deeper dive into how we might make it even better! Although I found some usability opportunity gaps through my research, I think that the two design recommendations above will help to alleviate the two major user concerns.

As a next step, I would love to dig deeper into the personas, user stories, journey maps of a typical user of Google Keep. Also, I’d love to explore design solutions for the other usability gaps I found through my research, including:

• Customizability of the reminders/notifications users receive from notes
• Syncing of Google Keep with other apps, i.e. Google Calendar and Drive
• Sharing settings of notes, such as updating a user on what edits are new since they last loaded a note, sharing of editing power, and creating reminders for collaborators.

Additionally, it’s important to test these design recommendations with users, using that feedback to once again iterate and refine.

Can’t wait to dive deeper! :P

*I am not affiliated with Google in any way.