Google Meet Redesign
Personally, I love to redesign different applications. The reason i choose Google meet was nowadays due to pandemic all are using different virtual platforms. Google meet is one of them. Note that this redesign is done in September,2020. I hope google address this issues in the future updates.
The app was redesign of Google Meet for Android ! :)
PROCESS OVERVIEW
I divided my research in four different aspects:
- Features in existing app
- User Research and what new can be added.
- Designing
- Prototyping and User testing.
INSPIRATION
User Research
Through my user research, I learned about user’s habits and pain points of using google meet. Some of the pain point that were identified were :
- To check whether you are audible or not.
- No option to record at users end.
- Push to talk option is easy to handle. But its not available.
- No different themes available
- Launching a Poll would have helped.
- Cannot chat/ message to a specific person.
Design Principles
The overall approach for this redesign was to make users experience much more easy and without radically changing an already popular and familiar platform. Key principles were :
~ Improving user experience by removing frustrations in user journey and adding delightful micro-interactions.
~ Making Google meet ready for changing behavior of the users.
~ User should not get unnecessarily confused with different buttons on screen.
~ Adding whole screen camera and floating buttons on first page.
PAPER WIREFRAMING
IMPLEMENTATION
User Interface
This is the first screen which appears when we launch the app.
There are floating buttons on the screen with whole screen captured by camera.
The audio spectrum is for the host/speaker to check their self if they are audible to others. Rather than asking again and again “ Am I Audible?!?”
This screen appears when you mute and turn off video yourself.
This is the home screen of the app.
Now you can chat personally with anyone under the surveillance of host.
Host and Co host can be changed manually.
Also Virtual background can be set as presentation screen.
means your presentation screen will be your virtual background.
Record Meeting, Change Theme, Launch a Poll, Push to talk, Leave meeting are all available in a single column.
Now you can’t leave the meeting mistakenly by clicking leave meeting button instead of mute or camera button.
Easy and simplified.
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that the team behind the Google meet app spent countless hours to make what we see now. The features and how they have been laid out must have the reasoning driven by those research and data. Besides, the company has its own agenda and goals to achieve.
The amount of research that has been done by me within a limited period of time is fairly small compared to what the Google team did. So I don’t claim that every decision I have taken to redesign the app is better than what exists now. I absolutely think a lot more research, usability testing, and iterations can be done to improve the Google meet experience.
Please let me know which of my design decisions you agree or disagree with. Tell me what you’d do differently and why.
Suggestions and criticism helps me grow. So everything is welcome :)
This was my first story. Hope you like it.
