How can Google Meet improve? Bring notes.

Instead of forcing people to use Google Meet, why not create products that would urge people to use the product in the first place?

I’m getting frustrated by Google pushing and forcefully making users use the product. Where is the empathy?

I decided to give this a shot myself using the first principles approach. If Google’s goal is to increase engagement with Meet, you should first look at the target users and the problems they are facing.

While there are many types of users using Meet today such as therapists, teachers, students, consultants, engineers, venture capitalists, I’ll speak to my personal journey as a Product Manager using Meet.

As a product manager, I conduct meetings with my customers, suppliers, and team on a weekly basis. Often times, multiple times a day. One of the core aspects of my job is to take good notes.

The problem I face regularly is the disconnect with my meeting participants while taking notes. I still haven’t been able to streamline my video calls. The current solution is toggling between Google Docs tab and Meet tab. I can’t pay attention to my customers because I’m constantly looking at a different screen.

Sure, I can get an additional screen but that still means I’m looking at a different screen. The ability to streamline my calls isn’t possible with current solutions.

So I tried brainstorming a bunch of ideas to improve this and refined it down to three notable ones.

1. If we turn on captions, maybe they automatically take notes of the conversation with my permission.
2. Integrating Google Docs itself into the video chat as a tab that can be seen by everyone.
3. Creating a new tab that brings a solo note board that can be downloaded directly via Google Meet.

Solution #3 has the lowest implementation costs and high impact if executed properly. I went ahead and created a user prototype on Figma on what this could possibly look like.

This allows us a massive shift in how we note take and integrate built in solutions in a well developed ecosystem. Something that the likes of Zoom, Microsoft, & Skype might be trying to work on to bolster their customer needs.

When I shared these designs with my colleagues and friends, they got excited at the thought it was an actual update by Google only to be disappointed that it was merely a product design. They certainly found it helpful just as much I did.

If Google’s goal was to increase engagement with Meet. We actively recognized a problem that needs to be solved within a subset of heavy users.

Google’s vision is to provide access to the world’s information in one click.

Why not bring it back to simplicity? Better than thinking of tricky ways for clickbait to using the product.

I’ve been a Google ecosystem fan since my high school and college days. Even bought the Pixel because of this reason. You didn’t force me. You brought value to the table and built products that impacted my life positively. Don’t force your products onto me. I already have product wanting my attention. It’s frustrating and annoying. Especially now when most of us are working from home and have to manage a lot of meetings through various platforms. Bring empathy. Users will notice.

Hopefully this finds its way to Google’s Product team with the intention to help and shed some light on a problem I’ve been having. Perhaps they might have already thought about this, hopefully they can revisit and launch this product iteration, it would certainly be impactful to others like myself.