Google Even More
Google wondered what the potential of their Even More page could be. In a short span of three weeks, we designed it into a series of widgets that together acted as a dashboard for what people were creating with Google products at any given second.
Helping a Big Brand Show What They Do
After we submitted concepts for a confidential project, Google came to us with something bigger. They wanted us to re-imagine their Even More page. Not sure what that is? To get to it you have to click on the “more” tab at the top of Google and at the very bottom is a link that says, “even more.” It’s hard to get to – and that was a problem, because it was essentially their products page.
An Immersive Way to Show a Range of Products
What many people don’t realize is that Google makes hundreds of products. It’s hard to say how many will be out there when you read this, but 600 is a modest guess. The Even More page featured some of their most popular, but it only shows a simple icon and one-liner of text – not much to rope you in if you don’t already know what they are.
We began attacking the assignment by researching other web product stores and content platforms. How were apps being sold? How do websites offering many products narrow down and explain what is relevant to individual consumers? We looked at smart approaches, like Netflix’s recommendation system and tried out many solutions.
The Strategy
Finally, we concepted a platform that wasn’t about the products, but about the content being created with them. We designed a dashboard that showed the changing currents of information flowing on services like Blogger and Google Docs, making it a veritable slice of any given moment. Each product was given its own widget, built with a movable API that allowed it to be embedded elsewhere. To make it feel truly Google, we built it entirely in HTML5 and CSS3, adding geolocation to many of the widgets.
Sprinting
The process was also a true exercises in iterative thinking. Instead of concepting a long-term plan, we worked in sprints. With the help of our developer friends at The Nerdery, the entire dashboard was finished in three weeks.
The Results
Google plans to use the widgets in many different areas to expose to staff and customers to the variety of work they are producing.