Content Strategy Refresh, Winter-Summer 2018

Scope:
To craft a content strategy that aligns branding across all product areas and publishing platforms; and to develop systems, protocols, reference documents, and design prototypes that help integrate this new strategy into our team’s deliverables at each stage of production.

Methodologies: Competitor analysis of media and online education studios and projects.

Channel audit organizing our design deliverables by product, content type, and visual styles to help our design team visualize where and how our current branding aligns to or strays from a cohesive system. The audit concurrently integrated previous research to ensure we considered our users first and foremost, and what they desire from our work.

Semi-structured interviews with internal and external stakeholders (fellow designers, our internal social distribution team, and Google developer advocates).

Wireframes of design systems that help categorize content such that it better communicates with our users and organizes internal workflows.

Design explorations of new templates, visual language, and branding guidelines driven by these inspirations.

Deliverables:
Educated the larger Developer Content Services team about the importance of creating a cohesive brand and design language.

Outline of the design assets we create across all platforms and how many variations or instances we produce of each.

Categorization of those assets based on a required degree of brand uniformity (i.e. which assets can be uniform across all platforms and products, which can be uniform within each product area, and so on down to assets that must be designed unique to their specific project needs.)

Design guidelines for video asset production, specific to each brand.

Design trend analysis that directly influenced our branding for 2018-19 developer events.

Team Operations Redesign, Fall 2017

Scope: To refine and clarify the systems of communication, asset sharing, and feedback within our 6-person design team, in anticipation of imminent growth of both personnel and project scope.

Methodology:
Semi-structured interviews with each member of our team, plus members of other GDS teams, to help identify strengths and needs, as well as to initiative a collective conversation about our deliverables, brand, and workflows.
Affinity grouping of interview feedbacks and findings.
Research into processes on other design teams both within and outside of Google

Deliverables:
Onboarding slidedeck (previously did not exist for the design team)
Reconfigured team meetings to integrate a regular feedback session internal to the design team.
Updated and improved deck templates to increase efficiency and communication clarity between developers and designers.
Increase of morale amongst the design team
New Google Drive folder for only designers to help keep templates up to date and applied to shows correctly.

Developer Ecosystem, Spring 2017

Scope:
The first dedicated research initiative within the Google Developer Studio’s design team that sought to inform designers of who is watching our videos, and how the graphics of the videos impact those users’ work or impression of Google videos.

Methodologies: Literary review of developer learning, online learning behaviors, and developer segmentation.

Semi-structured interviews with internal and external stakeholders (Developer Advocates, Project Managers, Producers, Engineers, UXRs, YouTube researchers, non-Google MeetUp organizers).

Online Survey evaluating when, why, and how developers engaged with videos. Self-analysis of our channels via comments, viewing metrics, subscription history, etc.

Ethnographic observation at developer conferences, meet-ups, and hackathons.

Deliverables: Snapshot of the demographic makeup, motivations, and habits of the developer community, plus their feedback on GDS videos.
Set of “developer mindsets” that provide a lexicon for talking about our audience in a way that emphasizes context and fluid personas. The process of researching also exposed internal gaps of communication that allowed for repetition, fragmented production, and general inefficiency. Such illuminations helped later to direct my work on systemizing the design team’s process.

Gaygler User Research

Scope: When evaluating communication structure and the “brand” of this Employee Resource Group at Google, the leadership team realized they did not know how its members generally felt about the Gayglers, and what role the group played in its members’ lives. So together with another researcher, I developed this iniative to provide an understanding of how to better support the group’s members and provide relevant, desirable programming

Methodology:
Semi-structured interviews of Gayglers-NY members with an array of participation, employee status, tenure at Google, and job position.
Affinity grouping of interview feedbacks and findings.
Comparison reviews of other ERGs at Google and at other companies.

Deliverables:
Feedback encouraging a shift in structure of the leadership committee.

Validation of current communication protocol
Suggestions for how to expand upon Gayglers’ involvement with the larger LGBTQ+ community outside of Google.

KIRAN PURI

Belladonna* Collaborative Spring 2017 Reading Series

Googler’s LGBTQ+ ERG event posters

**Belladonna* Collaborative Spring 2017 Reading Series**