Project snapshot
• My role:
Product & UX Research
• Team:
UX Research, Visual Design, Product Strategy, Client Stakeholders
• Timeline:
Jul - Dec 2024
• Platforms:
Mobile
• Tools:
Figma, Mural, Excel, Google Workspace, Remote Interviews, JTBD Mapping
Context
Google Drive’s product and research teams launched a cross-market audit to evaluate the current state of the mobile experience. Although Drive was one of the most widely adopted cloud storage platforms worldwide, the mobile experience had grown incrementally over the years, leading to fragmented organization models, unclear mental maps for users, and inconsistencies across markets. With growing mobile adoption, there was a need to systematically assess how users actually navigate, organize, and retrieve files on mobile, especially as mobile behavior differs significantly from desktop patterns.
I joined as a UX and Product Researcher within a global research team working across multiple countries, including the US, Germany, France, India, and Brazil. My role involved auditing current mobile flows, analyzing behavioral patterns, mapping job-to-be-done models, and collaborating with multiple teams to identify pain points and inform the next iteration of Google Drive’s mobile design strategy.
The challenge
While Google Drive was widely used on mobile, research revealed consistent friction across markets when it came to how users organized, located, and retrieved their files. Many users defaulted to search due to weak folder structures or inconsistent metadata usage. Others struggled with navigation hierarchy, file discovery, and redundant organizational models that didn’t match real-world mental structures, especially in mobile contexts where cognitive load is higher. This fragmentation led to increased time-on-task, unnecessary scroll behaviors, and reliance on workarounds that made file management feel cumbersome over time.
Quantitative data surfaced patterns of heavy search dependency, high bounce rates in certain folders, and inconsistent sorting behaviors across user types. Interviews also revealed cultural differences in how users conceptualize file ownership, hierarchy, and workspace collaboration.
How might we...
Research & Discovery
To audit the mobile experience with precision, we conducted targeted research across five global markets, blending both qualitative and quantitative techniques focused on real-world file organization behaviors.
We ran remote user interviews, applied JTBD mapping to surface core user goals, and conducted task audits that exposed patterns of navigation breakdown, sorting inconsistencies, and over-reliance on search workarounds. Complementary benchmarking against competitors and internal Google products provided reference points for current industry standards
Analysis revealed three distinct user organization mindsets:
These distinct mental models exposed gaps in entry points, file discoverability, and metadata usage on mobile. Journey gap analysis and friction mapping highlighted opportunities to reduce navigation complexity, optimize sorting defaults, and align mobile organization flows more closely with real user behavior.
Strategy & Ideation
The research revealed not just usability issues, but systemic misalignments between user behaviors and Drive’s mobile architecture. Instead of approaching this as a feature-level redesign, we reframed the challenge into one of organizational simplification and cognitive load reduction.
Leveraging the identified archetypes, we created several AI models and entry point hierarchies that better supported how users naturally interact with their files on mobile. A key principle was flexibility, allowing both structured organizers and fluid searchers to accomplish tasks without forcing rigid workflows.
Design explorations included:
Certain concepts, such as enforcing more aggressive folder creation or mandatory metadata prompts, were deprioritized after usability concerns surfaced in early discussions and prototype walkthroughs.
Close collaboration with Google’s design leads, product managers, and technical teams ensured that proposed solutions aligned with both platform constraints and future roadmap scalability.
Design & Execution
We translated the insights into a set of design recommendations and strategic opportunities for Google’s product and design teams to evaluate in future iterations.
Instead of producing final UI designs, our role focused on defining:
These recommendations were delivered as part of the current state audit report, providing Google’s design team with actionable direction for the next stages of Drive’s mobile experience evolution.
Testing & Iteration
Rather than testing visual mockups, iteration focused on continuously validating the accuracy and relevance of the behavioral insights we uncovered. As findings emerged, we engaged Google’s internal teams through structured feedback loops to ensure our models accurately reflected both user behaviors and platform realities.
We held cross-functional review sessions where product managers, designers, and researchers provided input on the proposed organizational archetypes, information architecture adjustments, and flow recommendations. These iterative exchanges allowed us to calibrate nuances between markets, surface edge cases, and refine the prioritization of opportunities.
Through this process, we eliminated several lower-impact recommendations that risked adding unnecessary complexity, while sharpening design directions that better aligned with real-world usage patterns on mobile.
Outcomes & Impact
The research delivered strategic clarity that helped teams reframe long-standing organizational challenges. Instead of isolated feature fixes, product conversations shifted toward systemic restructuring of Drive’s mobile architecture, anchored in real user behavior across global markets.
While this phase didn’t involve direct launches, it set the foundation for scalable product improvements, many of which continue to evolve across upcoming Drive releases.
Learnings
This project strengthened my ability to structure complex research at scale, while balancing cross-market nuance and platform-level constraints. Working with globally distributed teams taught me how to translate ambiguous organizational behaviors into actionable product conversations, even when no immediate design work is being executed.
