Google Unplug

Overview

Google Unplug is a new Google Calendar feature that helps users plan leisure activities around their work schedules. Users can switch their calendar to “leisure” mode with a click and explore fun activities to do at their workation destination, all within their calendars.

‍:: introducing a new way to integrate Google’s diverse services for workation planning.

ROLE

Project manager, user research, prototyping, poster design

DURATION

4 months (Sep - Dec 2022)

TEAM

2 product designers, 3 UX researchers

TOOL

Design: Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign(poster)
UI/Storyboard: Adobe Illustrator, Figma
‍Brainstorming: Miro

OPPORTUNITY

Remote workers have a difficult time balancing their work and leisure during their workation.

*workation: remote work at a destination that is normally visited for vacation

SOLUTION

A Google Calendar feature that helps users plan leisure activities around their work schedules.

FEATURE 1

Switch modes

Conveniently switch to leisure mode by clicking on the toggle. The feature signals a mode switch by changing the logo and the color of the time blocks to prioritize non-work related schedules and deprioritize work related ones.

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MODE OFF

Time blocks

MODE ON

Work

Leisure

When the user clicks on the toggle, the time blocks change their color to reflect the change in their hierarchy.

FEATURE 2

Browse & add activities

In leisure mode, when you click on an empty time, the calendar shows a list of activities you can do around you during the selected time. Just like any calendar event, you can invite friends and share/plan with them.

The “Explore” panel appears on the left when you click on an empty time slot

Easily manage the activities just like any other Google Calendar event

FEATURE 3

Join or create events

In the Community tab, you can browse events hosted by other remote workers around you. As you hover over each event, the calendar on the right highlights the corresponding time block the event will take place.

Easily manage the activities just like any other Google Calendar event

FEATURE 4

Leave reviews

After each activity, you can leave a rating or text review with optional anonymity for others. When you submit a review, a fun illustration is added to the corresponding time block!

Once the user shares their review, they see an illustration in the corresponding time block.

DESIGN PROCESS

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Are there any points of struggle in their travel planning process?

Our team decided to lead our preliminary research with this question because most of the times, users have a difficult time articulating what they need. However, when they are asked to share any points of frustration, it becomes a much easier conversation.

METHODS USED

DESK
RESEARCH

DATA
ANALYSIS

INTERVIEWS

COMPETITIVE
ANALYSIS

Workation was an increasingly common form of travel and provided us with an interesting challenge of working while traveling. So we redefined our question to focus on remote workers and workations.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we make travel planning more efficient for remote workers?

USER CONTEXT & NEEDS

What's currently making remote workers’ travel planning less efficient?

We interviewed 6 remote workers to identify pain points. Moreover, we conducted additional competitive analysis and desk research to gain a deeper understanding of workation and remote workers.

METHODS USED

COMPETITIVE
ANALYSIS

INTERVIEWS

DESK
RESEARCH

We plan during, not before

For workations, most planning happens during, instead of before. But most services focus on planning before.

We want access to communities

Remote workers have a hard time finding communities of other remote workers around them at workations.

We are not sure where to start

They want to best utilize the flexibility of working hours during workations, but are not sure where or how to start.

DESIGN GOALS

We aim to...

In order to achieve this goal, we need to...

DESIGN DECISIONS

Using tabs for different categories of activities

We started by sketching the hierarchy of the screens that supported our features, and how that hierarchy would be visually represented.

Making browsing within a side panel easier

One of the difficulties we faced was designing within a limited space. Although it was a web feature, because we wanted it to be inside user’s calendar view, we couldn’t fully utilize the full desktop screen.

We first started by putting 2 panels on the far left and right side of the view.

So we decided to eliminate unnecessary information and combine the left & right panel. However, we kept the additional “details” side panel in order to keep the depth of navigation optimal.

final design

Exploring different interactions for “adding” to calendar

An important interaction for our feature was adding the activity to the calendar. Therefore, we spent a lot of time testing with users and iterating diverse possibilities.