Google product icons orbiting an iPhone that asks about the benefits of Google’s ecosystem for college-age users

Google: Design Interventions for College-age iPhone Users

Role: Product Designer
Timeline: 3 months
Team: 8 Product Designers
Platform: Figma, FigJam, Google Suite

Context

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This project is under NDA

Through Design Consulting at Cornell, I’m leading an 8-person team to develop a three-stage mixed-method research program focused on engaging users with Google products.

I’m guiding the design, refinement, and testing of conceptual interventions based on research findings and stakeholder feedback.

Nine members of the Design Consulting at Cornell team in a Google Meet call — Our team of consultants working with Google, and our client Sarah.

Key Takeaways

Designing for ourselves required a different kind of empathy

UX classes often teach us, ‘Don’t design for yourself.’ But in this project, our team was part of the target audience: Gen Z college students. I learned to use our firsthand experiences as hypotheses rather than universal truths, then step back and test which assumptions were actually shared by other students.

The experience extends beyond a single interface

I entered the project thinking primarily about UI/UX, but our interventions also touched marketing, communication, and ecosystem strategy. Exploring ideas across NotebookLM, Gemini, Maps, Chrome, Calendar, and Gmail taught me to design connected touchpoints around a student’s day, not isolated features on a single screen.