Meet the UXEs
- Rahul Gaba, UX Engineer, Google Workspace
- Shana Goldman, Senior UX Engineer, Google Cloud
- Caroline Hermans, UX Engineer, Google Travel
- Min-Zhong Lu, Senior UX Engineer, Google Cloud
- Ian Li, UX Engineer, Google Health
- Alex Finlayson, Staff UXE, Google Nest
- Aaron Zemach, Senior UX Engineer, Area 120
- Bonnie Zhou, UX Engineer, Google Workspace
- Yerusha Nuh, UX Engineer, Consumer UX
What is a UXE, anyway?
Well, it’s complicated—there is no “average” UXE.
Shana Goldman: It’s a difficult position to describe because UXEs wear so many different hats and have a variety of backgrounds and expertise—but we sit at the intersection of design and engineering and speak the language of both. Need a new tool built to support a Figma integration? Ask a UXE. Need to research some new technology and determine feasibility? Ask a UXE. Need a functional prototype for user testing? Ask a UXE. Need to build a front-end using the latest technologies and platform best-practices? Ask a UXE.
Yerusha Nuh: UXEs are amorphous unicorns. Being hard to define is part of our superpower.
Aaron Zemach: The process of creating a new feature can sometimes feel like a negotiation between sides: designers are trying to pitch the best version of a feature based on what they've learned about users, and engineers have to adjust that to fit within the way the existing product code has been written. UXEs act as a communication bridge—a translator—who can often see and propose solutions to problems that realize all the user benefits while avoiding major engineering challenges.
Alex Finlayson: UXEs need to have creative problem-solving skills.
Caroline Hermans: I'm constantly switching between “engineer” and “designer” brain, which involves bringing technical understanding into design discussions, and writing code with an eye towards usability. But we all write code with the goal of making things that are beautiful and user friendly.
Bridging disciplines
UXEs at Google operate within two focus areas, or “lenses,” and solve problems in the (often amorphous) space between.
Design lens
Ian Li: The design lens requires a lot of collaboration with UX designers and researchers within my team: figuring out what questions to explore with prototypes; advising the team on what interactive features are feasible and demonstrating them with prototypes; and creating prototypes that can be used to explore designs and to conduct user studies.
Aaron: I'm [always] trying to answer two questions: How can I help my team learn as much as possible? And how can we do this as fast as possible? A UX Engineer learns by building. I want to be able to take what I learn from people’s reactions to a prototype and apply it to our finished product.
Caroline: I'm an active part of our design process, including brainstorms and UX discussions.
Min-Zhong Lu: I advise what’s prototyped, and how, and predict what design problems might arise in the future—which is when my design intuition and knowledge comes into play. I have to fill in a designer’s shoes, know what features are more “risky,” craft initial experiences on my own, and rendezvous with designers when they get more detailed requirements from various stakeholders. There’s a lot of “translating ambiguous design problems into technical execution” in my role, and it’s only by regularly keeping in-sync with others can I be confident that I don’t have blind spots.
Engineering lens
Shana: UXEs are in a great position to bring engineering feedback early to a design process and conversely, provide UX feedback and guidance to engineering. My main focus is writing production code, but I build and iterate on prototypes when needed for a project. I may also be responsible for “production-izing” a prototype [writing production code], rather than handing off to a larger product team.
Caroline: I write UI code, learn relevant tools and APIs, and work with engineers to get data.
Rahul Gaba: We collaborate with backend software engineers, or find backend optimizations which will help improve the product; tackle on-call issues; improve load time; and make sure that our product matches the Google standard of core web vitals. A strong library of UX components is critical, and we’ll maintain our team’s UX library. In addition, every piece of code which goes to production needs to be reviewed for security vulnerabilities and needs to have a proper suite of test-cases.
Min-Zhong: “Engineer” is in the job title for a reason, even for people who only write prototype code. I need to minimize tech debt, architect reasonably, and reduce development overhead, applying all sorts of “real-world” software engineering best practices.
Harnessing the power of prototypes
While there may be no “typical” UXE, there is a throughline; prototyping plays a critical role for UXEs on nearly every team.
Bonnie Zhou: Prototyping is where design ideas come to life! It’s hard to fully understand the nuances of interactions or patterns with static design files, so it’s hard to communicate the value of these ideas to someone else. Prototypes fill that gap—they’re essentially a higher fidelity version of these ideas that you can use to gather feedback, validate or invalidate assumptions, and pitch to leadership, etc.
Aaron: I've heard UXEs describe being a prototyper like being a time traveller. Any time you release a new product or feature, you learn a lot based on real-world usage that isn't obvious until it's out there. When you build a prototype, you capture a bit of that future and bring it back to the present where you can learn things much faster, and with lower risk. The “secret sauce” of being a UXE is learning how to use code to fake and shortcut the hard parts.
Caroline: With a prototype, everyone can quickly try out a new idea without committing a full production engineering team to it. This allows UX to move quickly, solidify our thinking, and explore multiple possibilities.
Alex: Building a prototype can help focus people with different roles and backgroundson one vision and evaluate different iterations rapidly; once everyone is on the same page we can build a more robust product.
Ian: I’m able to explore multiple designs and iterate on designs quickly; create prototypes with real data for use in studies; and help the UX team validate designs, so when we pass them to engineering for implementation, they’re properly tested and vetted. This reduces churn and saves development time.
Yerusha: As a UXE, I can use my engineering skills to build solutions to UX problems. Many UX problems don't have a definitive answer and the ability to unlock creative explorations is crucial.
Min-Zhong: For my team, prototyping is the design process. It starts as the designer places the very first rectangle on the canvas, and evolves along with the design, so designers can play with and feel their design—and uncover design questions—as they go. And then there’s the oft-repeated proverb: “A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.”
Tools of the trade
What UXEs use to get the job done.
Figma
Sketch
Visual Studio Code
ProtoPie
iPads
Custom 3d printed solutions
Code
Where process meets product: UXEs in action
Every team has its own unique workflows, objectives, and output, so specific UXE responsibilities vary. Here’s how their critical contributions help bring a range of Google products to life.
Min-Zhong: It’s really about illustrating design problems—and their solutions—at scale. There are 80+ product offerings across Google Cloud Platform (GCP); one change in the GCP UI in one place often has unintended consequences in another. We rely heavily on UXEs to produce scalable design artifacts and design tools, so designers don’t have to duplicate design changes across the product offerings.
Shana: My primary work consists of designing and building reusable components through a standardized design system. I work closely with the designers, researchers and other engineers on my team as we design and iterate on experiences to support users across cloud.google.com. I also help maintain the end-to-end process of launching experiences.
Ian: My role as a UXE in Google Health is to help the UX team explore interactive features for software that allow clinicians to quickly search through complex patient information, and provides a comprehensive view of a patient’s records. This requires building prototypes of new user interfaces and visualizations—and since we test these features with clinicians, the prototypes often need to have real and synthetic data, it is critical that we design, research, and test our products in a rigorous way.
Alex: I’ve built custom hardware; built simulated hardware using iOS devices; built webapps to develop experiences; built prototypes to help iterate on designs; come up with new features and product ideas; and tried to connect dots that might not generally happen until the final stages of development. I’m often the first person to run into strange edge cases, so bringing these to design early helps engineering avoid those pitfalls.
Caroline: I work with maps and data to prototype new designs.
Lessons from the field
Beyond the myriad technical smarts required to do their job, being a UXE requires a thoughtful—and flexible—approach to work.
Aaron: Be biased towards action. You can debate, you can write-up proposals and pitches, or you can just build an idea and see for yourself whether it works or not.
Min-Zhong: Be adaptive and think out of the box. This is instrumental to keep up with the rapid design processes and paradigm shifts; we constantly learn new tricks to serve the production process better.
Bonnie: Be an empathetic communicator. As a UXE you’ll be working closely with designers, researchers and engineers, and it’ll be your job to understand all those viewpoints and be the “bridge” across disciplines.
Aaron: Tune into emotions. Often with prototypes, what we're looking for is emotional reactions. Are people excited when they play with something? Frustrated? Confused? Do they think it's funny? Are they pleading to make it real? Any one of these is going to reveal crucial information that we can use to make better products and features, but you need to be attuned to be able to receive and understand it.
Min-Zhong: Be inquisitive. UXEs need to be curious both about design problems and solutions plus engineering/implementation problems and solutions.
Caroline: Be an active learner. There are frequently new tools and processes that can help us and our teammates be more efficient.
Min-Zhong: Recognize what’s perfect without being perfectionistic. Getting the product into real users’ hands is the ultimate goal—overpolishing doesn’t help with that.
FAQs
What makes Google's Design work? ›
Intuitive, beautiful, user-centered design is key to the success of Google's products. Our passionate, interdisciplinary UX specialists and designers work across platforms to create powerful visuals that highlight each of our product's unique personalities.
What are your thoughts about Google's material design? ›It has a very simplified sense of physics, too, which makes interactions more intuitive. Material Design was built on a mobile-first sensibility, which makes sense considering its original purpose was for designing Android apps.
How much do UX engineers make at Google? ›The estimated total pay for a User Experience Engineer at Google is $218,298 per year. This number represents the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges from our proprietary Total Pay Estimate model and based on salaries collected from our users. The estimated base pay is $142,602 per year.
What is material design in UX? ›Material Design is an Android-oriented design language created by Google, supporting onscreen touch experiences via cue-rich features and natural motions that mimic real-world objects. Designers optimize users' experience with 3D effects, realistic lighting and animation features in immersive, platform-consistent GUIs.
Is Google Material Design free? ›MDL is free to download and use, and may be used with or without any library or development environment (such as Web Starter Kit).
How was Google designed? ›Google has its origins in "BackRub", a research project that was begun in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.
What is the purpose of designing materials? ›The main purpose of Material Design is the creation of a new visual language that combines principles of good design with technical and scientific innovation. Designer Matías Duarte explained that, "unlike real paper, our digital material can expand and reform intelligently. Material has physical surfaces and edges.
Do I have to use Material Design? ›Of course, there's no reason that designers should implement Material Design. It's simply an indication of its omnipresence that it is seen as the standard to aspire to.
What companies use Material Design? ›- Google.
- Digital Services.
- Coya Stack.
- Assertiva Soluç ...
- SENSYN CORE and ...
- mobile.
- SkyQuest Tech Stack.
- DREAMENTUM.
The peer network is one of the greatest benefits of joining Google. I've found past experiences as a UX leader lonely, and often looked outside of the company for counsel and camaraderie. However UX at Google is over 2700 people strong.
How much do entry level UX designers make at Google? ›
An early career UX Designer with 1-4 years of experience earns an average total compensation (includes tips, bonus, and overtime pay) of $110,000 based on 6 salaries. A mid-career UX Designer with 5-9 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $133,594 based on 9 salaries.
How do I become a Google UX Designer? ›Get started in the fast-growing field of user experience (UX) design with a professional certificate developed by Google. Learn the foundations of UX design, including empathizing with users, building wireframes and prototypes, and conducting research to test your designs.
Does Google still use Material Design? ›Updated October 28, 2021: Material Design 3 is now live! Read about our latest resources, guidelines, and code in our new post. Today at I/O we unveiled Material You, a radical new way to think about design. Material You will transform design for Android, for Google, and for the entire tech industry.
What is the difference between material UI and Material Design? ›Material Design is a unified system that combines theory, resources, and tools for crafting digital experiences; Material-UI: React components for faster and easier web development. Build your own design system, or start with Material Design.
What are the 4 types of materials? ›Materials can be classified into four main groups: metals, polymers, ceramics, and composites.
Is Material Design only for mobile? ›MDG were made primarily (but not exclusively) for mobile (particularly for Android apps on Play Store). Mobile doesn't only mean “smaller screens”. It also means interaction with finger vs mouse.
Is MUI owned by Google? ›MUI – Interesting Facts and Figures
These facts were accurate as of Jan 2022. MUI started in 2014 as Material UI but decided to change its name to differentiate itself from Google. Many people assumed Material UI was a Google product. MUI has over 2,200 open-source contributors.
Pictographr - Google Workspace Marketplace. Create beautiful graphic designs with Pictographr. Our quick and simple drag and drop tools allow you to easily unleash your inner creativity.
Who is head of design at Google? ›...
| Matías Duarte | |
|---|---|
| Born | Matías Gonzalo Duarte Sunkel Talca, Chile |
| Occupation | Vice President of Design at Google |
Google Web Designer gives you the power to create beautiful and compelling videos, images, and HTML5 ads.
What are the main characteristics for Material Design? ›
Material Design takes into account the essential characteristics of print-based design (color, shape, texture, space, form, unity, balance, scale/proportion, emphasis, contrast, and typography) and help to create meaning and focus in applications.
What is Material Design for website? ›Material Design is the standard for designing and creating websites and apps. It's been a response to old, user-unfriendly, and chaotic design styles and its aim is to bring order and unity to web design. Learn how to use it. Since its creation, the face of the web has undergone many changes.
What is Material Design model? ›Material design can be defined broadly as design that deals with the structural, aesthetic and functional behavior of the material based on product type [35]. From: Woven Textile Structure, 2010.
Which is best bootstrap or Material Design? ›Bootstrap is very consistent and provides a simple, clear interface that, is easy to learn. And comparatively less customizable than Material UI. Material UI is highly customizable with which designers can create tons of designs. But it may produce inconsistency among components.
Is Material Design any good? ›If the app is built mainly for Android devices, the answer is a no-brainer, Material Design is a good choice. Your app will feel like a native Google app, and users will have a sense of familiarity (and trust!) while using your app. Even if it isn't for Android, there are many use cases where it could work.
Why should we use material UI? ›MUI makes it possible to use different components to create a UI for a company's web and mobile apps. Google uses Material Design to guarantee that no matter how users interact with the products they use, they will have a consistent experience.
What was before Material Design? ›“Before Flat and Material UI Design styles, designers were using Skeuomorphism design style. It was a well-known approach to mobile UI for many years since it helped people to imitate the real world using lighting and shading effects.”
Why is material UI so hard? ›> Material UI uses a very similar theming system. The interface of the theme itself is different, but that seems to be about it there. Material UI implements Material UI by default and this is the main reason why it's hard to customize.
What is the use of Material Design in Android? ›Material design is a comprehensive guide for visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices. To use material design in your Android apps, follow the guidelines defined in the material design specification and use the new components and styles available in the material design support library.
Why are UX designers paid so much? ›Traditionally, the skills needed to become a highly-skilled UX designer are much higher than that required for UI design. This is why the salaries of UX designers tend to be higher than the salaries of UI designers.
How useful is the Google UX design certificate? ›
The Google UX Design certificate is a great certification to pursue if you want to start a career in UX or web design. It will equip you with the skills needed to get an entry-level job as a UX designer. The course is easy to follow and it's aimed at people that have no prior experience with web or graphic design.
Is Google UX design certificate respected? ›The course covers enough to set students up for entry-level jobs in the UX design space and is a well-respected certificate in the industry. Still, students and graduates of the Google UX Design Certificate should anticipate competition when applying for entry-level UX design jobs.
What pays more UX or UI? ›The average salary of a UX Designer in the US is $115,743 per year. This can increase to over $134,395 for more experienced designers. Entry-level UI Designers make an average of approximately $73,040 a year and $100,559 at mid-level. When you gain more experience, you can earn as much as $103,026 a year.
Is UX design a high paying job? ›The national average salary for a UX Designer is ₹8,00,000 in India. Filter by location to see UX Designer salaries in your area. Salary estimates are based on 133 salaries submitted anonymously to Glassdoor by UX Designer employees.
Where do UX Designers make the most money? ›In the US, Payscale reports that salaries are highest at Google where the average pay is $130,000. Amazon and Microsoft also offer high salaries for their UX designers who earn around $116,000 and $111,000, respectively.
Does Google hire UX Designers? ›There is no one definitive answer to this question since it depends on the specific needs of a given company and the preferences of its UI UX designer. However, in general, it is safe to say that Google does hire UI UX designers.
Can I become a UX designer in 3 months? ›The answer is — definitely a big NO! Nobody can become 'professional' in 3–6 months in any field, because it's a fairly low time to call yourself one!
How do designers get hired at Google? ›When you interview at Google or Facebook, you interview for the company first. Your team and project are a bit of an afterthought. If you prove to be good enough, you are hired. Afterward, they will bring you on-site again, but this time, you get to interview the teams, and you pick the project you want to work on.
Is material UI better than bootstrap? ›While Bootstrap is known for its consistent user experience, full-proof documentation and high-speed development, Material UI is lauded for the artistic freedom it offers developers while creating unique, stylish and modern-looking apps.
What language is Material Design? ›Material Design (originally referred to as and codenamed “Quantum Paper”) was developed by Google and is a design language used for Android devices. The idea, according to Matias Duarte Vice President of Design for Google, is to provide a design language which mimics the feel of pen and paper.
Is material UI only for React? ›
No, you cannot use Material-UI without React. Material-UI is a library of React components.
How do I apply a material theme? ›To change your wallpaper, long press on your homescreen and tap Wallpaper & Style. Don't exit this screen, as this is where you'll customize your Material You colors. You can also access this menu through Settings > Wallpaper & Style. Material You doesn't use your lock screen wallpaper to influence its themes.
What is material component in Android? ›Material Components are interactive building blocks for creating a user interface. Browse all components or select a specific platform.
What is Android design layout? ›Android Layout is used to define the user interface that holds the UI controls or widgets that will appear on the screen of an android application or activity screen. Generally, every application is a combination of View and ViewGroup.
Is material UI a CSS framework? ›Material UI is a CSS framework with foundational and advanced components, enabling you to develop applications faster.
Does material UI follow Material Design? ›If using React, Material-UI is Google's implementation of Material Design. It's a robust system of components, well organized, and repeats much of the research (not all) that the Material Design website provides.
Which is better ant design or material UI? ›Material UI offers a large variety of built-in theme options whereas Ant Design doesn't offer as many of that. Material UI is only suitable for Android apps but Ant Design is compatible with iOS, Android, and web.
Does Google have graphic design? ›Pictographr - Google Workspace Marketplace. Create beautiful graphic designs with Pictographr. Our quick and simple drag and drop tools allow you to easily unleash your inner creativity.
Does Google design software? ›Google Web Designer gives you the power to create beautiful and compelling videos, images, and HTML5 ads.
What UI does Google use? ›Most people likely think Google Pixel smartphones come with stock Android. This is only half true, though. In reality, Pixel phones come with an Android skin known colloquially as Pixel UI.
Who is head of design at Google? ›
...
| Matías Duarte | |
|---|---|
| Born | Matías Gonzalo Duarte Sunkel Talca, Chile |
| Occupation | Vice President of Design at Google |
About The Job
At Google, we follow a simple but vital premise: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." Google's Visual Designers weave space, typography, color, iconography, and texture together to help people successfully navigate our products.
Google Web Designer is an advanced web application that lets you design and build HTML5 ads, images, videos, and other web content for your business using an integrated visual and code interface.
How much do Google graphic designers make? ›$91,690. The estimated total pay for a Graphic Designer at Google is $91,690 per year.
What are the 3 types of web design? ›Web designing is of three kinds, to be specific static, dynamic or CMS and eCommerce.
What does a design system do? ›Design systems provide a single source of components, patterns, and styles and unify disjointed experiences so that they are visually cohesive and appear to be part of the same ecosystem. As an added bonus, any major visual rebrands or redesigns can be managed at scale through the design system.
How can I put my design on Google? ›- On a computer, open a site in classic Google Sites.
- At the top right, click More actions. Manage site.
- In the menu on the left, click Themes, Colors, and Fonts.
- Under "Base theme," click Expand .
- Choose a new theme.
- At the top, click Save.
Ease Users' Mind & Easy on the Eyes. Google Search is very good at making sure that users are comfortable and relaxed while using it. They are also good at making users feel smart while using their service. These are some of the ways they manage their results to provide a better user experience.
What UX design tools does Google use? ›- Optimizely for A/B Testing. ...
- MindManager for Mind Mapping. ...
- Sketch for Interface Design. ...
- User Testing for User Testing. ...
- Smart Draw for Diagrams and Flowcharts. ...
- Mock plus for Rapid Prototyping Design. ...
- Axure for Prototypes and High-Fidelity Wireframes.
User experience (UX) designers focus on the interaction that users have with products, like websites, apps, and physical objects. They make those everyday interactions useful, enjoyable, and accessible. Over 7 courses, gain in-demand skills that will prepare you for an entry-level job.
How many UX designers work at Google? ›
I've found past experiences as a UX leader lonely, and often looked outside of the company for counsel and camaraderie. However UX at Google is over 2700 people strong.
Do Google hire architects? ›ARCHITECT JOBS IN GOOGLE (OCT 2022) - 4489 VACANCIES FOR ARCHITECT IN GOOGLE - SHINE.COM.