Google Modernize Workspace Video Player

 

Modernizing the Google Workspace Video Player

BUSINESS GOAL

Workspace has a video primitive to power the video experiences across Google Workspace. The Editors create a new video editing tool (Vids), Meet is improving their asynchronous meeting experience, and Drive is updating the video player to better support all cross-product journeys. These updates are all part of Workspace's effort to make video a more seamless and integrated part of Google Workspace.


FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH & ANALYSIS

Research conducted a user satisfaction survey (n=1401) revealing that only
57% of users were satisfied with the existing video player experience, with 76% (n=640) expressing frustrations related to

  • playback quality

  • processing latency

  • missing features

  • feature discoverability



PROBLEMS TO SOLVE

Google Workspace relied on the YouTube Video Player API, leading to a critical user experience gap. While visually familiar, this player lacked essential features users expected from YouTube, such as preview scrubbing, highlights, and chapters. This discrepancy caused significant user frustration. Compounding the issue, YouTube was unwilling to commit to adding these functionalities to their API, and the player's dated appearance failed to align with the GM3 design standards.





 

OPPORTUNITY

Recognizing this critical user pain point and design inconsistency, I successfully advocated for prioritizing a comprehensive visual update to the Workspace video player. My efforts secured critical buy-in from Workspace leads, ensuring dedicated resource allocation and cross-product alignment. This initiative aimed to redefine the video experience across all Workspace applications


GOAL

Making Video a hero journey across workspace. Our core objective was to transform the asynchronous video experience within Google Workspace, delivering a unified, consistent, and modern player.

  • Elevating Video: Making video a seamless and "hero" journey across all Workspace products.

  • Material 3 alignment: Modernize the Workspace player to align with updated design standards

  • Consistent UX: Ensuring a cohesive video user experience across Vids, Drive, Meet, Chat, and Gmail.

  • Accelerated Development: Laying the foundation for faster future development of video features within Workspace.


SUCCESS METRICS

Users satisfaction: Maintain or increasing user satisfaction
Modernity: Increasing users' perception of the video player as modern and up-to-date.
Performance: No increase in latency


APPROACH

BUilding THE FOUNDATION

My initial approach focused on establishing the core framework for the new player. I defined the foundational components, building blocks, and interactions.

CROSS-WORKSPACE DESIGN JAM

I organized and co-facilitated visual design brainstorm session to drive alignment and foster collaboration across Drive, Vids, Workspace Design Systems, and Meet.

We synthesized the ideas from the brainstorming session and focused on color, shape, opacity

Color

  • Introducing and expressive color palette to highlight certain color.

  • Live color sampling from the video

SHAPE

  • Shape containment

  • Use islands to introduce hierarchy

Opacity & gradients on the controls

  • Opacity versus solid color that fully blocks content

We defined two directions

DIRECTION 1 - Contained timeline and controls

DIRECTION 2 - OPEN TIMELINE

 

DESIGN SPRINT

I organized and facilitated a design sprint to ensure the new design worked well with upcoming features impacting the video player.

Additionally, we gained a better understanding of cross-product journeys by mapping out the flows, patterns, and overlapping areas. We established a shared multi-year vision for the video player journeys, providing us with clear direction for future development.

During the sprint research, our team performed rapid rounds of design, validate, iterate, repeat.

WHAT WE LEARNED

REfINE

We refined the visual and motion design.

 

LAUNCH AND ANALYSIS

We launched the Playback experience in Drive and Vids in November 2024!

 
 

Our post-launch metrics indicated

  • Satisfaction stays the same

  • Dissatisfaction went down 10%

  • Perception of modernity went up 20%

  • No increase in latency

WHAT PEOPLE SAID


 

TEAM

UX Lead - me

Visual Designers - Yong Kim, Zoë Knight

Motion Designer - Josh Greco

Interaction Designers - Dan Littlewood, Nina

Research - Prasanna Muthukumar

 

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