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RACHEL GARB: Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited to be here. I'm Rachel Garb, and I lead interaction design for Android's apps at Google. HELENA ROEBER: Hi. I'm Helena Roeber, and I led Android's UX research team from its beginning through 2012. RACHEL GARB: Let's just jump right in, because we have a lot to cover. Let's start with a vision. "Enchant me. Simplify my life. Make me amazing." If it seems a little touchy-feely, well, that's intentional. You see, it's about people. Now of course, this is not a revelation-- certainly not to the people in this room. Those of us in the business of creating technology for people, we're well-accustomed to thinking through use cases and analyzing user metrics. But there's another aspect to people that may not come up as much, and that's emotion. We all respond emotionally to every moment we experience. And according to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience about 20,000 of these moments in a waking day. Now, we don't remember all of them, but the ones we do are almost always either positive or negative. Now Kahneman and other scientists are studying the effects of these emotions, and here's what they're finding. Negative emotions, like anger and fear and hate and shame, can be harmful to your health and may even shorten your lifespan. Now positive emotions, on the other hand, like hope and joy and love, they're an essential daily requirement for survival. They improve our physical and mental health, and they protect us from depression and illness. So as designers, every decision we make affects people emotionally. Now our team sees this as a huge opportunity, but also a responsibility we take very seriously. So about two years ago, we developed this design vision. Now, you'll notice it's phrased in the first person. That's intentional. We want this to read not as our vision, but as the vision that our users have for us. Now how do we know this vision is valid? Well, from all the user research we've done to date, which Helena will talk about in a little bit, it really boils down to these three sentences. So it's a tall order. What exactly does it mean to enchant me, simplify my life, and make me amazing? Answers can be found in Android's design principles. They're based on the same research that informed our vision, and they've been guiding us to create beautiful, usable, and innovative designs. Now, we're certain they can do the same for you, and that's why we're here today. So we're going to introduce you to these design principles and talk about why we believe in them. We'll show many examples, including from some groundbreaking projects, and we'll talk about how you can use them with your teams. HELENA ROEBER: I will now quickly go through the principles. And don't worry if I'm going a little bit too fast. We will later spend a lot of time on in-depth examples that explain each of them. The principles are grouped into the three pillars of Android's vision. "Enchant me" is about filling people with joy, showing them beautiful visuals and graceful motions, letting them customize their space, and letting them directly touch objects and interact with them. And here are the four design principles for "Enchant me." RACHEL GARB: Delight me in surprising ways. HELENA ROEBER: Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus. RACHEL GARB: Let me make it mine. HELENA ROEBER: Get to know me. The second pillar of Android's vision, "Simplify My Life," is about making things easy for people, making their world simple to navigate, explaining it in clear words and sometimes even with pictures, and bringing attention to what is essential. And here are the eight principles for "Simplify My Life." RACHEL GARB: Keep it brief. HELENA ROEBER: Pictures are faster than words. RACHEL GARB: Decide for me, but let me have the final say. HELENA ROEBER: Only show what I need when I need it. RACHEL GARB: I should always know where I am. HELENA ROEBER: Never lose my stuff. RACHEL GARB: If it looks the same, it should act the same. HELENA ROEBER: Only interrupt me if it's important. And finally, the last pillar, "Make Me Amazing," is about making people feel capable, strong, and smart, giving them things that they would love to show off to their friends, and making them feel like they're in charge of this powerful and magical force. And here are the five principles for "Make Me Amazing." RACHEL GARB: Give me tricks that work everywhere. HELENA ROEBER: It's not my fault. RACHEL GARB: Sprinkle encouragement. HELENA ROEBER: Do the heavy lifting for me. RACHEL GARB: Make important things fast. HELENA ROEBER: Next, I'll talk a little bit about the origins of the design principles, how we realized we needed them, how we developed them, and the difference that they made once we started to apply them. During an extensive UX research project called the Android Baseline Study, consisting of diaries, in-home interviews, and observations, we saw the profound effect that technology design had on people's lives. This photo here is one of our engineers at one of the in-home visits. We saw when, how, and why people were using computers, tablets, and mobile devices. And we saw that technology had become so pervasive that people had started to schedule deliberate offline times and enforce them so they could spend quality time with their family and friends. We saw joy in people's faces when they used technology and something happened that they considered magical or something that brought them closer to their friends or maybe something that just gave them a welcome break during their day. But we also saw, unfortunately, the flip side. It turns out we tend to blame ourselves whenever something goes wrong in technology, and we realized that all those non-ideal implementations, they eroded people's confidence in their own abilities and often just caused sheer frustration. I'm sure you have all experienced the same. I certainly have experienced it myself. So this was a call to Android to touch people's hearts, to do more of the good stuff and to fix some of the annoyances in the product. So the entire Android UX team got together and started to unpack what wasn't working and why, and we came up with a long list. And to be honest, because the team had such high aspirations for their work, it was a little bit of a bummer. So Rachel and I, we looked at each other, and we thought, what if we turn this long list of shortcomings that bum us out every time we look at it into something that actually inspires us to create beautiful and usable designs? So we took the long, negative list of shortcomings, and we organized it. We painstakingly wordsmithed and crafted it to be short, memorable, and in the voice of the user. Let me give you an example. One of the insights from this baseline study was users are overwhelmed by options and limitless flexibility. So our first try at rewording this was "Don't overwhelm me on the first date." So you can see, we actually have a lot of fun with this. But in true iterative design fashion, this was not the last version. So we gave it one more try, and we came up with "Only show me what I need to see." And this was pretty close, but it didn't have that time element that is actually really important to progressive disclosure. So we gave it one more try, "Only show what I need when I need it," and this was a winner. This is one of our design principles that we have today. We started to use the design principles during Android's Ice Cream Sandwich release, which is the biggest qualitative jump in Android's user experience to date. Two years later, they are still serving the team well. What they do is they remind the team what good design is all about, and they give the team a common language to talk about design in terms of people. And finally, they help the team to tap into people's emotions and to specifically design for those emotions. Many of the principles are aimed at avoiding negative emotions in people. For example, "Only interrupt me if it's important" prevents users from feeling annoyed or angry. Others are geared at triggering positive emotions. "Let me make it mine" makes people feel more at home. So the design principles give us designers control over the emotions that our products trigger in people when they use them. And this is important, because from all our research, we know that our mobile devices have become almost as close to us as our best buddies, our partners or colleagues. They wake us up in the morning. They entertain us and make us productive during the day, and they even tuck us into bed. So it makes sense to take a closer look at research that examines relationships and emotions. Psychology professor John Gottman at the University of Washington has done extensive research on marriage. And he did this one study where he was able to predict whether a couple would stay together or not after observing them for only 15 minutes shortly after they got their marriage license, and he was right with 94% accuracy. So that's pretty cool. So how did he do it? So his predictions were based on a simple formula. And his predictions, actually he checked back 10 years later to see whether he was right. So his predictions, they were based on a simple formula-- the ratio of positive to negative emotions. He predicted that a marriage is heading toward a good outcome when that ratio is close to 5 to 1. And he predicted that a marriage is heading toward divorce when that ratio is closer to 1 to 1. Other people, like the psychologist Marcial Losada, has done similar research in the workplace as director of the Center for Advanced Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And he found that work groups that have a positive to negative ratio of 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than work groups that don't reach that ratio. Another psychology professor, Barbara Frederickson, she runs a lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill called the PEPlab, which stands for Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology. She found that we need three positive emotions to lift us up for every negative emotion that drags us down. Does this apply to design? Absolutely. Think about how common it has become for people to spend more time with their technology, their mobile devices, and computers than with their partners. And the message for designers is clear. All those little annoyances in your product, they're unfortunately not so little. They have the power to erase all the magic that you have created. RACHEL GARB: Here's a way to visualize this. Imagine we have two jars side by side. One is a positive jar, and one is a negative jar. If we trigger a positive emotion because we are excelling at a design principle, we put one marble in the positive jar. If, on the other hand, we trigger a negative emotion because we are ignoring a design principle, we put not one, not two, but three marbles in that negative jar. Now, once the marbles go in the jars, they can't be taken out. But the difference in amounts in each jar can change over time. If both jars have the same number of marbles, it does not mean our job is done. Heck, research tells us we're barely out of the doghouse. And if this were a marriage, we'd be halfway to divorce. So what we're really after is to fill the positive jar and keep the negative jar empty. HELENA ROEBER: Let me give you an example of visual motion. So we all know the Android has multiple Home screens. And if you reach the end of the final Home screen, this is what happens. The screen tilts a little bit and changes color. I'll get back to that design in a little bit. I'd like to just explore a couple of other ways to solve that design problem of communicating that we've reached the final screen. What if we did nothing when we reached the final screen? How would that feel? I know how I would feel. I would probably keep tapping it, and then eventually I'd give up, thinking that I did something wrong. And even though this was probably not the most important event in my day, there would be this nagging feeling. What did I do wrong? So let's see how we're doing with the design principles. We missed the boat on "I should always know where I am" and "It's not my fault," because I just blamed myself for doing something wrong. So that's not so good. That's six negative marbles, and we would need six positive marbles just to get kind of even. Let's try something different. What if, when we reach the last screen and we try to go beyond it, we pop up a little message that says, "This is the last screen"? It turns out whenever we pop up something on screen, it's a little bit like being nagged. And in the worst case, it's like being shouted at, and it takes us out of what we were doing. And now, we have to read the words, understand them, and try to decide whether we need to act on the message. So how are we doing with our design principles? We still get three negative marbles for "It's not my fault," because I just got nagged. And there's more. We also get three negative marbles for "Only interrupt me if it's important." So even though this design has more feedback, it's not necessarily a better design. Let's look at the actual design. When people encountered this in user studies, they just kept playing with it. They just really seemed to enjoy how it changes colors, how kind of the physics work out. And it was really clear that people enjoyed what they were doing, and they enjoyed interacting with it. Not only did it tell them that they did everything right, it also kind of helped establish the virtual spaces. And it provided this feedback in an elegant, subtle, and non-disruptive way. So how are we doing with the design principles? So the things that were previously an issue are no longer, so negative marbles. Yay. But we do get positive marbles for "Delight me in surprising ways," because this interaction was just really enjoyable, as we could see in the user studies. We also get a positive marble for "Sprinkle encouragement," because we just encouraged people to interact with the device through touch. We get a positive marble for "Pictures are faster than words," because there are no words used. And we get a marble for "Give me tricks that work everywhere," because this is a pattern that is applied throughout the platform. So if you work in design, you know that creating a beautiful and graceful animation like that is not simple. And our motion and visual designers, they spent many iterations to get this interaction just right. RACHEL GARB: OK. [APPLAUSE] RACHEL GARB: A segue to another topic, words. So one of the principles that Helena just mentioned was that "Pictures are faster than words." Now, to be clear, the principle is not saying that we should never use words. Of course, there are many things that words can say that pictures can't. But the wrong words can really backfire. So some error messages, they just scream at us, right? They talk down to us, make us feel like idiots. And some welcome messages when you open up a new app, boy, they try way too hard to impress us. They act a little too chummy, or maybe they ramble on and on. When it comes to shaping emotions, words are truly powerful. That's why the Android design team has a dedicated writer, and he's taught us to pay attention in particular to these three principles when we write-- "Keep it brief," "It's not my fault," and "Sprinkle encouragement." Let's look at a few examples of each of these. So say the user has just signed in to their new Android device, but they have to wait a moment because we're connecting with Google servers to authenticate the account. Now, we could say it like this or like this. Here, we're describing only what's necessary and nothing more, and we've eliminated redundancy. And that's an example of "Keep it brief." Another way we keep it brief is to help people skim by putting the most important thing first. That way users get a taste of the main idea right away. So if Larry Page is your best friend, that's more important than the 76 other people. "Keep it brief." Next example. There was a time, admittedly, when we had a setting with this label. And I cringe just seeing it now. But we've changed it, and now it says this. Much cleaner, right? [LAUGHTER] RACHEL GARB: When we write for the UI, we like to pretend that we're talking to someone who is smart and competent but may not speak the language very well. So we use short words, active verbs, and common nouns. And we avoid technical jargon. It makes people feel like they're not smart enough to use our products. This is an example of "It's not my fault." And speaking of "It's not my fault," here's an example of what not to say in an error message. Even if the user could have prevented the situation from happening, we never point it out, and we certainly don't shout. So here's a better way that doesn't even feel like an error message anymore. "It's not my fault." OK, another example. We have a feature in Android called Face Unlock that keeps your device secure with facial recognition. Now, if a face isn't recognized for whatever reason, we need to display a message. Now, we could say it like this. It's direct, but it's a little off-putting. Or maybe inject some humor. But here's how we actually say it. We talk directly to the reader using second person with contractions, just like we do in casual conversation. Now, by using a tone that's human and approachable, we are sprinkling encouragement in the form of words. Now what about humor? Well, for some products and brands, it's perfectly acceptable-- maybe even expected. But Android's an operating system. Our voice has to fit with a very wide variety of situations and people, and that makes humor a more risky proposition. Now while we strive to be friendly, we don't go overboard with being polite, because too much "hello" and "please" and "thank you" everywhere can get to a point where it really exhausts the reader. So go for just a sprinkle of encouragement. So to avoid negative emotions, we write with these three principles in mind. But even ahead of that, we ask ourselves, do we need to write anything in the first place? Now we already talked about looking for ways to say it in pictures. Here's something else we do. If we're thinking about having a dialogue that asks "Are you sure?" we'll just do it and then offer a way to undo. And that's our principle "Decide for me, but let me have the final say." Oh, and by the way, our team has banned the use of the phrase "Are you sure?" because it places blame on the user by presuming that they didn't think something through. So again, "It's not my fault." Now, I want to switch topics and show you an example of how principles influenced a feature called Android Beam. Does everybody know what that is? OK. Well, for those who haven't heard of it, I'll just give you a quick background. We released this in Ice Cream Sandwich. It lets you quickly share information with someone else simply by touching your devices together. It's really great for sharing web pages, YouTube videos, photos, contact info, things like that, and it's one of the Android projects that I'm most proud to have worked on. We designed it with the future in mind-- a future where everyone's Android devices could beam and every app developer does something useful or cool with it. Now let's say I want to share this picture of Lulubelle with Helena. We just bring our devices together, and that puts us directly into a mode for sharing. I don't have to choose anything from a menu. But you may be wondering, what if I didn't know Helena, and we're crowded together on a subway, and our phones are in our pockets? Could I accidentally pocket beam that photo? And at the same time, could Helena accidentally send something to me that she didn't want to? Well, the answer is no. Because once the devices are together, I confirm with a touch, and then the beam happens. And that's an example of "Decide for me, but let me have the final say." Here, Android decided that when two phones are put back to back, somebody probably wants to share something. But it won't happen unless a sender touches to confirm. Now because we've stripped down on-screen interactions to the bare minimum in Android Beam, we've made it the most effortless way to share. When two people are in the same physical space, Android Beam avoids extra steps that both the sender and receiver would have to take with emailing or texting. And that's an example of "Do the heavy lifting for me." When the devices come together, sound and vibration let you know Android Beam is ready for you. [ANDROID BEAM CONFIRMATION TONE] RACHEL GARB: And that's a sprinkle of encouragement. Now, if Beam doesn't work for some reason, like the devices pull away before anyone could send, the sound indicates that in a gentle way. [ANDROID BEAM REDO TONE] RACHEL GARB: And that's an example of "It's not my fault." Now, instead of choosing from a dialogue that says, "Do you want to beam your screen?" with buttons for yes and no, you simply touch an object that's an exact representation of your screen, because "Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus." Now we excel at this principle in another way too. The devices themselves are real objects, and bringing them together is kind of fun. Now the animation that happens when you touch to beam makes it seem like your screen is actually flying into the other person's device. It's very satisfying. And that's an example of "Delight me in surprising ways." Now no matter what app you're using, when you touch to beam, something always happens. If the developer of the app didn't implement any special behavior, then by default we just open the app on the recipient's device. If the recipient doesn't have that app, then we launch the Play store to the exact screen where they can get it. And that's an example of "Give me tricks that work everywhere." So as you can see, even when a user interface is pretty minimal, like Android Beam, it can be shaped by a lot of our principles. HELENA ROEBER: Our last example is about the leading edge of interface design. I am honored that I got to participate in creating what I consider one of the most exciting new developments in user interfaces, Google Now. It's an interface, as you probably know, that aims to make your life better by predicting what you need at any given moment. It came out last June with Android's Jelly Bean software release. Google Now is accessed by swiping up from the bottom of Android's Home screen like this. And then, beneath the search box, it displays context-dependent cards that show you information that you need. For instance, most people's lives involve many logistical challenges, and Google Now can show you how long it takes to go to work, when your package is getting delivered, or what the weather will be, all depending on your context. What makes Google Now innovative is that it goes beyond traditional interface conventions, and it pushes some of our design principles further than most interfaces. One of those principles is "Delight me in surprising ways." Imagine you love where you live, like I do, or maybe you're visiting a place that you always wanted to visit. Google Now changes the background of Google's search box to beautiful art pieces, depending on where you are and what time of day it is. When people encountered this first in user studies, we observed pure joy. And later on, we saw that same joy every time that header changed. It was a very clear success, and it's a good example of "Delight me in surprising ways." Here's another one. Imagine you've spent a long day in the city walking around, and you just would love to have a warm drink. I personally like hot chocolate. Google Now will show you the restaurants nearby, and one of them may just have that hot chocolate that you've been craving. And this is another way that Google Now scores points for "Delight me in surprising ways." Another design principle that Google Now exceeds at is "Do the heavy lifting for me." For example, flying abroad can be a big production, and Google Now finds ways to make it a little bit easier for you. It will let you know if your flight is delayed and will give you time maybe for an early dinner. Good example for "Do the heavy lifting for me." Another example. So once you're abroad and you're jet-lagged, it's often kind of tricky to do time zone math. Because you're awake when nobody else is, and you're sleepy when you're supposed to be awake. So Google Now does something to help you out with this by showing you what time it is at home. Another example of "Do the heavy lifting for me" Another example. We decided to go for a lean back experience with Google Now with almost no setup, because we knew that if you had to tell Google Now about all your preferences in painstaking detail, it would kind of spoil the fun. So now, this is all you have to do to get started. It's "Do the heavy lifting for me." And instead, Google Now implements the principle "Get to know me." In fact, it's all about "Get to know me." If you drive to work, you probably have a preferred time. And most of us would very much like to know if there is an accident or just if there's bad traffic that they could avoid. Google Now learns about your habits, cross references it with traffic and other data, and adjusts what it shows to you. It sounds kind of easy when I say it, but I think you know it's clearly not. We're giving the design principle "Get to know me" a serious workout. Most interfaces would implement this design principle as maybe remembering one user preference. Google Now completely reconfigures itself based on automated data triangulation. Here's another example. I like freshly baked bread. And there's a bakery close to where I live that sells delicious bread, and I go there quite a bit. Google Now has learned that this place might be of interest to me and is giving me the choice to get traffic to that place. Another good example for "Get to know me." Here's another one that Google Now pushes to its limits. "Only show what I need when I need it." We have simplified Google Now to the point where it only shows content when it has something to say, and it will show nothing when there's nothing to say. It's a pretty bold move. It looks like this. And it applies "Only show what I need when I need it" to almost everything in the UI. Here's another example of something similar. Whether you're traveling or not, weather is usually an important topic. And there's a million details one could show-- precipitation percentages, air pressure, humidity, and so on. On the weather card, we've stripped everything down to its bare essentials. And it's another example of "Only show what I need when I need it." There are a lot more principles applied in Google Now, but these are the ones that it really pushes very far. RACHEL GARB: From the examples we've shown you, you can see the tremendous impact that the design principles have had on Android's user experience, and we hope you're inspired to bring them back to your teams and try them too. Is there a specific process that you should use? No. Your design team has its own way of doing things, and the principles can fit into whatever that is. So instead of process, let's focus on activities-- things that we all do, like exploring design solutions to a problem. If you're having trouble getting started, you could scan the principles and see if any sticks out to you as relevant to the problem that you're trying to solve. This could help generate ideas. Or if you don't have that problem-- you've explored and have come up with several approaches-- you could evaluate each of them in terms of the principles and see which one does best. And then, take your winning approach, and see if you can improve upon it even more by excelling at more design principles. So a few weeks ago, I was in a really heated discussion about design with a product team, and we had two competing interaction models. We'd been sitting around probably for 90 minutes. It was getting to be dinner time. And it just hit me all of a sudden, and I said to the group, hey, you know what? This is really a battle between "I should always know where I am" and "If it looks the same, it should act the same." And once we recognized the principles, we started looking for a way to excel at both of them. And we did. We arrived at a new interaction model. Now, here's another thing that we all do or the designers that you work with do, which is presenting designs. And when you present designs, you could bring along the principles for everyone to refer to. As the designer, you could quote from the principles to explain your thinking or defend your choices. You could also encourage others to point to principles when they give you feedback or ask you questions. So I'll never forget the time that I presented my first pass of a design for Android Beam to my fellow designers. The first thing I told the team was that I was focusing on the "Enchant me" pillar of our vision for this feature, and everybody was very excited to see what was next. And then, I showed a screen where you could touch one of two buttons to indicate whether you were sending or receiving. Now, the immediate reaction was, understandably, you call that enchanting? It teased out an important principle that I'd been overlooking, which is "Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus." And that moment was pivotal for the design of Android Beam. Here's something else we all do-- research. And it can come in handy in several ways to use the principles. When you're developing your research plans, you could use the principles to help you determine your goals. And then, when you're delivering the findings from your studies, you could use the principles to name reasons for what you observe, both the successes and the failures. And Helena can tell you all about this. HELENA ROEBER: Yeah. So when we developed Google Now, one of our primary design goals was to be delightful. So when we ran this one study, we actually started to keep track of all the moments where participants voiced either delight or disappointment or frustration or were just neutral. And it was a really nice way for the team to be reminded of their original vision, but also to see how they were doing with respect to it. And identify the places that we should definitely keep and develop further, but also find the places where we can do better. RACHEL GARB: And here's one I'm sure everyone in the room is very familiar with-- prioritizing fixes, especially at the 11th hour. Here, you could use the principles to help make your case for what's most important. And the principles might also help you identify some quick wins, which are things that you could easily change that also pay off well in terms of excelling at the principles. HELENA ROEBER: So Rachel earlier talked a lot about the importance of words, and you now know what emotional impact they can have. So when you're looking for something to fix at the 11th hour, look at how you're talking to the people using your product. And you now know with relatively small changes, you can have a big impact. RACHEL GARB: And finally, when you're brainstorming the future of your product with a group, you could start off by going over the principles. It's a really great way to frame the challenge and also encourage everyone to think big. And I've been doing this for a while. The first time I did this, I organized a brainstorm workshop with a cross-functional team to envision the future of a particular area of Android. And I started out by giving a five minute refresher on our design vision and principles. And then, we asked everyone to brainstorm, what would it mean for this experience to enchant me, simplify my life, and make me amazing, or to excel at any of the principles they saw? And the thing I noticed right away, as people were writing down their ideas on sticky notes and handing them to me, these ideas were phrased in the voice of the user, in the first person. I just thought that was very cool. And I was also really excited to see that everyone was not really thinking about implementation challenges or feasibility. They were really able to step away from that as they put themselves in the shoes of users and focused on the vision and the principles. HELENA ROEBER: We have some parting thoughts for you. And we will leave you with three questions to ponder, and we'll ask them in the voice of the people who use your products. Are you enchanting us? Are you looking for ways to activate the pleasure centers of our brains with pictures, real objects, slick animations, and pleasing sounds? Are you bringing a ray of sunshine into our lives every time we use your product? Are you simplifying our lives? Are you removing all those things that burn us out-- inconsistencies, being lost, confusing messages, placing blame? Are you keeping our time and attention focused on what really matters? And finally, are you making us amazing? Are you creating something that we want to show off to our friends? Are you solving real problems for us? And are you giving us the power to do things that we never thought we could? And with that, we thank you very much. The design principles are published on the Android developer website. Soon, this slide will change to a barcode and a link. Here we go. So yeah. And this ends our session. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]