Help people discover and engage with places and businesses through Search.

Role:

Product Design Lead / Manager

 
 

Problem

Local Search, which was responsible for over one billion searches a day, was underserving its users. 

  • Our business goal was to evolve Search as a platform to support hundreds of local verticals (ex. Dining, Shopping) with aggressive double-digit growth goals.

  • Vertical-specific sites and apps were doing a better job at helping users find specific businesses or services, like restaurants or doctors. 

  • Gen Z and international users were looking at emerging platforms like TikTok and Instagram for local discovery, because of their richer photo and video forward experiences and authentic tone.

Process

User Research

To set up our team for success, I worked closely with XFN partners to learn about gaps in our knowledge — particularly, how users were using Google’s Local Search today and where we were falling short of expectations.

Archetypes & Critical User Journeys

I worked with UX research on a quantitative / qualitative program to establish more Local specific user archetypes.

UX Heuristic Audit

I worked with PM & Data Science to understand top queries and key metrics and where we were underserving our refined user segments.

 

Above: User Archetypes of mindsets as users search for local businesses.

 

Above: UX audit of top verticals and Jobs to be Done.

Vision

Make Search more personalized, contextual and visual.

We learned that younger and international audiences were going straight to social to discover businesses. I took the team on a journey: how might we create a search experience that knows your interests and presents results in a way that makes it easy and delightful to browse through options?

 

Competitor audits

At the time, TikTok and Instagram were a primary destination for local discovery among GenZ and International markets.

Google’s Local Search (Before)

Meanwhile, Google’s Local Search was information dense and had no ability to capture user intent.

Zurich Sprint

 

I led a multi-day workshop to explore alternative ways to make Search more visually engaging while respecting Google’s business and performance KPIs.

Experiments and iteration

Leverage AI and ML to create a compelling Search experience with rich visuals and refinements.

Search is a busy surface with billions of queries a day. We went through many iterative cycles to find the right entry points on the search results page, as well as the right immersive experience for users to dive deep into photos of places, working closely with bleeding-edge technologists around image recognition and AI to present compelling stories about businesses.

Above: One end-to-end flow of the Visual Search experience, from Search Results to Immersive to Business Page.

Below: We tested new progressive disclosure interaction patterns (below) to surface more context and imagery as the user interacted with the page.

 
 
 

Below: We also made a number of incremental visual, interaction and GenAI content improvements to increase the discoverability and usefulness of the refinements and integrated map.

Outcome

My team launched the biggest and most impactful changes to Local Search in over 5 years. This includes Visual Search — a new approach to Search to help Google stay relevant with evolving audiences looking for richer and more relevant search results.

  • +40m daily users have better interactions vs. control for a Tier 1 vertical

  • +70% of Visual Search visitors engaged regularly with the new experience

  • Increased international traction, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region

  • Sparked New Technology Initiatives (NTIs) through cross-org work, particularly in GenAI & Image AI/ML