🎉 TGIW #003 – Designing at Google with Cyprien Toffa
Google Maps — The balance between UX and monetisation — Frameworks and Design Thinking— How to advocate design internally? — How to nurture your creativity?
🎉 Thank God It’s Wednesday! (TGIW)
TGIW: Every Wednesday, I interview design enthusiasts to reach a collective understanding of what is design and how you can leverage it in your work.
#003: I had a chat with Cyprien Toffa, UX designer at Google (New York) 🚀
Cyprien and I will dive deeper into his unique relationship to design including his experience at Google and his tips to nurture creativity!
Co-create the newsletter with me and take part in the movement ⭐️
I will be iterating and prototyping to make this newsletter tailored to your preferences! But for this, I need your feedback! Answer this week’s poll by scrolling to the bottom of the page or leave a comment 👇🏼
🎙 On-Air
De-mystify is not only a newsletter but a podcast too! On-Air highlights key takeaways from our discussions!
In today’s newsletter with Cyprien Toffa, we discuss:
What does design mean to you?
What is the focus of Google Maps
How are you make Google Maps even better?
You could be the one ideating Google’s new feature!
How to nurture your creativity
What does design mean to you?
For Cyprien, design has always been a way to intentionally influence the lives of others through creating meaningful and useful experiences. For instance, your experience at work has been designed to cater for an environment for people to work more productively. Overall, design is a tool to make everyone’s life easier!
What is the focus of Google Maps?
Cyprien works as a UX designer on the Maps Team specifically on Search and Explore. His job is to help you find what to do and get you to the places where you will be able to connect with others in real life.
Google Map's purpose is to create experiences digitally that lead to other experiences in real life!
How are you making Google Maps even better?
By leveraging insights from users…
… you can improve the product better itself, but when it comes to such a mature product like Maps, your challenge lies in how to make Maps more inclusive, how to make it more accessible and more representative.
Moreover, over time the behaviours of your users change. Your mission is also to make sure that you will keep delighting your customers. For instance, Google now focuses on U24 (technical term for Gen Z) and works on adjusting Maps to new use cases.
I wrote about the importance of delighting your customers in the last edition of #OTR, check it out below 😉
You could be the one ideating Google’s new feature!
Google is user-first → Developing a new feature comes from understanding the users, what they need and how to use resources and tools to cater to those needs.
Google is bottom-up → While other corporations may prioritise the development of a new feature only if it increases X or Y business metrics (such as revenue from ad), at Google new features are ideated by the designers, engineers or PMs. How does it work?
First, you need to convince extremely busy UX researchers that they should test out your ideas. One thing to remember is that it is not about the idea, but about how can get behind your idea. This is why as a designer, a lot of the time your job is to create presentation to share your vision with your team and prototype to persuade by making your idea a reality in their mind.
A dream that you dream alone is only a dream, a dream that we dream together can become reality!
Google is statistic driven → Second, after getting feedback from users and estimation of the potential impact of your feature, it is only then that you can present your idea to the “Lead” who is not only evaluating your design but how it could play towards Google’s business goals.
One thing to note here it that to stand out at Google, thinking outside of the box is not enough, you need to master persuasion techniques and understand internal dynamics.
How to nurture your creativity?
For such a mature product like Google Maps, the only way you can make improvements is by innovating, think outside of the box!
But how can you train divergent thinking? For Cyprien, just like prototyping, divergent thinking is a skill that can be learned and strengthened. Cyprien’s hack is talking to people. Get out there and talk, not only thinking about design but being fully present in the experiences you live every day. Cyprien’s message is an invitation to mindfulness and awareness in our routines. Overall, his creativity stems from the combination of experiences he lives and also shares others.
In the podcast, we also talked about the balance between UX and monetisation, design thinking, his team, the role of the members and the dynamics between them as well as classic frameworks they use such as the sprint or the crazy eight!
So, make sure to give it a go if you want to find out more about what it is like to be a UX designer at Google 🚀
👋🏼 Cyprien Toffa
https://www.cyprientoffa.com/
🛰 Deep Dive into Google Maps’ latest project
Google adds new search features to try to give users the ‘vibe’ of a city or neighborhood
⭐️ Off The Record
#OTR helps you to dive deeper into the relationship our guest has with design throughout the week.
Cyprien has also co-founded Fleek 🛍
Fleek is the first smart discovery platform to browse fashion curated from your favourite brands, all in one app. Our personalization AI makes it much easier and faster to find clothes that match your style. As you shop, Fleek learns your preferences and recommends items across top brands such as Urban Outfitters and Revolve.
In the next edition of #OTR
🚀 Fleek’s founding story or how to leverage your college experience to start a thriving marketplace?
💡 The role and responsibilities of a design founder
❓ How to design a product for women when you are three male co-founders?
🧠 How do you decide to pivot?
🖌 From co-founder to UX designer
✨ What’s up?
Be part of the Co-Demystification Experiment!
Where are we at 💡
After the interview with Cyprien, we have a better idea about how Google leverages design. Over the episodes, we start to understand that design is that extra layer that can be built on top of any experiences to make it better. Moreover, design has no barriers to entry and can be leveraged in both a start-up environment with resources and in a billion-dollar company.
Poll outcome 📮
Last week, I asked you whether you preferred 🎙 or ⭐️. The answer was a 🎙On-Air! However, you found ⭐️Off The Record more engaging. Therefore, rather than drafting a summary of the podcast, I decided to highlight the five favourite questions Cyp answered! I hope you liked it ☺️
💌 Be the change you want to see in the world
Every week, I will ask you one simple question to tailor the newsletter to your preferences.