GOOGLE: Digital Wellbeing
Helping users find their balance and maintain healthy relationships with technology
Background
The tech industry is under increased scrutiny and experts have begun to question the impact of digital products/services on the heath/wellbeing of society. Our small team of researchers and strategists spent several months working to understand the complex relationships users have with their technology. This included looking into topics like dependency, anxiety, intimacy, and many other fundamental emotions/needs. All of the research findings are confidential, but you can learn more about our process below.
OBJECTIVE
Understand Google’s role in the lives of users and how we can help them have healthy relationships with technology.
CHALLENGE
People want companies to take responsibility for the negative impacts of their products, but they’re skeptical that corporations can solve issues that conflict with their business goals.
Opportunity
How can we reaffirm our commitment to responsible product innovation and show we make products to help users reach their personal goals?
Results
Our work directly influenced cross-company product design and led to the resourcing of a marketing team specifically for Digital Wellbeing.
Product Features
During our research we created prototypes for user testing and several of them have become real product features (or are currently on the roadmap). This project has been held up as a great example of how marketing can help guide product development. You can view more information about the team’s work at wellbeing.google
Google I/O - Keynote Presentation
The team’s work was incorporated into the CEO’s keynote at Google I/O in 2018. Over the last year, more resources have been dedicated across the company grow our efforts around digital wellbeing. You can watch Sundar’s presentation timestamped here.